Epilogue
One Year Later
Brett
“It’s official,” I told Sophia. “I’m declaring our bedroom a disaster zone.”
“Who knew babies needed so much stuff?” Sophia asked, nodding her agreement.
“Not me.” I really hadn’t. Thank god for grandmothers and the internet. I didn’t think that we’d have survived without either.
People who were parents before the advent of the internet had been elevated to godlike status in my book, and I made sure that my assistant sent both my mom and Sophia’s flowers every week. They both protested that it wasn’t necessary, but it was. Mom finally moved into that house I’d bought for her when Sophia moved in with me.
Mark and Soph’s dad John were also rock stars with little Harper. I made sure to treat them with tickets to Wrigley Field often. Of course, nowadays, if I joined them, it was with a kangaroo carrier strapped to my chest.
Much to my surprise, I fucking loved it. If babies were little pinks lumps, Harper was the most beautiful little pink lump that I ever could’ve imagined. I was crazy about her. Absolutely mad. She had me firmly wrapped around her fourteen-week-old pinkie.
When I found out we were having a girl, that I was about to become the father of a daughter, I freaked the hell out.
At least I’d been a boy once, so I kind of knew what to expect. Kind of. But a girl? A girl who would eventually grow into a woman and start dating one of the little pricks out there? A mini meltdown was probably more accurate of a description of what I’d had at the time.
Because even though most of the boys she’d end up dating probably weren’t born yet, I just knew that they were all going to be pricks. Or assholes.
Mark backed me up. He knew it, too. It had taken him some time to fully accept our relationship, but when he came on board, he came with everything that he had and with absolutely no reservations. He organized a Man shower for me, which had actually rivaled some of the wilder bachelor parties I’d been to, and he helped me move Sophia into my place a month before the baby was born.
So when we found out it was a girl, he bought us both toy guns and solemnly swore to be there on the day that the first prick arrived to pick her up.
Sophia, on the other hand, loudly proclaimed that we both had issues and laughed so hard that I legit thought that she was going to laugh herself into labor. Apparently, that wasn’t a thing. The pregnancy hormones making her super horny, though? That was a thing. A thing that I loved so much that I was already looking forward to getting Sophia pregnant again.
She wasn’t on board with that idea, though. Not yet anyway.
If I was being realistic, she was probably right about it being too soon. I wanted just a little more time to dote on the girls who were already in my life.
And there were a few other things that I wanted to get done first. The most important of which was burning a hole in my damn pocket.
Sophia was standing by her dressing table, in the middle of a sea of playmats and toys, staring intently at the screen of the baby monitor. Harper had gone down ten minutes ago, and while there was a second crib for her set up in our room, we really tried to have her sleep in her own nursery.
My Soph was tired but serene. I thought that she looked more beautiful by the day, but she didn’t agree. Even wearing cotton pajamas with her hair pulled back into a messy ponytail and slightly dark smudges under her eyes, she was the most gorgeous woman on the planet as far as I was concerned.
I still got hard whenever I thought about being inside her, which was still all the time, and I was hopeful about my prospects for later. But there was something else in my pants that I needed to give her first. I smirked a little at my corny, internal joke, and Sophia’s lips kicked up into a smile when she caught me in the middle of it.
“What’s going on in that dirty mind of yours now?”
“It’s not filth all the time anymore, I’ll have you know,” I joked, walking across the room to wrap my arms around her.
“Maybe, but I know that look, and whatever it was this time, it was dirty or borderline dirty at the very least.”
She knew me well, but she was the love of life, so I was okay with having lost the mystery. Most of it, anyway. I could still surprise, and I was pretty sure that I was about to.
“Fine, you want to know what I was thinking?”
Sophia nodded. “Pray tell, oh filthy one.”
“I was thinking that there’s something in my pants that I’m desperate to give you.”
Sophia smacked my chest, laughed, and rolled her eyes. “Oh my god, you’re an animal. How many hours has it even been?”
I raised an eyebrow, grinning to flash my dimples, because I knew she loved them. “What do you think I’m talking about?”
She cupped my cock, and it reacted to her attention. Then she dropped her hand and gave me pointed look. “Isn’t it obvious?”
“It wasn’t that, actually. But you know that’s yours whenever you want it.” I reached into my pocket casually, trying to keep calm, even though my heart was pounding harder than Sophia had squeezed my hand just before Harper made her appearance in the world. “I was talking about this.”
I pulled the ring I’d picked up from the jewelers earlier out of my pocket and sank to my knee. Sophia stopped laughing immediately and stared down at me, blue eyes wider than golf balls.
“Sophia Love, you have given me everything that I never knew I wanted out of life. Everything that I was too afraid to ask for or dream about. You asked me a question once that changed my life for the better and forever. I’m really fucking hoping that you’re going to give me the same answer that I gave you. Will you marry me?”
“Why me?”
My heart wasn’t going to handle much more of this. “What?”
“You said you wanted the same answer you gave me,” Sophia said, a megawatt smile on her face. “Those were the first words you said to me after I asked you.”
I groaned. “Okay, smartass. I meant the ultimate answer, then.”
Sophia sank onto her knees, crawled into my lap, and grabbed my face between both of her hands, eyes blazing like a cobalt fire. “Yes. Of course, I will. I’ve loved you for a million years, Brett Kelly, and I’ll keep loving you till my dying day. A million times, yes.”
And then, just like I had on that fateful day that kickstarted my life into the thing of beauty that I couldn’t live without today, I leaned forward and closed those precious few inches to capture her delicious mouth with mine.
Soph looped her arms around me, pressing her breasts up against my chest, melting into the kiss, and making those sexy little noises that still turned me to steel. She smiled against my lips. “Can I have it now?”
“Which one do you want?”
“Both,” she quipped. “Shiny one first. When we get to the other thing in your pants, I want to be wearing only the ring that officially makes me yours.”
“God, I love the sound of that,” I told her honestly, opening the hand that was still clutching her ring. In its center sat a large, brilliant cut diamond, with two rings of smaller sapphires around it. The band was inlaid with tiny diamonds and sapphires. “I had it made like this because the colors together reminded me of your eyes.”
Sophia gasped when she took her first real look at the ring. “Brett, this is stunning.”
I shrugged. “You’re stunning. The ring’s pretty.”
She held out her hand, and I slid it on, loving that it was my ring sitting on her finger. Perhaps her parents, and even Mark in the end, had a point. I would never have been able to watch her with another man. We were inevitable, because she’d been made for me, and now, finally, she was really going to be mine.
The stones shimmered in the light when Sophia held up her hand to admire them, sighing happily. “I could just look at this and revel in what it signifies for the rest of night.”
I squeezed her ass. “No can do, future Mrs. Kelly. You promised me that I was going to get to see you in only that ring, and since tonight is all about promises...”
“I don’t remember promising,” Sophia said, joy lighting up her eyes.
I recognized the emotion, because it was exactly what I was feeling. “The promise was right there in your tone.”
“Well, I guess if it was right there, then I’d better make good on it, shouldn’t I?”
Without another word, she stood up from my lap and started walking toward our bed. She turned to face me when she reached it and shimmied out of her pajamas, hooked her thumbs into her panties, rolled them off, and pulled the ponytail out of her hair to shake it free.
My mouth dried up, and my cock strained against my jeans, instantly hard for her. “You are so fucking beautiful.”
She placed her hands on her narrow hips and cocked her head at me. “Well then, Mr. Kelly, what’re you waiting for?”
Absolutely fucking nothing.
Jumping to my feet, I shed my clothes before I even made it halfway across the room and went to stand right up against my future wife, bending to claim her mouth for a kiss that sent a current shooting through my veins.
I put my knee on our mattress, then locked an arm around her waist, and guided her gently onto it. Sophia went willingly, her body following my movements easily.
Once she was spread out on the bed, I stepped back to marvel at the sight of Sophia Love, the girl I’d never wanted to notice but simply couldn’t miss, now my fiancee and mother of my child, naked on my bed.
My cock throbbed and pulsed, my heart nearly bursting from happiness. “I am the luckiest damn man in the world, baby. Thank you.”
I spent the next couple of hours showing her exactly how grateful I was for her presence in my life, that she’d given me Harper, and how fucking happy I was that she’d had the bravery to ask me that one question.
THE END
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