“You want me to tickle it out of you like I tickle your sisters?”
“No.”
“Well, then, you better get to talking.”
“It’s stupid and it doesn’t matter.” When she tries to get up from my lap, I sit her in her seat and drag her close enough that she has no chance of getting away from me. “What have I told you? If it bothers you, it’s not…?”
“Stupid.”
“And?”
“And it matters.”
“Exactly. So talk to me, champ.”
After a moment of waiting for her say something, she finally caves, looking down at her lap as she tells me, “I’m on my own now.”
“What do you mean?”
“Rose and Poppy have the same name as you, and now Mom is going to have it too, so I’m on my own.”
Oh God, this girl is something else. I knew from the moment I met her that she was special. Iris is so much like Avery it’s insane.
“You’re never on your own, and you know that regardless of whether or not we have the same name, you’re mine. Just like your mom and those two nightmares over there.” I nod at the twins, and as she’s done from the day they were born, she reaches over and strokes each of their cheeks with the back of her finger. “A name doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a word like any other.”
“It’s not, though. You’re all going to be a family, and I’m…I’m me. I’m not a Dixon like the rest of you. I don’t even have a dad.”
“Okay, time out,” I tell her, getting up from my seat and taking her up with me. “Come on.” I grab her hand as Avery walks into the kitchen. The concerned expression on her face tells me she’s heard the conversation we were having, and when I press a kiss to her forehead in passing, she hands me the envelope we prepared last night.
“Where are we going? We’re not even wearing shoes!” Iris groans as we walk through the house and out of the front door.
We only moved in five months ago, and there are still cardboard boxes stacked in one corner of the dining room off the hallway. We were really beginning to struggle in the bungalow, but we wanted to wait until the house we redesigned for the plot I bought off Jo was ready.
It’s our own mini ranch with a chicken coop out to the side and a barn-type garage where we keep our surfboards and hang our suits to dry. We walk past the cars to the small pond Iris asked for so we could keep ducks like Jo.
“Sit with me,” I tell her, putting my feet in the water and waiting until she does the same. “Look around.”
Kicking her feet around in the water, she does as I told her until she finds my gaze again.
“What do you see?” When she shrugs, I point at the barn and ask, “What’s in there?”
“My surfboard.” She smiles.
“And who taught you to surf?”
Fresh tears line her eyes as she replies, “You.”
“Who’s going to teach your sisters?”
“You.”
“And what about over there?” I point to the field separating our home from Jo’s ranch. “What’s over there?”
“Dodo,” she chuckles with a roll of her eyes, mimicking her sisters.
“Is her name Dixon?”
“No.”
“But she’s family, right? For all intents and purposes, she’s a nanna to you like Priscilla, right?”
“Yes.”
“What else is over there?”
“The horses.” She smiles wide again.
“Who taught you to ride?”
Her smile grows bigger. “You did.”
“And I’m going to teach your sisters too. Let’s face it, your mom is still too scared to saddle up, so…”
“I know all of that, it’s just that…I don’t know. I told you it was stupid.”
“Your feelings are never stupid, Iris. It’s understandable that you feel isolated because we don’t have the same name. You’re not the only person to ever feel that way, but here’s the thing…” I wrap my arm around her and pull her into me. “Where do you belong? Where do you feel like you belong? Where’s your home? Where do you feel the most loved?”
“Here.”
“And who makes you feel that way?”
“You and Mom.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Because…” Her voice wavers as she hugs me tighter. “You’re my family.”
“You don’t need to be Iris Dixon to be family. You don’t need to have my name for me to be your dad. You’re always going to be my first baby girl. No matter what.”
I knew today was going to be hard for her. I think in a lot of ways it’s harder than when we brought the girls home and she had to adapt to sharing Avery with them. In many ways, this little old soul championed me from the moment we met. Sometimes I think that if it wasn’t for her unwavering and unrelenting love of me, her mom’s heart would’ve been a lot harder to conquer.
“Look at me, champ.” Pulling back, I brush the tendrils of hair that have escaped her ponytail from her face. “You don’t need to have my name for me to love you, but if you want it, I would be so proud for you to have it.”
Her eyes widen when I pull the envelope Avery handed me from the pocket of my shorts. Over the last couple of years, Avery and I had this conversation every now and again. After the twins were born, it seemed like the right thing to do, the last piece of the puzzle to our future. Iris and I might not share the same genetics, but she’s as much mine as the two little girls who do.
Taking the envelope from me, she opens it with bated breath. I notice the way she’s picked at her baby blue nails and her thumb is bitten raw at the sides from her anxious gnawing. We’ve had the adoption papers for a few weeks, but we wanted to wait till today to make it special for everyone. Now I wish we hadn’t waited.
“What do you want, baby girl?”
Her audible swallow is followed by a shaky breath as she replies, “What do you want, Doc?”
“I want you to be happy. Whether you’re a Dixon or a Henderson or anything else.”
“I’m not…not happy.” She smiles. “But…” She swallows again, and this time tears don’t just fill her eyes, they pour in hiccups and sobs that have me pulling her onto my lap and suffocating her with my tight embrace.
“You wanna be a Dixon?”
“Yes,” she sniffs.
“You realize that Mark will expect you to call him Uncle Mark all the time…and Cullen will tease you and prank you as much as he does Kenny?”
“Yes.”
“And Charlie will keep trying to make you a girly girl.”
A long chuckle bursts from her before her sobs become so hard that she’s trembling.
“Those better be happy tears, Iris Elizabeth Dixon.”
“Mhhhmmm.” She nods, kneeling up on my lap to bury her face in the crook of my neck.
“I love you, champ.”
“More than my last bite of cake.” She squeezes harder, and I don’t just wish Avery and I had given her the papers sooner, I wish we’d done it after that first conversation we had about me adopting her.
“More than my last crumb of pie.”
“Forever and ever.”
“And ever and ever.”
Always.
“And I’m still your favorite, right?” She looks up at me with that sneaky smirk that makes her more of a Dixon than she’ll ever know.
That smirk has been the start of many a trouble, especially when Makenna is involved and Cullen is the recipient.
“Shhh…” I look back at the house to find Avery standing on the porch with the twins perched on her hips as she smiles on at us. “Of course.”
“Along with Pop and Ro.”
I hold up my thumb and forefinger in a half heart shape, and she does the same. “See, you’re all a piece of my heart.”
“That’s corny,” she giggles, looking back down at the paper semi-scrunched in her hand. “It kinda feels good being a Dixon.”
Pushing up from my lap,
she pushes the paper into the front pocket of her hoodie before grasping my arm and trying to pull me up too. “Come on, Daddy, you got a wedding today.”
“Yup, or your aunt Charlie might get all ninja spy on my ass.”
With the biggest grin I’ve ever seen on her lips, she runs back to the house, and there is no happiness I’ve felt that comes close to this hot ray of sun in my chest.
Whoever said it’s the little things that make life worthwhile was wrong. It’s these small moments that make life worth everything.
AVERY
The day has been perfect. We had the smallest sprinkle of rain as Jo walked me down the jetty to Garrett. Everything we’ve been through—the highs and lows—my heart has never beat so fast as the moment he took my hand, and with Mark officiating, we promised each other forever. Hands down the best moment of my life.
Well, I think with him there isn’t only one great moment. Garrett makes every second of every day feel like a lifetime of nothing but the warmest sunshine. I look down at my hand and smile at my mother’s rings. I wasn’t sure why Dad left them to Priscilla, and a part of me was devastated by his decision. But I think he knew that one day I would have everything I wished for and dreamed of, and the only thing that would make it even more special was having him and Mom with me.
Mom never took these rings off her finger till the day she died, and my father took them off himself. And it’ll be the same for me. I’m going to love, cherish, and adore Garrett until my very last breath.
“That’s quite the sight, huh, sugar?” Jo nudges me as I watch my husband dance with our daughter.
“The most beautiful sight.”
“Just remember, I told you he was a good one,” she chuckles as I wrap my arm around her so that her tremors don’t make it so hard for her to stand beside me. Even with her stick, it’s getting harder for her to stand on her own. It’s why it made sense for us to build on the land Garrett bought from her. We wanted to be close to look after her the way she looked after me and Iris when we were nothing but strangers.
“The best,” I tell her as my gaze catches on his and he gives me that grin that makes the butterflies in my belly go crazy.
He winks, and as I make my way to him, I help Jo to one of the chairs overlooking the makeshift dance floor he and Mark put up over the rocky shore of Duke’s cove. Twinkle lights and wildflowers decorate the picket-like sides they put up to keep the kids safe, and while Priscilla insisted on hiring proper tables and chairs for our wedding picnic, there are odd rugs, blankets, and cushions patched over the wood slats keeping us above the water.
It’s beyond perfect, and there isn’t a single person here that shouldn’t be. It might be the smallest wedding ever, but it’s ours and only ours.
“How’s my wife?” Garrett grabs me by waist when I’m within reach and pulls me flush to him.
“Happy, Dr. Dixon,” I reply as he sways us to the snappy tune that comes on.
I’ve never heard it before, but the melody is familiar, and when he hums it in my ear, I smile at the familiar sound that he hums me and the girls to sleep with almost every night. The warmth in my chest becomes impossibly brighter, and as his hand slips down to the curve of my ass, I press myself as close as I can while I tell him, “I’ve never been so fucking happy.”
“Say that again?” The words are something between a rasp and groan, and as his hand slips lower, I whisper, “Fucking.”
His mouth comes down on mine hard, pressing our lips together so that his light stubble scratches over my jaw and our teeth knock together as his tongue slips over mine. A hum vibrates from him as the hand holding mine falls to meet the other at my ass, and I roll onto my tiptoes so I can wrap my arms around his shoulders, holding him as flush to me as he is crushing me to him.
“God, I love your potty mouth, Mrs. Dixon. You do things to me,” he growls, his hands anchoring at the juncture of thighs so that he hoists me up his body. “Have I told you how beautiful you look tonight?”
“Only every chance you get.”
“Not enough, then,” he laughs, and the low gravel of it makes my already thrumming heart beat a little faster for him as we stop in a small shadowed, rocky nook away from our family and friends.
His lips ghost over the side of my face to my ear where he murmurs, “You are the most magnificent creature I’ve ever known. Always is not long enough to love you. You deserve so much more than that.”
“Garrett…honey…”
“You got something old,” he says, lifting my hand and kissing my rings. When he looks up at me from beneath his lashes, he adds in that funny voice he reads to the girls in, “I mean me.”
A laugh builds up in my chest that I can’t contain. While I’m chortling to his quip, Garrett pulls out a small box from his cream chinos while I tug at the suspenders that bring the smart to his casual.
“Something blue and new,” he breathes over my hand, pressing another kiss to it before he opens the box to reveal the faintest blue oval earrings that glint in the soft light ebbing from the dance floor. “I was meant to give them to Iris this morning, but I didn’t want to take away from her moment. Besides, now I can put them on you myself.”
I found it strange that Charlie insisted on me not wearing earrings today, even when Priscilla suggested my grandmother’s diamond or pearl studs. It makes perfect sense now as he threads the earrings onto my lobes.
“Something to fill that last space in your music box. Like you’ve completed me, sweetheart.” Nudging the tip of my nose with his, Garrett twists one of the curled tendrils of my hair around his finger. “I had no idea how much I needed you until that day I walked into Mark’s house and saw you. And I know that life isn’t always going to be this perfect, but I can withstand anything with you by my side. I know without a shadow of a doubt that we can endure whatever life throws our way, so long as we’re together. Side by side.”
“I love you, Garrett Dixon.”
“I love you, Avery Dixon.” He brushes a kiss over my lips, and I know that there isn’t a better moment to tell him than right now. And as I’m about to speak, he flattens my palm to his chest and says, nodding to the party, “There would be none of this without you. No girls…nothing. You’ve made life so full…so very full…”
“Not too full I hope,” I tell him, taking his hand and flattening it to my stomach. “You’re going to need room for one more.”
I can see it all sink in slowly but surely, and that grin I love flashes brighter than ever.
“Maybe you’ll get your boy after all.” It’s something Mark likes to tease him about.
“I love my girls,” he marvels, stroking over the slight curve of my belly that refuses to flatten since the twins.
“Even though you’re always outnumbered?”
“Absolutely,” he snickers, nipping at my lips with a happy hum.
“Do you know how many boys you’re going to have to warn off?”
“Mark won’t let me forget. Karma, remember?” Pulling me to him, he hoists me up his body and spins us on the spot with a contagious laugh that has my entire being vibrating with pure unadulterated joy.
“I call it happiness,” I tell him when he stops, keeping me pressed to his chest so that I’m looking down at him. “Pure, fucking bliss.”
“There she goes again, making my heart run away with itself.”
“You know what they say, don’t you?” I waggle my brows at him before I answer my own question, “Pregnant women are sex fiends.”
A loud burst of laughter bursts from him as he takes me back to the dance floor where Iris and Poppy are dancing together while Rose is sitting next to Jo, the two of them clearly grumbling at each other.
“You’re certain it’s only one this time?” he asks, shaking his head at the two of them.
“Unfortunately, that’s not something the pregnancy test ruled out,” I reply as he spins me into his chest.
“Oh fuck.” Garrett levels me with a wide-eyed terrorized
stare. “The twins are great, but I don’t know that I could endure that again.”
“You just said we can endure anything together.”
“I didn’t know I knocked you up again.” Garrett sways us exaggeratedly to the music, bopping his shoulders along to the beat.
“You really should learn to keep it in your pants.”
Spinning me out, he shakes his head and catches the girls when they find us as I twirl back to him.
“Not when it comes to you, sunshine, and definitely not when we get to have all this.”
“No more after this one.”
“Didn’t you say that after the twins?” He picks Poppy up and puts her on his shoulders as I perch Rose on my hip and Iris cuddles into the both of us.
“I mean it this time…” I think.
THE END
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