Epilogue

There should be a calorie refund for things that tasted like crap.

-Lark’s hopes and dreams

Lark

Phone call number one of the day was placed after I got a picture message of a present that my husband was about to give to his brother for his birthday.

“What is that?” I questioned my husband.

“Travis’ birthday present.”

“What is it?” I asked, my voice a few octaves higher than usual.

“An electric toothbrush.”

I shook my head.

It wasn’t an electric toothbrush. It was a dollar store toothbrush with a vibrator duct taped to it.

“Baylor.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Seriously, he’s going to kill you.”

Baylor and his practical jokes.

“You’re going to have to grow up one of these days,” I teased him through the phone. “And I swear to God, if Tate turns on rap music on our Alexa while I’m sleeping one more time, I will go over there and set his bike on fire.”

Tate started to laugh in the background, and it was then I knew that I was on speaker phone…something that Baylor did a lot.

He felt that everyone in the world needed to know what was happening on the other end of the line, saving him the trouble of having to tell them later.

Normally it wasn’t a big deal. However, there were times, like right now, that I kind of hated that he did it.

“Baylor…”

Baylor started to laugh. “You told him.”

I hung up after saying I love you, then laid down on my bed and continued to study for my first exam of my second semester in veterinary school.

***

Phone call number two started out much the same.

“The air conditioning isn’t working,” I frantically whispered to my husband.

“Why are you whispering?”

“Because I don’t want to wake the baby.”

“We don’t have a baby yet,” he said humorously.

I rolled my eyes.

“Weeny is laying on my chest, and he looks so peaceful.”

“Weeny is a fucking cat, and there’s no reason in fucking hell you can’t wake him up by speaking loud enough for me to hear you,” he said, this time not so humorously.

We’d gotten Weeny when Baylor had found him in the trunk of a car, and instead of letting Baylor take him to the pound like he’d wanted, I’d saved him and brought him into our home.

Pongo despised him at first, but now they were reluctant best friends.

I rolled my eyes.

“But he looks so sweet laying across my chest,” I told him, this time a little louder. “I’ll Facetime you and show you.”

“I don’t want to…”

I hit Facetime and waited for him to connect, which he did. Grudgingly.

I immediately switched it over to rear view and showed him how precious Weeny looked with my big belly right behind him.

“Cute.”

I narrowed my eyes and then turned it back around so he could see the sweat on my face.

“Do you see this sweat?” I pointed to my forehead.

He didn’t look impressed. “Do you see mine?”

I narrowed my eyes. “How can you say that?” I snapped. “You’re outside. I’m inside.”

“Exactly,” he said. “If it gets too hot, go to Travis’s.”

I narrowed my eyes. “I don’t want to go there. If I go there, I have to talk, and I don’t want to talk.”

He rolled his eyes. “What’s the temperature in there?”

I reluctantly stood up, placing the cat on the bed next to where I’d been laying, before rolling to a stand.

I waddled to the thermostat on the wall and moaned. “It says it’s eighty. It’s set at sixty-seven.”

“Too low for Texas, honey,” he said. “Bump it up to seventy-two. I’ll get some guys to look at it.”

Then he said his goodbye as a scuffle broke out in the background. He was doing a repo in the middle of the Texas summer, and I’d interrupted him.

Grinning and saying my ‘I love yous’ I dropped the phone to the bed and looked at both Pongo and my new kitty. “Y’all want to go to Grandma’s?”

Grandma’s was better than Travis’s because Grandma, aka Baylor’s mother, cooked me food and lavished me with attention. All I would get at Hannah’s house was a friend who would sit on the couch with me and yell at her kids.

Not that that wasn’t something I enjoyed— in moderation—but I’d just been over there yesterday. There was only so much a woman could take when she was seventeen years pregnant with a Hail baby who was presumed to be well over ten pounds…already. And seeing as I still had another two weeks to go, there was no telling what he’d be at birth.

Before I left, though, I changed my clothes, slipping on a less sweaty pair of underwear and a pair of leggings.

I glanced down at the underwear on the floor and decided that I’d get them later.

The heat was killing me. I could hardly breathe.

And I was hungry.

Two very bad things when it came to a pregnant woman.

***

Later was, apparently, the wrong move, when it came to picking up my underwear.

Me being too lazy to bend over and pick up my underwear meant when I got home later that night, it was to a whole shit ton of men in my closet, where I’d changed earlier, surrounding them.

I glared at Baylor.

“Baylor!” I hissed.

He turned his head from where he’d been surveying the men in the attic doing something to the A/C.

“What?”

I gestured for him to come over to me. Which he did, curling his arms around my back and pulling me as far into him as he could.

“Go pick my underwear up off the ground,” I gestured to the underwear I’d just left lying there earlier.

He looked over his shoulder, spotted the underwear, and shrugged. “They’ve already seen them.”

“That’s not the point,” I growled. “Now go.”

He rolled his eyes and let me go, walking over and picking them up.

Then he tucked them into his pocket.

I groaned. “Seriously?”

He grinned, looking down at the lacy thong that was half in/half out of his pocket.

“What’s wrong?”

I blew out a breath and walked away, counting to ten as I did.

I made it to five before he was wrapping his arms around me and pushing me into the spare bedroom that we’d yet to prepare for our child.

“What are you doing?” I asked as he closed and locked the door.

“You.”

Forty-five minutes later, I walked back into the kitchen and stopped when I felt the cool air pouring out of the vent above my head.

“This is amazing,” I informed the room.

The two men from the A/C company looked at me and grinned.

I looked back at them and waved.

They waved back, and suddenly I felt awkward.

“Who do I make the check out to?” Baylor asked.

The men told him, and two minutes later, they were out the door with a check in their hand for their services.

“Thank you,” I told Baylor.

He turned around and winked at me, but before he could come to me, his phone rang, startling both of us.

“Hello?”

Baylor listened intently.

“You’re shitting me.”

Baylor’s eyes were wide and almost happy as he listened to whoever was on the other end of the line speak.

“That’s kind of sucky.”

Kind of sucky.

I snorted and walked to the fridge, pulling out the fried chicken from the gas station that Baylor must’ve brought home for dinner.

After putting it in the microwave, I waited for him to finish his phone call before demanding to know answers.

“What’s kind of sucky?” I demanded.

Baylor looked at me curiously. “Sal was killed in a prison riot.”

My brows rose at that.

I couldn’t say I was upset.

“Should I be upset about this? Because I’m not.”

Not after all that he’d put me—and Baylor—through.

Baylor may be all healed now, but every time I saw the scar on his belly, I got angry all over again.

“I’m not either.”

I burst out laughing, then turned and pulled the chicken out of the microwave when the beep sounded.

After placing it gently on the table, I sat down and started to eat straight out of the box.

I couldn’t help it, though.

I was so hungry.

I might’ve eaten twice at ‘Grandma’s’ house, but I was still starving.

“I got another call today.” Baylor sat next to me, dropping a cold bottle of water on my side of the table, and a cold beer on his.

“Yeah?” I looked up at him, part of the skin of the drumstick I was eating hanging out of my mouth.

He stole the skin and popped it into his own mouth.

“Hey!” I growled, mouth full.

He winked and said, “Yeah. They’re sending another bird here.”

My brows rose.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“When?”

“Tonight.”

My mouth opened.

“But we don’t have the house ready yet!” I said. “We just got the other one ready for the Jay. How are we going to get the new one done before she gets here?”

“Not a she. A he.”

My mouth hung open in surprise.

“No shit?”

“No shit.”

“Well then,” I said. “How old is he?”

“Eighteen.”

“Wow,” I said. “So young.”

He agreed, then snatched the last chicken leg.

He loved dark meat. Me, not so much. But the chicken legs were the easiest ones to eat at this point. With the current level of my hunger, if I didn’t eat the dark meat, I’d probably starve to death before I could pull all the chicken off of the breast he’d gotten me.

And as we got up to leave forty-five minutes later, I realized that though this wasn’t exactly how I thought I’d be living my life a year ago, this was exactly what I needed.

I was with the man I loved. I was pregnant with my man’s baby. I was in my second year of vet school.

Life never worked out quite how I wanted it to in the beginning. Maybe it was a matter of it being the wrong time and the wrong place. But I knew for damn certain that I was in the right place now with the right person. Baylor was my home. He was my future. I couldn’t have dreamt up a better life than the one I was finally living.