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Sean leans in to kiss me. “I’m going to savor every moment,” he says, stroking his hand down the side of my face. “I only wish you’d been born twenty years earlier, so we might have had more time together.”
“Don’t think about the last twenty years,” I tell him. “Think about the next twenty, and how we’ll be spending them side by side.”
And instead of a kiss, he draws me in for a long embrace, the kind of embrace that pours out every kind of emotion into you, that tells of longing finally fulfilled, of love that will never die.
And I hug him back, knowing that I’m finally home.
Epilogue
Two Years Later
Sean
I juggle three bags of groceries on my way to the door, fumbling to get my keys out at the same time. I’m sure this wasn’t so difficult when I was a bachelor. I only had to get enough groceries for one.
And I usually lived on room service, but that’s beside the point.
“Hello?” I call out, managing to get the door open and step inside. I can’t take off my shoes and carry all these bags at the same time, and I’m not confident I can get the door locked either. I do manage to kick it shut just before a furry menace comes towards me at predictably high speed, yapping about my ankles in excitement.
“Daddy’s home,” I hear Candace exclaim from somewhere down the hall, and I relax, waiting for her to emerge.
“There you are,” I smile, as she comes out from the kitchen. She’s carrying little Emilia in one arm, the baby burbling happily with her fingers stuffed inside her mouth.
“Busy at the store?” Candace asks, leaning in to kiss me before taking one of the bags. With my load lightened, I can finally come inside properly.
“Not too bad,” I tell her. “I got stuck in a little traffic on the way back, though. I was wishing all the way here for them to speed up and let me get home to my favorite girls.”
Barney, the terrier mutt who found his way to us while Candace was pregnant, yaps noisily.
“And my favorite boy, of course,” I say, rolling my eyes and leaning down to scratch him behind one ear.
“I was just getting started on dinner,” Candace says. I follow her through into the kitchen where Emilia is swiftly whisked into her high chair so she can stay out of harm’s way, and I set the bags down on the counter. Candace moves back to the stove where a pot of something that smells delicious is bubbling away.
“Smells amazing, my love,” I tell Candace, busying myself with putting everything away. I pause as she leans over the counter for something, admiring her ass in her jeans. Her body still gets me hot. Having a baby hasn’t done anything to change that.
“It won’t be long,” she says, glancing over at Emilia. “Mimi’s a bit hungry, though. Why don’t you get her started?”
“Good idea,” I say, taking off my jacket and dumping it on the back of a chair. I roll up my sleeves before taking a seat at the table, next to the high chair. I’ve got enough experience now to know that no sleeve or cuff gets through this process unharmed, so it’s best to get them out of the way.
I open up the jar of baby food sitting on the table and grab a spoon, dipping it in and wiggling my eyebrows at the already captivated Emilia. “Ready?” I ask her. “Here comes the plane,” I make noises with my mouth to fill in for the engine as it swoops through the air and towards her mouth, making her laugh.
The sound alone fills my heart almost to bursting. The sound of my daughter laughing. There was a time I thought it would be something that I would never hear. But now, with my wife bustling around in the kitchen, our home feels like the very picture of domestic bliss. I don’t know what I did to deserve this, but it must have been something in a past life because I have it so very very good.
“I had a message from your secretary,” Candace says, calling out a little louder over the sound of the bubbling pot. “He said the deal with Precontium has gone through. We just both need to sign the paperwork.”
“That’s amazing,” I say, putting another spoon of food into Emilia’s smiling mouth. “I don’t even think you two need me anymore.”
Candace laughs. “I wouldn’t go that far,” she says, coming over and chucking Emilia on the cheek. “Daddy’s very important, isn’t he?”
I look up with a grin. “Dinner’s ready?”
“I’ll just serve now,” Candace tells me. “You know, deciding to work remotely was the best decision you ever made.”
“I can think of an even better one,” I laugh, holding up my hand with my wedding ring. But she’s right. After spending a while traveling the world together, when Candace got pregnant, we had to make a lot of big decisions. We didn’t know if it would work, having me at home all the time and the business running remotely without us. But between video calls, emails, and the occasional hosting of business partners in the city, we make it work. And it means I get to spend time with the people in my life who matter the most.
