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He reaches for the bread.

I swear to God.

Somehow, we all make it to the table.

Dante talks over Luca. Luca tries to read between bites until I take his book away.

Giulia informs Damiano that if he ever interferes with her love life again, she’ll shave his head while he’s sleeping. Damiano tells her he’d still look better than her. She throws a napkin at him. Jude catches it before it lands in the sauce.

Someone asks for more Parmesan. Someone else steals the last piece of bread.

I tell Dante to stop feeding the dog under the table. He insists he isn’t. The dog beneath his chair says otherwise.

It’s loud.

So fucking loud.

I sit back for a moment and look around the table.

Four children. Four completely different pieces of us.

Giulia is still arguing with her twin, green eyes flashing while Damiano grins at her. Luca has somehow managed to get his book back and is hiding it beneath the table. Dante is whispering something to the dog that I probably don’t want to know.

And Jude sits among all of it with a satisfied smile on his face.

My Grumpy.

Eighteen years have changed him. There are silver strands hiding among the black curls now and lines beside those green eyes that weren’t there when I first met him.

I love every single one of them.

Maybe even more because I know how many of those lines came from laughing. From living. From us.

Then Jude looks at me. Across all the noise, those green eyes find mine.

They always do.

His expression softens. I smile.

For just a moment, everything else fades.

I remember another table. Another family dinner. A life I once stood on the outside of and watched with an ache in my chest because I wanted it without knowing whether I was ever getting that too.

I remember thinking how loud they were. Happy. Full. Chaotic.

I wanted that life.

And somehow, against every expectation I once had for myself, I got it.

Not the life I planned when I was young.

That life mattered. That love mattered.

It always will.

But this one? This one is alive, chaotic, beautiful and all mine.

I look at my husband. At our children. At the mess on the table and the muddy shoes I know someone left by the door. At the boy named Damiano arguing with his sister while his little brothers create their own kind of chaos.