Epilogue
Lily
Three years later
“Ah! Mama!”
I turned to look at my little girl, who I’d just set down in a high-chair. “What’s wrong, Mia?” I asked, fretting over her as I pulled my hair back into a ponytail. She’d recently picked up the nasty habit of pulling my hair (along with anything else she could get her hands on) so it wasn’t safe to keep it down around her.
“Umm,” she gurgled, and I smiled, staring into her big blue eyes. Jackson’s eyes. She took after him in every single way. No wonder she was so interested in pulling my damn hair out; he’d always liked to grab my hair too.
I giggled at the naughty thought as I heaved Mia out of her chair and onto my hip. “You just want to be held, don’t you?” I said before crooning a lullaby to her.
It wasn’t easy being a young mom to a toddler, especially when I was still in college. I’d gone part-time just before giving birth to Mia, and so my degree took three years to finish, rather than the one and a half years which had been remaining on my course before that. So for the last few years I’d been dealing with late night feedings, diaper-changing and studying, all at the same time. It was hard, and it was exhausting.
I wouldn’t change it for the world.
Jackson helped as much as he could, and I wouldn’t have gotten through any of it without him. He’d done so much for me; kept me safe and happy all these years. That wasn’t easy, given the things I’d gone through, but he made me feel like it was all okay. And it was okay. I still thought about the past sometimes, and I knew I was a bit messed up. For years I thought my mother was a murderer, and then I found out it was my father who was the real murderer. That sort of stuff couldn’t be erased from my memory, and it impacted on who I was. A lot. But now I was more than the messed up girl with the crazy family.
Now, I was a mother.
Now, I was Jackson’s.
And I always would be. All that mattered now was our future, and the less I looked back on the past, the better it would be.
That didn’t mean I was ignoring the past completely, though. I still saw Dr. Steinberg from time to time to help me deal with the trauma surrounding my mom’s death at the hands of my dad, and with Jackson’s help and government connections, I’d also begun to set up a non-profit organization with Alexandra during my last break from college. When it was officially up and running, it was going to be a small legal organization which was committed to exonerating wrongly-convicted people who were currently still serving time in prison for crimes they didn’t commit.
It was named after my mother, and I knew she would be proud. Her name was clear now, after all the years of people holding her responsible for Jenna Potter’s death, but having it cleared simply wasn’t enough. Starting this organization helped me move on from the trauma of discovering what really happened to Mom all those years ago, and I knew it was exactly what she would’ve wanted me to do.
Perhaps it wasn’t close to my old dream of running a restaurant, but I could always do that further down the track. Things never turned out how you planned, and it was better that way—life didn’t happen in a vacuum, and we all needed to grow and evolve around everything that happened to us, or else we’d all go nuts.
“What’s my little girl doing?”
I turned to see Jackson watching me from the doorway of the kitchen, and my insides sighed at the sight of him. He was so damn sexy with that cocked eyebrow and tight T-shirt which showed off all his muscles. I wanted to run my hands all over him right away.
“I’m just singing to Mia,” I replied, rocking our girl back and forth on our hip.
“You dirty girl,” Jackson murmured. “I meant Mia, not you.”
I pretended to pout. “I thought you said I’d always be your little girl,” I said before sticking my tongue out at him.
“Careful. Young kids pick up on a lot of stuff,” he said with a grin, striding over and encircling the two of us in his strong arms. “Wouldn’t want Mia to overhear some of the filthy things you say and do…”
I smiled and pulled away. “Oh, she’s already a naughty little thing. She threw her breakfast across the room today. Didn’t you, darling?” I said, turning my attention back to Mia.
She blew a raspberry at me, and Jackson and I both chuckled. “She’s your daughter, all right,” he said. “I’m stuck with two bad girls now. What am I going to do?”
He let out a dramatic sigh, and I smiled. “Oh, hush. You know she takes after you. I was a good girl until I let myself be corrupted by a bad older man.”
“Is that right?” he said, arching an eyebrow. “I might have to corrupt you some more when Mia goes down for her afternoon nap.”
I gave him a devious smile and set our daughter back down in her chair. She was getting sleepy now; I could tell from the way her eyelids were beginning to look heavy, and the way she sat still instead of flailing about. “She’s going down in five minutes. You sure you’re ready?” I asked.
“I was born ready for you,” he growled, watching me as I bent over to pick up a rattle that Mia must’ve thrown to the floor earlier. She was already nodding off to sleep in her high-chair after just twenty seconds.
“These damn toys everywhere…” I said, putting the rattle up on the table.
Jackson grinned. “Speaking of toys…I’ve got some new things for the toy box. Did a little shopping earlier.”
I gasped and stepped over to him. “You claim I’m the bad one, saying stuff while we’re in the same room as Mia. But then you say that…”
“She’s asleep. She didn’t hear.”
“Excuses, excuses. So what are these new toys?”
“You’ll have to see later,” Jackson murmured, circling my waist with his arms again. “But for now, I’ve got another kind of box I want to show you. Not a toy box.”
I puckered my brows with confusion. “Oh?”
“While I was out earlier, something occurred to me. We’ve been so damn busy these last few years. Too busy. I haven’t made an honest woman out of you yet, baby girl.”
“What do you mean? I think that saying is from a bit before my time,” I teased. But I knew where this was going. I just knew.
He leaned down and planted a kiss on my forehead before drawing back and pulling something out of his pocket. It was a small jewelry box. “I mean…” he said slowly, opening the box and sinking to one knee. Nestled in the center of the box was a gorgeous ring with the biggest damn diamond I’d ever seen. “I made you my little girl a long time ago. But I haven’t made you my wife yet. So I’m fixing that now. Will you marry me, Lily Rubio?”
I didn’t even pause, because I didn’t need to consider my answer. “Yes!” I replied, practically throwing myself toward him.
“I was going to wait for a better moment,” he said softly, sliding the white gold and diamond ring onto my finger. “I suppose proposing in the kitchen isn’t exactly the height of romance. But seeing you in here with our girl…having the ring already in my pocket….I couldn’t stop myself.”
“Don’t be silly,” I replied, grinning from ear to ear. “It’s amazing. You’re amazing.”
It wasn’t a monumental proposal with fireworks and flowers, but that had never been me anyway. I’d always been a girl with simple tastes, and I’d never cared too much for glitz and glamor, notwithstanding the massive diamond Jackson had just put on my hand. All I really wanted in the end was my little family—Jackson and Mia. And now we were going to be an official family, all sharing the same last name.
To me, that was enough. To me, that was perfect.
Sure, there would always be some people who had a problem with our age gap, thinking it was weird or that I was some sort of gold-digging harpy, but I didn’t care. We were both adults despite our difference in years, and we were allowed to make whatever choices we wanted. I chose Jackson, and he chose me.
We made the right choice.
THE END