Epilogue
November
Nine Years Later
Porter
“Daddy!”
I woke up seconds before the weight of three newly turned seven-year-olds crashed onto me, shrieking loud enough to wake the neighbors. I felt Asher roll away, and did my best at keeping the kids’ attention away from her as she quickly slipped into her robe.
For every single last birthday of these three rugrats, I had been on the road.
For every single last birthday of these three rugrats, I could only Skype them on this day—and I’m man enough to admit that the moment they left the room, and it was just Ash and me on video chat, I bawled like a baby.
It didn’t help matters that my wife screenshot it too.
Every frickin’ year.
The Enforcers were a top-notch team and because of that, you damn well better believe that every time we were in the Western Conference finals, and there was a chance that we would be playing over the twins’ birthday, I used my Captain powers to the utmost extreme and made sure the guys played their hardest.
If we could win it in four and I could be home with my girls for their birthday, I made sure to light that fire under their asses.
The triplets, though, were a different story.
I swear—my kids were born in the middle of mayhem as punishment to me for giving my parents such hell as a kid, as well as myself, for being born with terrible timing.
Ashlyn, Annabelle, and Porter—yes, my wife talked me into a junior, poor kid; we called him Skip—were supposed to also be a scheduled C-section, but Baby A—that would be Skip—decided to start the game early, sending Asher into labor while I was in the middle of a flight to the East Coast, somewhere above Montana, and there wasn’t a chance in hell I would make it home for their births.
Thankfully, I had a pretty awesome extended family; Sydney Skyped the entire thing for me, and Avery took my place, holding my wife’s hand.
Needless to say, from day one, I had cried on the triplets’ birthday.
This year, though, while we were still on an East Coast tour—you would think being a Prescott, my siblings could do something about this fucking schedule—we had the day off. The moment the game was over last night, I pulled on my dress clothes, gave my obligatory post-game interview—I had a reputation for only interviewing after changing—and boarded a plane.
Not even Asher was expecting me to come home.
I had snuck into the house, checking on my five—sometimes I couldn’t believe it myself—kids before quietly entering the master bedroom, stripping myself of my clothes, and kissing my wife awake.
She still had slight issues with sex—issues that would very likely never go away—so I knew better than to just sink into her to wake her up. Instead, I kept my hands light on her, over her sleeping shirt, my lips feathering lightly over her face.
When she rolled to her back and beamed up to me, I was kicked in the gut with the love I had for this woman.
We had our occasional moments. There were times we were fire and kerosene—we were both stubborn to a fault and sometimes needed our own timeouts—but when that fire wasn’t blazing mad and red, it was a fire much like an autumn sky—the prettiest of sunsets in shades of bright oranges and purples and pinks.
She was still my best friend, still my better half.
I could not picture my life without her in it.
Now though, as our triplets attacked me in our recently well-used bed, was the wrong time to remember I didn’t lock the bedroom door before making love to my wife.
But it wasn’t the first time we were woken up in a state of undress.
There had been many stories over the years of how mommy rolled right out of her sleep shirt, or that daddy’s pants got stuck in the sheets somehow.
“You’re home!” squealed my little Belle. Annabelle was triplet C, and had been the smallest of the three. Where Peyton and Presley looked identical—I remembered the comical fear that they were, they’d looked so much alike—Annabelle and Ashlyn truly were identical and had been what was called twin-to-twin transfusion babies.
…Meaning Ashlyn was an asshole in the womb and took almost everything from Annabelle. Ashlyn was definitely the most headstrong of all five of our kids, something that wasn’t surprising in the least, considering her womb-antics.
Annabelle though...
For as small as she’d been, as small as she still was, she was strong like her momma.
I heard the bathroom door click shut and pulled myself up to sit against the headboard, making sure to secure the comforter around my hips as I did so. Annabelle turned to sit on my lap, her back resting against my chest and her fingers tracing over my bracelet tattoo, as Ashlyn straddled my legs and Skip sat beside me, his legs crossed criss-cross applesauce style—when I was a kid, we called that Indian style, but, as I learned with our oldest two, that was politically incorrect.
“Can you make pancakes?”
“French toast!”
“No, ice cream cake! Let’s have ice cream cake!”
The triplets all spoke at once and I couldn’t help but smile, hugging Belle close to my chest as they fought over what to have for breakfast, even though we all knew where we’d be going this morning.
Ice cream cake—which came from Skip, and totally my kind of breakfast—was definitely out of the question.
Asher wouldn’t go for it.
The triplets continued speaking over one another, talking about their week and how much they missed me. I heard a door open and before long, my nine-year-old ladies were in the room as well.
All four of my girls looked like their mom; it was going to be a problem—sooner than later, I was sure. Apparently, Pres had her first kiss the previous Friday on the bus.
At nine.
Shoot me now.
Better yet, let me get my own gun ready for a showdown.
Shit, this was terrible. I wasn’t ready for it.
Hugs and kisses and conversation pursued, and I enjoyed every fucking minute of it.
I knew at nineteen, that Asher was my place to land. It took us a while to get here, but I wouldn’t trade a moment of it.
Not now, knowing that this was all waiting for me.
Asher
I showered quickly and, towel wrapped around me, walked into the large closet that was attached to our master bathroom. I could hear five different voices all chattering their dad’s ear off.
I smiled as I pulled on a shift dress.
Raising five kids during hockey season wasn’t the easiest, but it was moments like this one that made it all so worth it. The first pregnancy scared me—terrified me, really, when I learned there were two in there—because I didn’t think I had what it took to be a good mom. The second pregnancy, though…
The second pregnancy terrified Porter.
Everything from my pregnancy with the twins, was worse with the triplets. When we got pregnant the second time, multiples weren’t on our radar. My doctor told us that the likelihood of my HG returning with a single pregnancy, was slim.
So, when I spent a week in the bathroom, we knew something was up.
In the end, though, I thought Porter and I were doing a damn good job.
The girls weren’t interested in hockey, and while I liked to tease Porter that it was his pushing that made Skip interested, I was pretty sure the boy was ready for skates long before Porter strapped them on him.
Deciding that my husband probably needed to get in the bathroom by now, I moved my slowly drying mass of hair over my shoulder and left the warmth of the bathroom.
“Alright everyone,” I spoke over their voices. “Go get dressed so we can go to breakfast.”
That was our tradition—fancy breakfasts, as the twins once penned them.
Really, it was just breakfast at the same mom and pop restaurant year after year. When we moved to San Diego, Porter made a point of restarting the tradition in our new city.
All five little people—God, the twins were getting tall; when did that happen?—left the room and three bedroom doors closed shortly after. I followed suit, closing our own door, being sure to do what my husband failed to do last night, and locking it before making my way back to the bed.
The whole time, Porter continued sitting there, bare-chested, and that sexy half-smile beckoning me. At thirty-three, the man still had it. He was still the full package.
He still pissed me off, but made me laugh in the very next breath.
His heavily tattooed, muscled arms were still the place I felt the safest—the most loved. Where I felt wanted and needed.
My troublemaker found his way to a tattoo chair more often than not, and these days, his entire right half was covered in ink, from shoulder to ankle. Mostly grays and blacks, but the kids each had splashes of colorful ink in his sleeve, splashes that matched the watercolor slashes on my arm. On his back, to the right of his spine, were five footprints—each one a copy from their birth certificates.
If you weren’t looking for it, Porter simply looked like a guy who liked tattoos, but if you knew what you were looking for, you saw his family woven in and throughout; we were the base of it all.
The only tattoos he had on his left side were his wedding band, his ‘Mom’, Bri’s bracelet, and the giant Roman numeral XI—but now there were two ribbons woven through those two letters.
Again—his family.
“What’cha staring at, beautiful?” he asked, his crooked grin prominently displaying that dimple I loved to trace.
“At my husband,” I answered quickly, easily. I hitched up the skirt of my dress and straddled his lap, the evidence of his arousal pressing firmly against the very core of me. I wrapped my arms around his neck, pulling his face to mine, so I could give him a proper good morning kiss.
His tongue licked over the seam of my lips and he kissed me back, his arms snaking around my hips, but he pulled his mouth away from the kiss before I was ready.
“I gotta piss,” he spoke against my lips.
I chuckled against him, my lips curling up and my arms tightening around his neck, keeping him near. “Yeah, I know. Man of habit. I just wanted a moment.”
“I’ve got lots of moments for you,” he whispered, his eyes piercing and staring into mine. In his eyes, I saw truth.
I saw love.
I saw forever.
Our journey wasn’t the easiest, no, but I didn’t think we’d been ready for forever when we first met. I had too much to work through, emotionally. And while there were some steps in that process I would rather not have gone through, it led me to learn that it was okay to open up and lean on someone.
Leaning on Porter had been the scariest thing I had to do in those first few years. It was why I’d pushed him away.
But he didn’t give up on me.
And for that, I would be forever grateful.
I had a family, a family I never would have imagined for myself at seventeen.
“Seventy games to go,” I reminded him, still locked in close. Retiring at thirty-three hadn’t been his dream, no, but when his bad knee started bothering him again last season, he and I had a long talk about what came next. He was ready to be home more.
He nodded. “Seventy games to go. What are you gonna do with a has-been like me?”
I tilted my chin up so I could nip at his nose. “Probably love you. Maybe give you more chores around the house.”
“Ah, so I’ll have to work for my keep.”
I couldn’t help the fast smile and shrugged a shoulder, loosening my arms so I could lean back in his lap and take him in fully. “Well, yeah. You won’t be bringing in the money any more. I’ll be the bread-winner.”
I fully took over Studio 11 back home a few years ago, and pretty much just shot summer weddings; it worked for us. With his retirement, though, I’d be able to open up my availability for the year. A little anyway, because—
“You know damn well I can’t just walk away from the Enforcers organization. They’ll have me in some fancy office before the retirement ceremony is aired.”
I pursed my lips, pretending to contemplate this fact.
I was well aware that my husband was likely going to stick with hockey, in some form or another, after retirement. Caleb was still the head coach, with Jonny as the goaltending coach. It wouldn’t surprise me if they moved Porter into the soon-to-be vacant assistant coach position. Mike, one of the two current assistant coaches, was due for a promotion, and was looking at head coach positions on the East Coast.
I wanted my husband around more, yes, but hockey was Porter’s life. It had been from the moment I met him. But, just like he had when we first met, he made more than enough room in his life for me and now, for the five kiddos who gave us more hell than either of us had been prepared for.
We should have been.
Prepared, that was.
They looked like me and acted like him.
It was quite the wild ride, this love that Porter and I built. I wouldn’t trade it though.
His hands dropped down to the lower crest of my ass where I was sitting on him. I teasingly moved over his growing erection, which only served to lift the hem of my dress up a little more. Soon, his fingers were on my bare skin.
“Why, Mrs. Prescott. Are you not wearing panties?” he asked quietly, his grin turning absolutely devilish.
I loved it.
“Mm. Yeah.” I leaned into nibble at his lips. “Unfortunately, you have bathroom business to take care of.”
“I can be back in thirty seconds. And I can have you on your back and screaming—”
“Silently.”
“…my name thirty seconds after that.”
“No one likes it when guys brag how quick they are.”
“I haven’t been in you in almost a week.”
“Pretty sure you were in me last night. Twice.”
“I need you, Ash,” he groaned, his eyes closing.
I kissed him once more before bringing my leg up over his, sitting on my side of the bed. “Well then go on with your bad self.”
He jumped out of bed. “You better not move.”
I watched him stalk toward the bathroom, tall, and strong, and self-assured, the muscles in his back, ass, and legs flexing. I certainly appreciated the view.
Quickly, my mouth was watering and I could feel myself getting wet.
I was going to have to change my dress.
“I mean it, Ash. You sit right there,” he said, not bothering to turn toward me. He walked into the bathroom, leaving the door open. I watched with an amused smile as he peed, bent, and trying his damnedest to not make a mess.
He hated toilet duty, and he knew I hadn’t been joking about giving him household chores.
When he was finished, and washing his hands, I moved to my knees, bringing the dress up and over my body, which so was not what it once was, but Porter didn’t seem to mind the wider hips or the slight pooch that refused to go away, no matter how many crunches I did, or how hard I tried to follow a similar macro diet that he did. Carrying two babies, then three babies—all at one time—did things to a body.
He flipped off the bathroom light and dropped the hand towel he’d been using to the ground, walking toward me. I sat down on my haunches, smiling up at him and at his predatory grin.
“Peyton and Pres will likely shower. We have fifteen minutes,” I informed him as he crawled up the end of the bed.
He continued to crawl to me and I moved my legs from under me, out straight, laying back on my pillows as he towered over me. His body completely caged me, his hands by my shoulders, his knees on either side of my hips. He kept his body off me though.
I knew why.
Last night he hadn’t asked. He simply eased me into it.
This morning, he was going to ask.
And damn if I didn’t love him for it.
I wished we could get past it, but after two failed experiments of him just diving in, sending me into an incontrollable panic, we just played it safe.
“What do you need, Ash?” he asked, looking down at me. His face was tight with need.
“Just love me, Porter,” I whispered, lifting a hand to his face.
“Always.” He bent down to kiss me softly.
He would go slow when on top, unless I urged him further.
I was going to urge him further.
I needed this man with my last breath.
Always have, always will.
We weren’t the same seventeen and nineteen-year-olds we were. No, we had fourteen years of trials, fights, passion, love, and loss, between us. And five beautiful faces that were going to come banging down our door if we didn’t get started soon.
With that thought, I pulled my husband down to me and let him go wild.
And I matched him, pace for pace.
Did you enjoy Porter & Asher’s story?
Please leave a review at as well as your retailer of choice!