Page 106 of Sex, Lies, and Margarita Mixes

After the party winds down, after the last glitter egg is found and busted, after the toddlers crash in a massive blanket fort in the middle of the living room and Stella is tucked safely into her crib, Mari Lynn and Knox head to the guest room with the baby monitor for the living room. Chase and I climb onto the food truck roof again with the baby monitor for Stella’s room.

Same spot. Same stars. A little more tired. A lot more grateful.

He reaches for my hand, linking our fingers. “You ever think about Vegas?”

I snort softly and lean my chin on his chest, looking up at him. “Only every time Marnie crawls into bed between us, or Stella throws food down to the dog, or the house looks like a bomb went off three point two minutes after I straighten it.”

He grins. “Still the best bad decision we ever made.”

I snuggle into him. “The best.”

He pulls me close, kisses me slow, deliberate—the kind of kiss that tastes like the vows we finally said on the beach, almost four years after Elvis married us.

“Would you do it all again?” he asks.

Smiling against his lips, I nod. “Every crazy, messy, glitter-bombed second of every damn day.”

He leans back, looking out over the backyard, the string lights still glowing. Mari Lynn and Knox are now on the patio, her feet are in his lap, they’re both sipping drinks, and watching their boys and our daughter snore in the fort through the glass.

“I used to think forever had to be big,” I whisper. “But this? This quiet chaos? This is it.”

He rests his chin on my shoulder. “Forever’s whatever we make it. I still choose you, Rox.”

“I choose you, too, Chase.”

And as quiet laughter drifts up from Mari Lynn and Knox keeping watch over our motley crew, our daughter lets out a tiny snore in her sleep from her crib, visible on the monitor, and I look at our beautiful chaos, I realize something.

We didn’t just build a life. We built a family.

Not perfect. Not polished but absolutely, wonderfully, unapologetically ours.

And I wouldn’t trade a second.

Not the glitter. Not the frosting in the curtains. Not even the tricycle that trips us every time we walk past, even though we know it’s there.

Every bit of that crazy brought us closer to here.

And here is exactly where we’re meant to be.