Yes. Yes. Yes.
Epilogue
Alexander
“Come on, bub, sit still. Help your daddy out,” I said to Penny. She was wriggling in her seat making it harder than it already was to get her hair tied up in the hair elastic. Her hair was short, but it was getting long enough to hang in her eyes. It was straight, so when I tied it, it stuck right up like the stalk on an apple. I had turned the television on so she would stay put.
She swung her legs, sitting on the sofa while sucking her thumb. I sat next to her. It was like the fiftieth time I was watching that episode of Dora the Explorer with her. I’d watch it again the next time she wanted to see it. I used to swear up and down that it would never be me. I ate those words the minute I met Penelope. She came into the world screaming like she was so mad at us for having her. She had been so small she could fit in the crook of one arm. Pink, angry and completely bald.
Her hair had come in before I could get worried she’d look like a baby Bruce Willis. She definitely had my eyes, and those same light freckles, but practically everything else was identical to her mom; nose, mouth, smile. So, you know, gorgeous. Perfect.
Smart too, like her mother. Stubborn too, like me. That’s why Livvy got pregnant, despite being on the pill. Some children were accidents, born even though their parents were using condoms or the pill, or some other thing. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that she was too, but I liked to think that my virility was the one area I overachieved. Or just achieved a normal amount. Cassie’s baby hadn’t come out black, so it wasn’t Travis’s, but it wasn’t mine either. It was like an episode of Maury. I was not the father. Hadn’t I called it?
I heard Liv coming down the stairs and felt her hand on my shoulder.
“Ready to go?” she asked. Dora was asking Penny what her favorite part of the episode was. “What did you do to her hair?” she asked. She leaned over Penny’s head and pulled the elastic free. She disappeared again and came back with another elastic. She parted Penny’s hair down the middle and tied it into two pigtails. She clipped the hair back that hung in her face.
“Penny did that herself, didn’t you, bub?” Penny looked from me to her mom hearing her name but didn’t take her thumb out of her mouth to talk to us. She had to stop doing that. She would, once it stopped being cute.
“And what is she wearing?” Liv asked, circling the couch to look at Penny’s clothes. She was in a t-shirt, tutu and rain boots; I had let her choose what she wanted to wear.
“I think it’s important that she feels she can express herself,” I said, quoting a parenting book directly. I was ready before Liv was, which meant I had had to get Penny ready, and I had. She wasn’t naked anymore; that was the point, right?
“You can’t wear those boots, honey, it isn’t raining,” she said to her. She disappeared again and slid the rain boots off Penny’s feet, replacing them with tiny sneakers.
Penny was starting preschool. Liv was more excited about it than she was. It meant she could finally start working full-time again. It had been a journey. She had done the whole stay-at-home mom thing till Penny was old enough for daycare and had worked part-time then. I don’t know why she wanted to. Taking care of the little stinker was more than a full-time job.
Once Penny was in school, she could go back to school too. That was if I didn’t get her pregnant again before then. I wanted another girl. She kept saying that she wasn’t trying to get pregnant again so soon after the first one, but we hadn’t been trying to get pregnant with the first one in the first place. It had happened once; I was going to bet that it could happen again. Penny was amazing, but I was ready to take as many kids as she was willing to give me.
“Did you pack a snack?” she asked.
I actually had—applesauce and cucumber slices. Penny loved cucumber, I didn’t know why, but it was better than loving string cheese or only eating food that was white. It was a few hours before lunchtime, but we wouldn’t be coming back to the house after visiting schools. We were going to see my mother.
She was a grandmother for the fourth time over now, and Colin had gotten the three-point field goal, popping out another kid with Roberta, a girl—Alana—before Penny was born. It would have been cool to give Mom her first granddaughter, but it was fine. Colin got started early; he had an unfair advantage.
A great part of mom’s Alzheimer’s was she had trouble forming new memories; her grandchildren were the newest things in her life, and Penny was freshest out of the mint. Mom… she wasn’t going to survive this. It was fatal; it was just a matter of when. Her treatment had kept it more or less contained—as contained as it could be at least. Her language hadn’t started leaving her. She could still feed herself and walk. It was all we could ask.
I had been terrified of introducing Penny to her because she would forget her. She had. Plenty of times, but isolating her just wasn’t fair. It wasn’t her fault. The other thing was how Penny would take it.
Penny, surprisingly, got it. Grandma loves you, but she’s sick and sometimes, she can’t remember things. That was all it took. She had this cute little speech she would do, her full name, her parents’ names and how she and Mom were related. It definitely helped that she was a cute three-year-old. You didn’t cuss out babies.
It wasn’t a Monday, Thursday or Sunday. I was in a button-down shirt and slacks, but not because I was trying to make sure Mom knew who I was, I was just trying to make sure Penny didn’t get waitlisted or whatever because her dad looked like he sold drugs. I couldn’t control how Mom reacted to me, or to Liv, or to Penny. I had stopped trying. All I could do was just be there for her and let her be as much a part of our lives as she could.
I grabbed the bag full of Penny’s stuff, and we walked out the door. I held Liv’s hand. I walked on her right side, so the view of the rock on her left hand was unobstructed. That way my right hand—my sword hand—but really punching hand, was free in case anybody wanted to act like they couldn’t see it. If they really wanted to act like they couldn’t see, I could help them make that a reality for themselves. She’d finally let me marry her.
My guest list had been three people long. Will, Colin and Mom. She’d invited her parents. Only her mother showed up, along with Roberta, Iris, Rick and Hayden. Mom’s home let us have the small ceremony on the grounds. She was already a couple of months pregnant when it happened. Her dad was a dick about the wedding, but he had gotten over himself when Penny was born. Shutting me out was shutting her out, and he knew better than to do that. He still didn’t like me, but at least he called me by my first name and wasn’t taking it out on Penny. It was a start.
I strapped Penny into her booster seat. Liv let me drive. I started the car, and The Little Mermaid soundtrack started playing. The annoying, repetitive, but sweet sound of my new life. My future. The one I almost didn’t have. After my back injury, I felt cheated out of the league, like the future in the NFL I had envisioned for myself would never be mine. Guys came back from injury sometimes, but now, I barely knew who that guy who wanted that shit was anymore.
The league had nothing on this. I’d withstood screaming fits from Penelope, sleepless nights when she was a newborn, arguments with Liv and true terror when Penny got sick and had to go to the hospital. It had been harrowing; parenthood, being a husband. It had changed me in ways I could never reverse, and it was perfect. I’d never been happier.
This was it, the whole point.
Why I came back.
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Introducing… Levi
The subsequent novel in the Heartbreakers & Troub
lemakers series. Available on Amazon.
About the Author
Hope Hitchens is a rising star author who exploded onto the scene in 2018 with her debut series of scorching hot contemporary romance novels entitled Heartbreakers & Troublemakers. You can find her work exclusively on Amazon in both Kindle and Paperback formats.
www.hopehitchens.com
Alex (Heartbreakers & Troublemakers Book 3) Page 19