The minute Alejandra had come to in the hospital, she’d burst into tears, asking if Rosalee was all right. She was a good woman and while she was still on the mend, the doctors expected her to make a full recovery. We’d gone to visit her in the hospital, and for as many times as she’d admonished me for lying to Rosalee, I gave her hand a squeeze when she told my girl that she’d taken a tumble down the stairs. We all got a good laugh when Rosalee told her she should have held on to the rail.
There wasn’t much I could do to make up for what my brother had done to Alejandra. So I did the only thing I could think of—I fired her. Well, it was more like a retirement with full medical and a pension plan. It included a car and a house of her choosing with all utilities paid for the rest of her life. She took the pink slip in stride and negotiated that she still got to pick Rosalee up after school and got first refusal to keep her on nights and weekends when I was working or had plans. So, basically, we were back at square one, only her house was no longer in my backyard.
This was probably a good thing because I was never going back to that house.
Willow and I had both put our houses on the market, and we were staying at the beach house in the Outer Banks for a few weeks until we could find a place we could buy together. And, yes, it was going to be Willow’s name on the deed when it finally happened.
With an absolute clusterfuck of information flying through the Leary Police Department and national news banging down their doors, it had taken Doug and Beth less than one conversation to draw up paperwork to have Willow’s death certificate declared invalid. They had also ensured that any possible fraud charges against her would not be pursued on the grounds that she had been fearful of her life after Trent Hunt, a serial killer, had murdered her sister. Willow had been adamant about no more lies, but that was our chance—the out we desperately needed to be free forever. I’d all but gotten on my hands and knees, begging her to agree. Standing in front of a judge with Beast Mode Beth at her side, she’d finally let Hadley rest in peace and perjured herself right back into being Willow Banks.
I’d never been prouder of breaking the law in my life as I was when I walked out of that courthouse hand in hand with the woman of my dreams.
“Daddy, look!” Rosalee called, holding up two fingers.
Willow pushed her sunglasses up and squinted. “What is that?”
It was nothing. Or at least that’s what it appeared to be.
I tilted my head to the side as if it might make it easier to see. “Uhhh… Dad experience tells me it’s the the tiniest speck of a broken shell.” I looked at her and grinned. “Or possibly a booger.”
“Ewww,” she groaned. But she’d been getting a lot of parenting practice as well recently. So she gave her a thumbs-up and called back, “Oh my gosh, that’s so pretty!”
I’d died every single second that Trent had been holding Rosalee with that gun in his hand. It had been burned on the backs of my eyelids and carved into my subconscious. I’d woken up almost every night since it’d happened in a cold sweat, the sound of gunfire and her cries reverberating in my head. Willow was always there, whispering reminders that it wasn’t real and we were all okay. I didn’t know what I would have done without her that day. She’d saved my life when she was just a kid, but that day, as she took off out of the house with Rosalee, she saved me all over again.
I’d lived through a lot. But if anything had happened to Rosalee, I would have been stuck in hell forever.
We were all struggling in our own ways. Willow had jumped into caretaker mode, baking and cleaning as if having sparkling countertops could cure everything. And Rosalee, my poor sweet Rosalee—she was also waging war with nightmares. And the questions. Oh my God, all the questions. I didn’t know what to say when she asked why Uncle Trent had become a bad guy. Above and beyond wanting to shield her from the harsh reality, I had no explanation for why Trent had done what he’d done, either.
But not having an answer or sugarcoating it in the name of protecting her weren’t going to cut it after what she had been through.
We all started therapy within a few days. Individual sessions. Couples sessions. Family sessions. Any session I could get us into. Malcom had ruined her mother’s life. I was not going to allow Trent to do the same to my daughter. She was adjusting and coping as best as a four-year-old could. I’d noticed that she was a lot clingier and more cautious than she had once been, but that was okay. I was there for her. And so was Willow. If she wanted to sit in our laps or sleep in the bed with us, that was A-okay because we needed her just as much as she needed us.
I’d asked Willow to marry me as we were driving to the beach.
I had no ring. No plan. No grand proposal. No getting down on one knee.
All I had was her smile lighting one of the darkest hours of my life and the overwhelming need to keep her forever. Life was short and unpredictable. Sometimes, the seconds were all you had. And, dammit, I was going to make the most of them.
She told me no.
We argued about it. Her stating that the timing wasn’t right. Me stating that I loved her, so the timing didn’t matter.
But then that night, only moments after I drifted off to sleep, I woke up to hear her counting to ten.
“Yes,” she whispered in my ear.
I couldn’t even be mad that she’d waited for the splice. It was a new day. And she was going to be my wife. I would never love anyone like I loved that woman. And while she believed that the world was dictated by unorchestrated coincidence, I had not a single doubt that she had been sent to me from someone up above.
I didn’t deserve her. And our lives, as twisted and tangled as they were, would never be easy.
But she was mine.
They were mine.
The rest would fall into place.
“Have you given any thought to if you want more kids one day?” I asked.
She hummed and smiled out at Rosalee. “I just wanted a family. She’s enough. We’re enough.”
I stared out at Rosalee splashing in the ocean, the tide rolling in, my guardian angel and soon-to-be wife sitting on my left, and I had to agree with her. Though some doors were better left open. “You change your mind, I want to be the first to know.”
“Absolutely. Right after I see if Ryan Reynolds is available to father my children, you will be the first to know.”
She giggled as I stared at her with a gaping mouth.
God, I loved that woman.
“If you scream, you’re going to scare her,” I stated, standing up.
“Huh?”
I put my hands on either side of her chair and repeated, “If you scream, you’re going to scare her.”
“I don’t—”
But that was all she got out before I dipped low and tossed her over my shoulder. I had to give her credit; she barely let out a squeak.
“Hey, Rosie Posie. I think Willow needs to cool off. The sun has gone straight to her head. Let’s get in the water.”
“Yay!” Rosalee squealed. “Let me get my floaties.” She trotted over to our chairs and riffled through Willow’s beach bag, throwing everything out in her furious search.
“Caven, put me down.”
“You got any more Ryan Reynolds jokes?”
“Not at the moment. But I reserve the right should one pop into my head at a future date.”
I chuckled and set her back on her feet, the water biting her ankles. She could make whatever jokes she wanted as long as she was making them with me.
“I love you, Willow. In this second and all the ones to come.”
I hooked her around the waist, dragging her into my chest, and kissed her hard and completely indecently.
WILLOW
Five years later…
“Willow!” Rosalee called down the hall. “Keira’s diaper stinks.”
I looked at Caven, who was sitting beside me on the couch. He had his legs kicked up on the leather ottoman, mine draped across his, a football game playing i
n the background.
“Rock, paper, scissors?” I asked.
“Are you going to cheat and use the atomic bomb again?”
I popped one shoulder. “Probably.”
“Then no.”
I laughed and shoved at his shoulder. “Come on. I’m tired. I did the last one.”
“No, you didn’t. You took the girls out back and drew on the sidewalk for an hour, blew bubbles for another hour, painted their hands and feet then stamped them in their baby books for a half hour after that. Which, babe, I know I don’t have to remind you of this, but Rosalee is almost ten. You can probably stop the baby book before she becomes college-age. But then, after you did all that, you brought them back inside and asked me to change Keira’s diaper before you went up to take a shower. But what you failed to mention was that, before I removed that diaper, I was going to need a hazmat suit.”
I laughed again. This was all very, very true.
It had taken two years and watching Rosalee graduate kindergarten for me to catch the baby bug. For as many times as Caven had asked me if I’d changed my mind about kids, I think he’d caught it long before then—possibly even before our wedding.
We had given a lot of thought to how we wanted to finish our family. Caven was concerned his family history would prevent us from adopting, so we both agreed to give IVF and surrogacy a go. However, we had no idea the emotional rollercoaster we’d signed up for.
First, it took over six months to find a surrogate we both trusted. I liked several of the women the agency had matched us with. Caven wasn’t so sure. And when I say he wasn’t so sure, I mean he threw their folders into the trash and told me that they were all unacceptable. By the fifth perfect candidate, who he ruled out because she was a coffee drinker, I realized he was just scared.
After everything we’d been through, trust was not his strong suit. And trusting a stranger with his unborn child was more than he could handle.
Eventually, Beth volunteered to be our surrogate, and while Caven was ecstatic, Ian lost his mind. They weren’t together at the time. Or maybe they had been. Who the hell knew with those two. But when she showed up to break the news to Caven that she couldn’t do it, she was wearing an engagement ring the size of Rosalee’s head (slight exaggeration, but only slight.)
That night as we lay in bed, we talked a lot about how we’d met and how far we’d come. Caven was a firm believer that we’d been destined to be a family from the start. So, with that in mind, I told him that there was a surrogate out there who was already meant to carry our son or daughter. He just had to keep his eyes and his heart open long enough to see her.
I woke up the next morning to find the file of the dreaded coffee drinker on my nightstand. Her name was Hope.
After that, things only got harder. Holy shit, getting someone else pregnant was rough.
With only one damaged ovary, it took months of shots, medication, ultrasounds, and failure upon failure for my body to finally produce one mature egg. While our one little fighter successfully fertilized, the quality of the embryo was poor and every doctor who spoke with us begged us not to get our hopes up.
It was the impossible.
But we had been the impossible from the very start.
Keira Marie Hunt was born nine months later. When we’d found out she was a girl, we’d expected another redhead who looked just like Rosalee. But life once again proved it worked best with the element of surprise. At eighteen months, Keira looked just like her father—brown hair, blue eyes, and all.
“Okay, so what if I promise not to use the atomic bomb?” I asked.
He arched a challenging eyebrow. “Volcano?”
I bit my bottom lip. “No.”
“Meteor?”
“No.”
“Tsunami?”
“Damn,” I muttered.
He barked a laugh. It could be said that diaper duty was not my favorite.
I started to move my legs, but he stood up.
Leaning in for a kiss, he rumbled, “I’ll get it. Relax.”
“Have I ever told you how much I love you?” I breathed against his mouth.
“A time or two. But maybe you could show me tonight?”
“As long as the girls fall asleep before I do, I’m all yours.”
He chuckled and pecked me again before lamenting, “Great. I’m never having sex again.”
“Ew, gross. Stop kissing all the time,” Rosalee groaned as she walked into the room, covered head to toe in sequins.
It was what I recognized as Hadley’s flapper Halloween costume. Keira was holding her hand in nothing but a diaper, a long pearl necklace, and white elbow-length gloves.
I smiled, my heart overflowing with love. While packing up all of Hadley’s things from my old house, Caven and I had divided some of her stuff into age-appropriate boxes to one day give to Rosalee. There was everything from dress-up clothes and purses, to high heels and prom gowns, to a few pieces of nicer jewelry she hadn’t sold. Every so often when I was feeling particularly nostalgic, I’d ask Caven to bring one of the boxes down from the attic and we’d give it to Rosalee.
Hadley was gone from our lives, something I’d tearfully accepted the day we’d had the headstone at my family plot changed, but Caven had promised me she would never be forgotten. And that wasn’t just because Rosalee was looking more and more like her mother every day, but rather because he went out of his way to help me keep her alive through stories and laughter.
He didn’t have much to contribute in the way of memories, but he was always the first to randomly ask for a story about Hadley or my mom or dad. And I loved him more than words could ever express because of it.
Hadley and my family could have been a strained topic we were forced to tiptoe around forever. Caven’s guilt was still very real, though it had been fading over the years as our therapist had him transferring more of that guilt to his father’s and brother’s shoulders. It was still there. I could see it in the almost imperceptible winces while I spoke about happier times, but there wasn’t much that man wouldn’t sacrifice for his wife and his children. So he smiled and usually held my hand as I told Rosalee all about the amazing Banks family.
“Wow! You look gorgeous,” I told her.
Caven wasn’t so fond. “You look twenty-five. Take it off.”
Rosalee rolled her eyes, ignoring his order completely. “I think Keira stole your wallet. I found it hidden in one of my mom’s purses.”
It was like a slow-motion statement. The words all came out, floated around in the air, and went in through our ears, but it took several seconds for Caven and me to absorb them.
His eyebrows drew together as he slapped his back pocket. I could already see the bulge, so I knew whatever she had found wasn’t his wallet—at least not currently.
She extended a leather bifold out in front of her and I swear I felt a bolt of lightning hit Caven. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.
He stared at her outstretched hand for a long minute, but he never moved to take it from her.
“Here,” Rosalee said, pushing it toward him again.
But my husband, stunned into silence, just stood there, staring. His face was unreadable, which to me was the most concerning of all.
I stood up and took the wallet from her hand. “Hey, why don’t you take Keira to her room and get a diaper out. I’ll be there in a minute to change her.”
“Okay, but hurry. I can’t take the smell much longer.” She fake gagged and then started down the hall with her sister in tow.
The minute they were gone, I moved in front of my husband, who had turned into a statue. I rested my hand on his pec. “Is this the one Hadley took?”
He nodded.
My lips thinned, and I started to flip it open. His hand came up so fast that I never even saw him move.
He clamped the wallet shut. “Don’t do that. Not yet,” he rumbled.
I slid my hand up his chest, curling it at the base of his neck. “Caven,
what’s going on? Talk to me.”
He scrubbed his hand over his face. “I accepted that it was gone.”
“Your wallet?”
“No. My mother’s necklace. It was tucked in the front pocket. And I know Hadley, and I know she sold off pretty much anything of value. But now, I’m standing here, staring at that wallet, knowing it’s yet another impossibility but hoping like hell that maybe it’s still in there.”
I pushed up onto my toes and kissed his plump lips. “So maybe we should open it and find out.”
He shook his head. “It’s not going to be in there. There’s no way.”
“But what if it is? Think of how spectacular that would be. You never expected to see that necklace again, right? So if it’s not in there, nothing changes. Rosalee still has the matching one that you had made for her. Keira has the matching baby bracelet you had made for her. And we go on about our lives, knowing that pieces of your mother are living, breathing, and waiting on a diaper change just down the hall. We have everything we need, Caven. Necklace or not. We have everything.”
His blue eyes searched my face for a long second. “You’re right. You’re absolutely right.”
He took the wallet from my hand and sat on the couch, motioning for me to join him.
Together, side by side, we held our breath as he opened the wallet. His driver’s license was still in the front, and a few random credit cards lined the other side. There was a yellow piece of paper folded up in the cash compartment in Hadley’s handwriting that read:
IOU-$167 Damn, cabs are expensive in the city.
Yep. That was Hadley. I laughed as I took it from his hand and traced my finger over her handwriting.
He sucked in a deep breath and looked at me one more time.
“I’m right here, Caven. Always and forever.”
He smiled weakly and then dug his finger into the small pocket. I waited, staring at him, searching for any sign of what, if anything, was inside. But his forehead crinkled as he pulled out another small, folded piece of yellow paper.
Written With You Page 21