Epilogue

I’ll do anything with you except downhill sports and butt stuff.

-Text from Cobie to Dante

Dante

One year later

“You’re pregnant?”

Cobie was busy throwing up in the toilet, so she didn’t answer me.

I just looked at the test on the counter next to where she was and shook my head. “But how?”

“You do know how babies are made, right, D?”

I flipped my brother off. “Yes, Travis.”

My brother nodded. “Okay. Just checking. I didn’t want you to make this mistake again.”

I grinned. “Believe me, this is no mistake, fucker.”

Travis’ grin was wide as he offered me his hand. “I’m glad you’re back.”

I took his offered hand and shook it hard, squeezing it like only a big brother could.

“Fuck you,” Travis growled, shaking his hand out as he pulled away.

Cobie slammed the door closed, effectively closing us both out, making Travis smirk.

I chuckled as I pulled my hand back and wrapped my arm around Travis’ shoulders.

“Since you’re here,” I started, leading him out into the kitchen. “There’s something I wanted to talk to you about.”

Travis didn’t stop until he was picking up our son, Dante Junior, whom his big sister and his mother called Junior.

Travis brought Junior up to his face and inhaled, just like I sometimes did, and smiled.

“What?”

Travis turned his face to me as he cuddled Junior to his chest.

“Selling you my half of the business so I can start a new one, here in the Longview/Kilgore area.”

His eyes went up in surprise, then lowered.

“Why do you have to sell at all?” he questioned. “Why not just open another place?”

I thought about that for a long moment then shrugged. “I guess I kind of thought you’d want something that was all yours.”

He started shaking his head. “No. I don’t want that. Hannah and I don’t want that. We want to keep doing it like we’re doing it. I wouldn’t mind having a reason to come up here and visit more often.”

I grinned.

After the shit that went down with Drake at my old place, we’d never gone back.

My mother, father, and brothers had packed up the house without our help and brought all of our belongings here, to Cobie’s place that her grandfather had left her.

Cobie and I started our new life here, but every day I still drove down to Hostel to go to work.

Which gave me a lot of time to think as I drove, and what I came up with was an idea to start up a new business here. Not only to save time but also to give Travis the opportunity to have his own business if he wanted it.

It’d been Cobie’s idea to use the sale of her old place—which had sold for a considerable amount of money thanks to Drake’s additions to the place—to pay for the start-up of the new business.

I’d thought it was a great idea, mostly because I knew that we wouldn’t use that money for any other reason.

In the six months since it sold, the money had just sat in an account earning interest since neither of us had felt it was right to touch it. Me, because it wasn’t my house or money to use. Cobie, because she didn’t want to make money off of a house where I’d been held captive and tortured.

We only came to the decision to use the money to start the new business last night.

Which had been why I’d invited my brother here in the first place.

What I hadn’t expected was to announce Cobie’s pregnancy—even though I’d already been thinking that she was.

Over the last week, she’d changed. It wasn’t the usual signs, though, but the fact that she’d been a whole lot clingier than normal.

When I’d left to go on a run today, she’d been waiting for me to get back. And had started crying in my arms before I’d even managed to close the door.

“Did he say yes?”

Cobie emerged, face pale and looking a bit green around the gills.

“He said no,” Travis said.

“What did he say no for?”

That was Reed, walking through my door without even a knock.

“He said no to allowing them to start a new business in a place that’ll keep them away from us,” Travis said.

Reed snorted and walked in, holding out his hands for my son.

Travis shook his head. “Go find your own baby.”

Reed rolled his eyes and then turned his face in the direction of Cobie. “Did you tell him?”

Cobie looked sheepish.

“Yes.”

“You knew?”

Reed was an OB/GYN, but he was not, however, the doctor that had delivered Junior.

There was only so much I could take, and my brother seeing my wife’s vagina wasn’t one of those things.

“Yep,” Reed confirmed. “I was the one who told her to test. I tried to get her to come into my office, but since I was the only one working today, she refused. Said she’d wait for my partner.”

I grunted. “Good.”

Reed rolled his eyes again.

Reed had not taken the news of Drake’s involvement in everything that happened to me well. He’d felt terrible at first, and it was only recently that he had started to return to his old self.

I’d felt bad for keeping him in the dark now because it’d come as a surprise that his oldest childhood friend had been the mastermind behind his brother’s agony over the last few years.

The door opened and closed again, then the pounding of feet sounded as Mary ran her way inside, followed shortly by both of my parents.

“Mama!”

Cobie scooped Mary up in her arms and buried her face in our girl’s neck.

I grinned inwardly, but outwardly I scowled. “Hey, what am I, chopped liver?”

Mary’s giggling face popped up, and she stuck out her tongue.

My brothers chuckled.

My mom patted my chest. “Maybe the next baby will like you better.”

Then she walked over to Travis and stole Junior from his arms.

Travis scowled.

Reed grunted. “I was next!”

And I was left feeling utterly euphoric at having my family surrounding me.

I was no longer sad all the time.

Sure, I had my moments sometimes when a memory would hit, or something would catch my eye that reminded me of Lily or the girls.

But mostly, they were good memories now. Memories that left me feeling happy and smiling rather than broken and raw.

And, as more and more of my family came in to celebrate Mary’s birthday, I realized that my life, although not how I once thought it would turn out, was exactly what I needed it to be.

It was my kind of perfect.

***

In an hour, Mary’s best friend, Dobbie, showed up.

Dobbie, the little boy that Cobie had taken care of during clinicals in nursing school, was no longer just a part of Cobie’s life, but Mary’s and mine as well.

I also didn’t like the way Mary looked at him—as if he was her whole world.

“You better watch out, Daddy.” Cobie came up from behind me. “That’s looking a lot like love.”

I lifted my arm and wrapped it around her.

“Don’t even think about it.”

She snickered into my shoulder. “My lips are sealed.”