Page 232 of When Love Takes Root

“They’re family.”

I looked up at him.

He kissed my forehead once, smiling like the chaos didn’t scare him at all.

Behind us, Zuri and Skye were still celebrating. Jaya and Lyric joined in. Jamilah bounced happily on her blanket while Josiah lifted his hand and tapped the same little rhythm she’d given him earlier against his chest. She saw it, smiled wider, and tapped it back against her toy.

The C-Blacks had apparently entered phase two of whatever unauthorized plan they had created.

Josiah looked at the yard, then back at me.

“You still choosing us?”

His eyes held humor and truth.

I looked at my children. His family. My friends. The laughter. The noise. The way grief and joy had somehow learned to sit at the same table without fighting for the head seat.

Then I looked at him.

“Yes. All of it.”

And as the people we loved kept laughing beneath the string lights, I realized my heart wasn’t asking me to choose between the love that had rooted me and the love still growing.

It had made room for both.

And somehow . . . it had made room for us.

Two years later

Before I moved Celeste's rocking chair for the third time that morning, I was outside with dirt beneath my fingernails.

The garden behind our new home still had room to grow.

Most of it had already come alive. Hydrangeas leaned toward the morning sun. Lavender danced with every breeze. Rosemary spilled over its planter like it had somewhere important to be. The magnolia we'd planted the day we broke ground had taken hold beautifully, its branches stretching a little further with every season.

This morning, I knelt beside one of the empty beds and pressed another flowering shrub into the soil.

Roots first.

Flowers later.

I’d learned that from loving my wife.

By the time I came back inside, Celeste had moved the rocking chair three times before breakfast.

Closer to the window first because she wanted the babies to have sunlight. Then further from it because sunlight apparently had boundaries. Then angled beneath the mural Jaxon had commissioned across the nursery wall, where oak branches stretched toward painted stars, and roots curled through rich, brown soil as if the whole room had been waiting years to bloom.

I moved it each time.

Not because I lacked an opinion, but because my wife was standing barefoot in the middle of the room with twins beneath her heart, one hand supporting the curve of her belly and the other pressed to her back. Her locs were swept up, her robe hung loose around her shoulders, and the morning light touched her face with enough tenderness to make me forget every sensible thought I’d ever had.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, sliding the chair into place.

Celeste studied it for a long second.

One of our babies kicked first.

The other answered like they already had a language of their own.