Epilogue

Of course, I have flaws, but my boobs normally distract people from them.

-Kennedy to Evander

Kennedy

“I can’t believe he bought you a two-thousand-dollar bean bag as a wedding gift.”

I looked over to the man who said that. Travis, Evander’s boss.

I smiled at him in return, managing to make it only a little bit strained.

“It’s the best thing you’ll ever sit in,” I told him. “Try it.”

He looked at the huge, hulking blob in the middle of the floor, and immediately shook his head.

“I can’t,” he sighed. “I have to meet Hannah.”

Hannah, the woman who had given birth to his child. The woman whom Travis loved but wouldn’t be with due to some misguided loyalty to another woman.

I seriously felt awful for Hannah. Truly awful.

I knew how it felt to be second best, and my heart ached for her. The heartache on Hannah’s face every time I saw her was enough to make my heart ache.

I hated it.

And I think I even hated Travis a little bit for it, too.

He’d been good to Evander. He’d saved my life. Hell, he was even going to be the godfather of our child, but I hated what he was doing to Hannah.

I hated it with a passion.

“Baby?”

I blinked, surprised to find Evander standing in front of me.

“Hey!” I said, smiling at my husband. “What’s up?”

My husband.

We’d only been married four hours earlier, and we were now attending our wedding reception in the middle of the club owned by the Hails. I still hadn’t met Dante yet, though.

I’d heard a lot about him, but he’d remained elusive to me.

“Yeah?” I grinned at him.

My eyes raked up and down his body.

God, he looked so good in a tux.

He’d surprised me by wearing one. I hadn’t expected it of him.

In fact, as I’d been walking down the aisle, I’d been looking for the man wearing jeans and a lavender button-down shirt that I’d bought for him only yesterday.

What I hadn’t been looking for was a man who was tall, dark and debonair in a three-piece suit.

Now, though, the jacket had been shed, which didn’t surprise me.

He’d been sweating when I had made my way up aisle to him.

The club was hotter than hell, and I’d said as much in front of the preacher who married us.

He’d given me a raised eyebrow, and I’d slapped my hand over my mouth.

“Baby?”

I blinked, taken out of my contemplation of my man’s assets.

“Yeah?” I repeated, this time actually paying attention.

“Your nephew is on the phone.”

I blinked, surprised to find that he was.

I hadn’t spoken to my nephews or my niece since my sister had died.

Not that I hadn’t tried.

I’d tried a ton.

I’d called. Called my dad. Called my brother.

None of them had given me Darren’s forwarding address, and none of them had told me where I could look for him.

In fact, Darren had even gone as far as to change his freakin’ number.

Evander had said that he could find the number for me if I wanted it…and, one day, I would.

That day would be one year exactly from the day that Darren had ripped away all I had left of my family from me. That’s when I’d ask for that number.

It hurt, but I was willing to make that sacrifice for the kids, even though he would never give me the same courtesy.

“Really?” I asked in awe.

He nodded, and then held out my phone to me.

I’d given it to him to hold since he had pockets, and I didn’t. He’d been taking pictures with it of me and him, or of other random stuff that would make me smile later on, all night.

“Thank you,” I whispered, taking the phone.

He winked at me and walked away, taking Travis with him.

I nervously placed the phone to my ear, and started to cry the moment I heard my sister’s son’s voice for the first time in what felt like forever.

Evander had done some digging into my past one fateful night my father had said a few choice words to me about how I ‘wasn’t good for nothin’.’ From there, he discovered that our parents hadn’t actually split their children evenly and that was that. Apparently, a long time ago, my father had tried to contact me for my brother. When I’d ‘written’ back, I’d explained to them that I wanted nothing to do with them.

Only, I hadn’t written that letter. I hadn’t even known a letter existed, or that my father had tried reaching out to me.

He’d shared this ‘letter’ that I’d written to him a few months after Trixie’s death, then told me to leave. I’d taken one look at the handwriting and had known instantly that my mother had been the one behind it.

My ‘letter’ had also explained my brother’s and sister’s initial hesitancy toward me.

After explaining this to my father, he didn’t believe me. So…I’d given up.

It wasn’t worth my time, or my happiness, to tried to convince a stubborn old man that I wasn’t the asshole that he thought I was. Especially when he wouldn’t give me the time of day.

Though, every once in a while, I still tried to bridge that gap.

It never worked.

So, for now, I tried to be happy that my sister’s children were allowed to contact me again.

It would have to be enough.

“I can’t wait to tell you about the home run I hit!”

I grinned, stood in the middle of my wedding reception, cake in hand, and felt pure fucking happiness course through me. “I can’t wait to listen.”

Then I thanked my lucky stars as DJ promised that he’d call again tomorrow because his dad was tired of his ‘insistent’ whining.

Whatever. I’d take it.

I’d take anything Darren was willing to give.

***

Two hours later, it took both Evander and I to roll the huge bean bag into our living room.

We’d made the mistake of opening the enormous thing at the club. Then we tried to stuff it back into its bag—only getting part of it in there since there was no way in hell that the whole thing was going back in the bag no matter how hard we tried—so we could put it onto the flatbed part of Travis’ tow truck for transport back to our place.

Travis had helped us get it to the front porch before he’d been called away on a recovery, leaving us to shove it through the front door of our house on our own.

Well…I’d helped push. Evander had gotten it in the most of the way before he had forced me to wait outside until he got it through the door.

“Now,” he said as he walked over to me, bending at the waist and then lifting me up into his arms.

I squealed and threw my arms around his neck, holding on for dear life, even though I knew he wouldn’t drop me.

“But we forgot to feed the goats!” I cried out.

I’d decided to hold off on getting more chickens, so the only farm animals I had at the moment were my goats and my dog.

My dog that still was a bit unsure about Evander and didn’t try to hide it.

One day, I would get more chickens. One day, I would forget that Balthazar had ordered his minions over to my place to ‘give a warning’ that I hadn’t heeded. That warning being that he decapitated every single chicken that I owned.

A warning that I hadn’t realized was a warning. Ramirez, Balthazar’s minion, had informed me that I’d gone to the police, which had expedited Balthazar’s timetable—meaning that he’d taken the risk at visiting us himself, bringing Walter as backup. What he hadn’t expected was such a fast response time by the police, or for Evander to have a freakin’ bat.

“Don’t worry about them,” Evander growled against my neck. “Worry about me.”

“You don’t have anything that I need to worry about at this point…” I countered cheekily.

His mouth turned up into a grin. “No?”

I didn’t like that grin. It was his ‘I’m about to do something you won’t like’ grin.

Then he started toward my Lovesac.

“Evander, no,” I growled. “We’re not doing it on my Lovesac.”

My precious baby that I’d seen on Facebook and had cost an arm and a leg. A beautiful piece of furniture that still didn’t have a cover on it.

He ignored me.

Then started running to take a flying jump, with me in his arms curled around him like a monkey. He came down hard on the Lovesac, but I didn’t so much as jolt.

The air left my lungs as my wedding present took the brunt of our fall.

“Goddammit, Evander!” I said, laughter tinging my voice. “What the hell are we supposed to do now?”

We were both sunk down in the beast of a bean bag. We were cocooned on all four sides, and it was glorious.

In a few months, however, when I was further along in my pregnancy, it would definitely be a bitch to get out of it.

“We’re supposed to make love.”

I laughed, thinking that he was joking.

We couldn’t make love on my Lovesac! How cliché!

Except he was perfectly serious and went about showing me how very serious he was moments later.

By the time he was finished showing me, I was totally on board with Lovesac lovin’.

My face was buried in the canvas cloth, and my arms were sprawled out above my head.

The lower half of my body was supported by the rest of it.

I felt like a human hotdog.

“I brought a towel,” he said, handing me the towel. “Grabbed it on the way over.”

The minute I saw it, I shook my head. “I can’t use that. I cleaned up bacon grease with it, not to mention that there’s bleach and kitchen cleaner on that towel.”

He flipped the towel over. “This side is dry.”

I was already shaking my head. “No! I swear to God…do you know how bad yeast infections suck?”

He dropped his forehead to my shoulder.

“Well, I can’t really just pull out. It’ll go everywhere…including onto your Lovesac.”

I immediately shot my hand down between my legs to hold him there as I started laughing.

He joined me, and we were both laughing so hard, tears were pouring out of my eyes.

“Oh, God,” I wheezed. “Jesus.”

I could feel his cock deflating inside of me as he laughed, and moments later, he slipped free.

I caught it as best as I could and started to roll as Evander went up on his knees.

That’s when I got caught in a low spot in the bean bag. I was turtling in the deep gully and couldn’t roll any further. “Van, help me!”

He took a hold of my feet and practically tossed me off the bag. I rolled off the side and straight onto the floor with a soft thump.

Luckily, my hand was still covering my vagina and successfully catching the stray fluids as I continued to laugh.

I felt something standing over me and opened my eyes.

“What?” I giggled.

Evander held out his hand for me, and I took it…with the wrong hand.

“Jesus fucking Christ.”

“You still love me, Van?”

He pulled me in tight to him, uncaring about all the fluids that were now making our bodies slip against each other.

“There is one thing on this Earth that has the power to destroy me. That’s you,” he declared. “I love you, and I can’t imagine a life without you. There’s not a single moment that goes by throughout the day that I don’t think about you. So yes, I love you. It doesn’t matter if you break my heart for all to see…I’ll love you forever and always.”

My lip trembled as tears started to trail out of my eyes.

“And the baby you’re carrying?” He ran the backs of his fingers up the side of my barely there bump. “My life.”

I drew in a shaky breath.

“I love you, too, Van,” I told him. “So much that I don’t even have the words to describe it.”

He winked and then lifted me into his arms once again.

“Now, let’s go shower and do it all over again.”

I started to giggle.

“As long as it’s not in my Lovesac, I’ll do just about anything.”

And I forever would.