Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 127390 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 510(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127390 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 510(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
“Yeah,” I whispered.
He stood, taking me with him. “Good, then we’re going to that fancy as fuck hotel an hour away.”
“An entire hour?” I whined.
He grinned wickedly. “Don’t worry, babe. I’ll make it worth the wait.”
And he totally did.
Three times.
Then, two months later, he proposed to me.
That was worth the wait too.
Epilogue
We had lived hard.
Both of us.
Life gave us pockets of easy. Of love. Happiness.
But we also had hard times. Ugly, traumatic times. Blows that were meant to kill but only scarred us. Even together, there were more wounds. More scars from yesterdays coming back to hurt us.
So our epilogue, our ending, whatever you want to call it, needed to be soft. Gentle.
Of course there were things we couldn’t control. Both Kace and I had chosen a hard road in life. Choosing to love is harder still.
But things were softer now.
Things were quieter.
We’d both healed from the wounds that we’d obtained, each of them joining all of our other scars. Now memories.
There were no babies for us, although I had thought after our wedding that maybe that was going to happen for us. I’d wanted to give that to Kace, despite not being sure if I wanted more kids myself. More than anything, I wanted to give him the gift of fatherhood. Wanted to see a child who was a mix of the two of us. He would be patient with my pregnancy. He’d hold my hand while giving birth. Cut the cord. He’d get up in the middle of the night with me. Change diapers.
In short, he’d love that child an unimaginable amount. Because that’s who Kace was. Because he already loved my children that much. Loved them like he had watched them grow inside me, like he’d known them forever. Like they were his blood.
And they loved him back. Hesitantly at first. Well, not Lily. She was not one to love with hesitation, which was going to spell trouble for us in her teenage years. Jack, on the other hand, had been more guarded. Which was entirely to do with losing his father. It created borders, boundaries to his love. A fear of loss that broke my heart.
Beyond that, he idolized his father. Adored him. And he considered it his job to protect me. One he took more and more seriously with every passing year. So even though the child inside of him wanted to love Kace for teaching him about cars, about guns—that one got me—about all the things his father had started to teach him, there was also the fact that the ghost of his father lingered. He was also old enough to feel guilt for wanting to love Kace. Like it was somehow dishonoring his father.
So it had taken him longer.
But not that much longer.
Because that was the magic of Kace.
You couldn’t not fall in love with him.
Especially when we’d all been faced with the possibility of losing him. And when we didn’t lose him, we’d had to see him weak. Injured.
And my son stepped up. He was there every step of the way. And they were steps. Kace had had to learn how to walk again. Had to go through months of intense rehab. Had to weather constant pain. It could’ve done something to him. It could’ve made him depressed. Negative. Angry. It sure made me all of those things.
But not Kace. Through everything, he smiled, even if he was gritting his teeth while doing so. Regardless of his physical condition, he always found enough energy to be kind to me. To the kids. He was magic.
Jack certainly viewed him that way. He respected Kace’s strength. His dedication. When Kace got out of the hospital, it was Jack’s insistence that he move in with us. That he drive him and Lily to school when he could drive again. That he should sell his house down the street because he ‘didn’t need it anymore’.
He also helped Kace pick out my ring. Lily helped with the proposal. Kace made sure they were involved in such a big change in their lives. A bookend to their life with their father. Kace was so sensitive and knew that they didn’t have control or agency over losing their father. Over having their mother move on. He wanted them to feel like this wasn’t happening ‘to’ them, but like they were involved in everything.
Jack was his best man at the wedding.
Things got... softer from there. Easier.
Problems arose, to be sure. There were two growing kids around with scars of their own. There were more Sons of Templar courtships, Ashley and Wire of the most surprising. Well, not to me.
But for us, at least, things seemed to settle.
Then the baby thing slowly started. He didn’t pressure me. Didn’t mention it. But still, I felt it there. With his youth, with the fact it might just be an insult to science and the human race not to carry on his magical genes.