Epilogue
Brighton
I felt his fingers ghosting over the tattoo on my chest, and I smiled.
It happened so often that I thought I was going crazy. There were times when it felt so real, but he wasn’t there. It was like he was touching me from somewhere else, and it scared me. I was so afraid that one day I was going to wake up and it would all just be a dream. That I’d really lost him, and I’d imagined everything else somehow.
I blinked open my eyes and felt my heart stutter when I saw him staring down at me. I would never tire of looking into those beautiful eyes. I held his face and kissed him, deeply and passionately.
“I love you,” I whispered.
“Love you too, baby girl.” He nuzzled against me and breathed me in. “So fucking much.”
Ryland had beaten the odds. He told me he always would. For me.
I understood his craziness now. I felt the same uncertainty he did every time I had to watch him walk out the door or drive to work. Fear had a permanent place in my heart, and it likely always would. It couldn’t be helped. But I made the most of every single second I had with him. I told him every day how much I loved him.
We were a crazy pair, and our poor son would likely not have any semblance of a normal childhood with the two of us watching over him. But I lived by a new motto now, and it was that there was no such thing as being too protective.
I’d seen the flip side. I’d seen what happened when you hoped for the best or left things to chance. I wouldn’t ever make that mistake again. My son would be well loved and well cared for, and he’d be raised by fiercely protective parents who nobody would ever dare fuck with again.
He came into this world screaming.
When my placenta ruptured, I had no idea what happened. They rushed me into surgery right away, and Jacob Jackson Bennett was delivered four weeks early.
He was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. He looked just like Ryland, blue eyes and all. Sometimes when I looked at them, my heart was so full it hurt. I wouldn’t ever let anyone take them away from me again.
I knew Ryland felt the same. There were so many nights that one of us would wake up in a panic at three am, desperately seeking out the other just to know they were still there. That they were real, and they hadn’t disappeared.
We’d consume each other during those nights.
“I need you,” I whispered.
It was all I ever had to say. Ryland wrapped my legs around him and entered me with a long, contented sigh. I clung to his body like it was my lifeline, and he kissed and licked and worshipped me while he moved in time to the beat of our hearts.
This was our morning ritual. Our evening ritual. And our everything in between ritual. We stole every precious moment we could to connect like this. People said we were crazy for still being so in love. It was true. Our love was the craziest thing I’d ever experienced. It knew no bounds. It couldn’t be contained. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
“Come to the office tomorrow afternoon,” Ryland ordered, already planning out our next encounter. “I want to fuck you over my desk.”
His words had the intended effect, and I detonated around him with an explosion of color behind my eyelids. Ryland followed with a pained grunt as he fell to the bed beside me. He pulled me into his arms and kissed my face until his ragged breathing calmed.
“Who cares about tomorrow?” I teased circles around his chest. “We still have all afternoon.”
Ryland laughed and pulled me even closer, splaying his hand across my belly. I knew what he was thinking without even having to ask. He was worrying about what would happen in six months. When he’d learned what happened with Jake’s birth, he panicked and said we were never going to have any more.
Eventually, I got the doctor to convince him that it was going to be perfectly fine and that they would monitor me carefully just in case.
After the specialist had come to see Ryland, I was a believer in miracles. He’d found a way to help him. To bring him back to me. And while I would never really know if it was medicine or sheer determination, I didn’t care. The only thing that mattered was he was there.
***
“What do you think of this one?” Ryland asked.
I glanced at the paper in his hands and shrugged. It was my decision, but every year I’d left it up to him. Even though he’d never said so, I knew it was important to him. So I always let him choose who the foundation’s scholarship would go to that year.
“That was the one I was going to pick.” I smiled and leaned into his touch.
He was so warm, just like always.
He set the paperwork aside, and his hands wandered over my breasts while his lips grazed my chest. I knew what he was kissing. The place I’d been permanently marked, for him.
I’d gotten the tattoo of his and Jake’s heartbeats on our one-year wedding anniversary. Something permanent. Something nobody could ever take away from me again.
His hands caressed my face with a contented sigh as he kissed his way along my neck. Every once in a while his teeth would graze my skin, and then he’d make his claim on me. The darkness that would likely always be a part of Ryland was still there, but it didn’t overshadow him anymore. He still had moments where the grief threatened to swallow him whole, but he knew how to control it now. And I could always tell when he squeezed Jake in his arms a little bit tighter, he was having one of those moments. If there was ever any claim that another man loved his son more than Ryland, you wouldn’t be able to convince me.
“What do you think we should name this one?” he murmured as he stroked my belly.
“Hmm…” I pretended to think on it as I stared out at the bay. “I think we should follow tradition. I was thinking maybe Anna Sophia.”
Ryland pulled my gaze back to his as he stared at me anxiously. “We’re having a girl?”
“Yep.” I grinned.
He crushed me against his chest and breathed a sigh of relief. I’d snuck off to the ultrasound without him this morning because he always got too nervous while we waited for the baby’s heartbeat.
“Christ,” he grumbled. “Little girls are completely different.”
“You’ll do great,” I assured him. “Just like you do with Jake.”
“Speaking of…” Ryland smirked as the front door slammed shut.
Nicole and Matt had taken Jake to the zoo for the day, and judging by the smiles on their faces, it had been a good one. Jake bolted straight onto the back deck and snuggled up between me and Ryland.
“I pumped him full of sugar.” Nicole laughed. “I couldn’t help it.”
Matt shrugged and laughed. “God help our future children.”
He reached out and gave me a quick hug, followed by a handshake for Ryland. The two of them had grown surprisingly close over the last few years, and I was glad to see that Nicole was finally happy. It took her a while to accept that it was okay for her to move on, but Matt patiently saw it through. For the most part, everything in our lives had finally calmed down.
Norma-Jean was living in California now, and she was still sober. Looking at her now, it was hard to remember the woman that she used to be. She had a job and was dating a nice man named Ted, who just so happened to be Ryland’s driver.
As for Brayden, we weren’t as close as we used to be and I didn’t know if that would ever change. In the end, he and Ryland had come together with a common goal. To protect me. They could be in a room together now without wanting to kill each other, but I couldn’t look at him the same way again, and he understood. Just as he’d never been able to look at me the same after that day.
I was no longer the naïve and frightened girl that I used to be. In the end, my blood ran true, and I became my father’s daughter. I killed Alfredo, and I would do it again in a heartbeat. Though he never said so, I knew Brayden didn’t like seeing that part of me. It crushed him that he failed me and brought me into that mess. That I was forced to embrace the darker part of myself.
But they lived in unison inside of me, just as they did in Ryland. Just as they did in everybody, really. The light and darkness were always there if you really stopped to look.
“Mama?” Jake tugged on my shirt to get my attention. “Can I stay with Aunt Nicole and Uncle Matt tonight?”
Nicole beamed the same way she always did whenever Jake looked her way. His looks and charm were all Ryland, with the bonus of a cute little dimple in his cheek.
Matt looked like he was about to panic, and I shot him a reassuring glance.
“Not tonight, buddy,” I scooped him up onto my lap. “We have a special surprise tonight.”
“We do?” Jake asked excitedly.
Ryland and I both looked at each other and laughed as Nicole pouted.
She didn’t know it yet, but the surprise was really for her. Because tonight was the night Matt was finally going to propose.
***