“I love you,” she whispers between each of the little pecks.
I can feel each kiss and each ‘I love you’ in each corner of my heart that she’s managed to wiggle her way into.
Epilogue
Miller- Ten Years Later
“You think this one’s gonna be a boy, Bennett? It’s a shame that you’re a big, badass, ex-Marine, and all you can manage to make is prissy little girls.”
“Fuck off, Finn. We all can’t have super-human, twin producing boy sperm like you. Is that all you’re capable of?”
“Damn right,” Finn says, looking across the yard at Maggie. She and Andi are sitting in lawn chairs, each with a sleeping baby boy in their arms. His other set of twins, Thomas and Declan, are running wild in the yard with Bennett and Goose’s three girls, Rose, Anna, and Lauren. Ava and Charley are off by themselves, phones glued to their hands, obviously texting boys, by the looks on their faces.
“Magpie,” Finn yells across the yard. “Ready to try for that girl yet?”
“You’re not touching me ever again, Irish,” she teases back. “You’ve gotta give me a break. I can’t raise two more boys.”
“You say that now, but you’ll change your tune when I get you home. You can’t keep your hands off me.”
“Kids, Finn,” Bennett growls, throwing his arms wide to indicate the hordes of children running around.
“That’s what I’m trying to do here. Get more kids outta my woman.”
Maggie throws up a lewd hand gesture that certainly isn’t kid-appropriate and goes back to her conversation with Andi, causing Finn to laugh.
“Christ, I love that woman,” he says, more to himself than to us.
I smile at the sight of my wife with a baby in her arms. She’s got him propped on her own swollen belly. She’s radiant, but she’s ready for our baby to get here. Teaching kids all day is no joke, much less when you’re eight months pregnant. Throw thirteen year old Charley into the mix, and it’s a recipe for exhaustion.
“Food’s ready,” Cappy calls, stopping all the kids dead in their tracks. They all take off towards Bennett and Lucy’s deck, ready for some of Cap’s food. The parents all hang back, more than happy to keep drinking and let the kids eat first. Well, the men are drinking. Maggie’s breastfeeding, and Lucy and Andi are both pregnant, so no drinking for any of them.
I enjoy the few minutes of silence while Finn and Bennett leave to go help Cappy fix plates for their kids. If someone would have told me that this would be my life, I would have laughed at the absurdity of it all. Lucy and Andi are the very best of friends, I can hardly keep up with the kids everyone keeps popping out, and I have my own child on the way. Most surprising is the fact that Bennett Strickland is like a brother to me. The two of us spent many nights out on his patio during those few weeks Andi and I were on our break. We drank beer, cut out paper hearts (despite his bitching), and formed a friendship that continued long after I went back to Fairhope.
Unreal.
When I came back to Baton Rouge all those years ago, I fixed my relationship with Lucy and Bennett, and started mending my relationship with my parents. The key was getting back to school. I eventually went back, but had to do it in Alabama- I refused to leave Andi and Charley. Once Andi graduated and got a job teaching I went back to law school. It was tough on our relationship, but we survived. Hell, after what we had been through, we could just about survive anything.
Shortly after I finished school, Andi and I exchanged vows in our field on a cool, fall afternoon. It was a simple ceremony, our immediate families and closest friends present. Not only did we pledge our lives to each other, but I pledged myself to Charley, promising to raise and love her as my own. That day, she started calling me Dad. She knows the whole story of her real father, the sacrifices he made, and how he died before she was born. I never wanted to take that from her. She had a hard time with this when she was a little older. But, through Cappy and Andi’s stories about him, she’s dealing with it, as best as a teenager can. She’s never without one of his tridents, and she wears Andi’s gold wedding band religiously.
I hear movement next to me. I turn my head to the side, thinking Finn or Bennett came back, but it’s Goose. I give her a smile, but I worry about her. Four pregnancies must be hard on her body. I sometimes forget how close she came to dying. I practically kept her alive, night after night, hooking her broken body up to her dialysis machine, praying that I’d have just a little more time with her. I’d hold her in my arms while she’d cry herself to sleep over the loss of Bennett.
God, we’ve come so far.
“Penny for your thoughts,” she says, pulling me from that dark place I don’t like to visit.
“Look at us,” I tell her, gesturing to the yard. “Would you have ever guessed this would be our lives?”
“Never,” she says, grabbing my hand and smiling. “This is better than anything I could have ever dreamed up. I wouldn’t change it for anything in the world.”
“Neither would I.”
She squeezes my hand, forcing my attention from the kids in the yard to her face. “I heard Finn and Bennett earlier,” she says, eyes sparkling. “Bennett’s getting his boy this time, but he doesn’t know yet. I had an appointment earlier today but I went by myself. I’m telling him tonight.” She wipes at her eyes with her free hand. “Thank God, because I don’t know if I can go through this again. Anyway, I want him to be a Miller. I want to name my son after my best friend. I want him to share his name with the greatest man I know. Can I do that?”
I smile at my best friend, pushing down the emotions clogging my throat so I can answer her. “Of course you can. You know I’ve never been able to say ‘no’ to you, Goose.”
“What are you not saying ‘no’ to?” my beautiful wife asks from behind me.
“I’ll tell you tonight,” I tell her, grabbing her hand and moving her into the chair on the other side of me, opposite from Lucy. She gives me a gentle kiss. Her kisses still have the same effect on me that they did ten years ago. I’ll never grow tired of them.
I sit in the warm spring air, my gorgeous wife on one side of me, my lifelong best friend on the other side, and watch my friends and family enjoy the beautiful day.
I couldn’t ask for anything else.
I have everything I need, and so much more.
The End
Acknowledgements
Scott Tubbs, you are the best. You don’t fuss when I get out of bed at three in the morning to write, which makes me fall asleep at eight o’clock at night. You take care of our children when I’m writing, or tired, or just need to have some ‘me’ time. You are the greatest!
Virginia, thank you for introducing me to Fairhope. I fell in love with that little town when you took me there. I’m just sorry that the newest addition to the Grant family made you so sick while we were visiting. I hope I can sell tons of books one day and buy a little house on the bay!
Dana and Storey, your input, encouragement, book club participation, and friendship mean the world to me. Storey, I hope you enjoyed the fact that your ‘choreography’ at the Italian restaurant made it in the book!
Rachel, once again, you are awesome. Thank you for helping me with this book, as well as all my others. I’m pretty sure that during gym one night you were the one that helped me come up with the idea for the flashbacks and the letters, so thank you for that. You are the best!
I also want to thank James at goonwrite.com for doing my cover. It came out exactly like I wanted.
A million thanks to my two sources who helped me with the tons of off the wall questions I had about SEALS, BUD/s training, CACO notification procedures, and other things I thought might come up in my writing regarding Andi and Charlie. I didn’t actually need a lot of the cool information I learned from them, but their time is still greatly appreciated. Plus, I got to have several phone conversations with Navy SEALs, so…
Thank you for reading my books. I never thought I would have written o
ne book, much less three. I hope that I can continue to do this, and that you will continue to support me. Please take a few minutes to leave a review for my book on Amazon and Goodreads. This is a great way for word to spread about independent authors and it helps sell books. Also, if you have enjoyed reading my series, please recommend it to your friends.
About the Author
Gretchen Tubbs was born and raised in Louisiana, right in the middle of a loud, crazy, big, wonderful family. She’s a wife, mom, teacher, and now writer. Books have been a passion of hers since the day she picked up a copy of Gone With the Wind and fell in love with Rhett Butler. At the urging of a persistent friend, she gave writing a try and became addicted. You can find her every morning between the hours of three and six a.m. sitting in her chaise lounge, sipping coffee, pecking away on her laptop and bringing her characters to life.
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