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Epilogue
Four months later
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“Mrs. Derico, I had a question about the whole clickbait section of your lecture.”
Hannah glanced up from packing her mini video projector away, and smiled at Gemma Crutchfield. The headmistress had been bang-on target about her daughter; Gemma was bound and determined to become the greatest content creator the internet had ever seen. She soaked up every piece of information like a sponge, and her list of questions was never-ending. Normally Hannah loved spending however much time Gemma needed after class to answer all her questions, but today was different.
In fact, her entire life was different from this day forward.
That thought alone was enough to make her legs shake.
“As much as I’d love to stay and chat, Gemma, I’m afraid I’ve got to run. I’m meeting up with my husband for an early dinner, and he gets antsy if I’m running late.” Translation, Dalton gave serious thought to sending out search parties for her if she ran late without calling and telling him first. There were some people in her circle who thought Dalton was too controlling, wanting to know where she was at all times. But Hannah now knew what drove her man, and it had nothing to do with being in control.
It was love.
Dalton loved her, just as deeply as she loved him. If anything ever happened to him, she wouldn’t know how to go on. Dalton was in the same boat when it came to her, but he had the added trauma of forever having the memory of how they’d first met seared into his brain. Now and forever, her man would protect her, because he’d shown her in every way possible that she’d become the center of his universe.
She could live with that.
Gemma made a sound of disappointment before her freckled face brightened. “No worries, Mrs. Derico. We can talk while I walk you to your car. Students aren’t allowed in the faculty parking lot, but I’ve got a little wiggle room on that rule since my mom is usually the one who drives me home. Now, about that whole clickbait deal and how you can ruin the rep you’re trying to build if the title of your video and the content of the video don’t match up... Being just a little clickbait-y isn’t that bad, right?”
Stifling a sigh, Hannah slung her bag over her shoulder and headed out of the classroom, with Gemma trailing after her. This was going to take a lot longer to explain than a walk to a parking lot.
Despite the heavy blanket of snow covering CATE’s sprawling campus, the school itself was still an impressive sight to behold. Its whimsically Gothic spires and sprawling wings with its beautiful buttresses always brought a smile to her face. The faculty’s parking lot was on the far side of the main building, close to the tree line that ringed the school’s grounds. A family of deer delicately picked their way through the snow just beyond the trees, then stopped, statue-still, as Hannah and Gemma trudged their way to the car. It was a solid, sturdy Mercedes SUV, latest in its class with all the safety features known to man, complete with snow tires that could have navigated a glacier with ease. When they’d gotten married three months earlier, Dalton had convinced her that her little compact wasn’t the car for a married woman who might someday also be a mother.
There were times when her husband was so smart.
“Gemma, I’ll email you the transcript of today’s lecture, but ultimately it boils down to the best possible advice I can give, and it’s this—turn it around.”
Huddling into a double-breasted coat against the icy wind blowing snowflakes all around them, Gemma frowned. “Turn it around? What does that mean?”
“It means, think about how you might feel if you clicked on a video with a great title that grabbed your interest, only to find that the video has nothing to do with what the title promised. Obviously all the content creator wanted were a bunch of lovely click-throughs, and you were suckered into being one of them. Haven’t you ever been caught by something like that before?”
Gemma snorted. “Who hasn’t?”
“So, turn that moment around in your head. You got suckered. How did it make you feel?”
“Pissed off. Cheated. Kind of stupid and duped.”
“Exactly. So why would you pull that same stunt on people who could potentially be loyal followers just to get a quick rush of clicks? You’ll lose far more than you’ll ever gain in the long run, trust me on this. Thanks for walking me out,” she added in a louder voice, then waved a friendly hand at the approaching security guard. “What with all this snow and everything I had to carry, I’m grateful you were here to help so I didn’t slip and fall.”
“What...? Oh, right. Absolutely my pleasure, Mrs. Derico.” Glancing quickly over her shoulder at the guard, Gemma ducked her head and gave her a mischievous wink. “You are so my favorite teacher. CATE’s way cooler now that you’re here.”
She had to admit, teaching at CATE twice a week made her feel pretty damn cool, Hannah thought as she got into her car and headed for the freeway. She might not have been one of the cool kids who walked those majestic halls—and she now knew there were some seriously cool kids who did—but she was at least good enough to hold her own with the faculty while teaching a subject she knew just about as well as anyone on the planet. As much as CATE was still a magical place where only the special snowflakes got to attend, she had managed to carve out a place for herself and was comfortable with it.
In short, she belonged.
Snow began to blast out of the sky in earnest as she headed toward the house she now shared with Dalton and the place that always had her humming “The Brady Bunch” theme. She adored everything about it, from the kitschy look of it, to the feeling of peace and happiness that washed over her every time she caught sight of it. In every sense of the word, it was home.
And again, it was where she belonged.
Dalton was the reason her move into his house had been so seamless. He’d worked overtime on remodeling the attic to make it almost identical to her former attic office, so all she’d had to do once they got back from their whirlwind honeymoon in Bermuda was to sit down and create some killer content. Never once had she felt like she was a guest living in his house. Wherever Dalton was, that was her home, and she loved the feeling of knowing where her place was in the world.
It was by Dalton’s side.
“It is seriously coming down out there.” Climbing out of the car, Hannah hit the garage door’s button and headed up the small concrete steps to where Dalton waited, a tea towel draped over his shoulder. “You don’t have to go into work this evening, right?”
“I’m off for the next—” he flicked a wrist out and glanced at his watch, “—thirty-six hours. Have any ideas on how we can pass the time?”
“I might be able to come up with a few.” Smiling, she reached the landing where he stood, and reveled in his welcoming kiss. “Mm. You taste yummy. What have you been up to?”
“With snowpocalypse threatening outside, I got in the mood for my grandma’s killer Bolognese sauce. You’re not in any rush, are you?”
“I recorded three shows for the podcast, just in case the weatherman was right and we got hit with a blizzard. As of now, I’m off work until Monday. I’m all yours.”
A spark lit his dark eyes. “Then let’s get inside and do something about that.”
The kitchen smelled like an Italian restaurant. With a happy sigh, Hannah immediately ditched her outerwear and rolled up her sleeves to help finish up the meal by tossing together a quick lettuce, tomato and cucumber salad, then got some garlic bread going in the oven. She’d never been big on cooking, but she’d learned that Dalton—an Italian all the way to his bones—loved to cook, and believed food was just another way of expressing love. He adored cooking for her whenever he had the chance, to the point where she’d chided him that he was going to make her fat.
That, she supposed, was now a happy inevitability.
“It’s ridiculous how much I hate leaving this house,” she remarked once they were seated in the breakfast nook situated in a bay window off the kitchen. Snow continued to pelt down in a blinding white frenzy, but with a steaming-hot plate of spaghetti in front of her and Dalton radiating all that delicious warmth he generated like a living space heater, she couldn’t have been cozier. “Whenever I’m out, all I can think about is coming back home. I never used to be like that, but marrying you has turned me into a real homebody.”
“Not gonna lie, I’m thrilled to hear it,” he said, digging into the mound of spaghetti before him, the mouthwatering scents of browned-off hamburger, garlic, oregano and the zesty tang of roasted tomatoes perfuming the air. “It was a big change, going from parties every night to keeping your ass parked in one place. I’ll admit I was worried you’d be climbing the walls by now.”
“Are you kidding? There isn’t a hotter spot in this city than right here with you, the sexiest man in all of Chicagoland.” To make sure he understood she meant it, she leaned over to nuzzle her lips against his. “You’re better than any party scene, believe me. There’s no place I’d rather be than right here.”
“Yeah?” Smiling, he pulled her chair closer to his, then chuckled at the surprised squeak that escaped her. “Maybe it’s me you like coming home to, and not the house.”
“There’s no maybe about it.” Turning in her chair, she looped an arm around his shoulders and looked directly into his eyes. “I’m happiest when I’m where I belong, and where I belong is with you. And our baby.”
The widening of his eyes was hilarious. Half a second later she was up and in his arms, a plate of spaghetti and its delectable Bolognese sauce flying off the table as he spun her around the kitchen with a whoop of joy. Even before they’d gotten married, they’d stopped all forms of contraception, choosing to let nature take its course. When she hadn’t gotten pregnant right away, a whisper of worry had begun to gnaw at her.
But clearly, practice made perfect.
Or in her case, a baby.
“Dalton, put me down, you’re making me dizzy.” Laughing, she hugged him and let their shared happiness roll through her like the sweetest song. “We’re really doing this, aren’t we? We’re really becoming a family.”
“We already are, beautiful.” He kissed her as if starved for the taste of her as he at last came to a stop back at the table. He set her down on the edge, his hips pushing between her legs while his hands went to the belt at her waist, his eyes lit with a burning love and an undeniable hunger. “We already are.”
*
Seven months later
“...thanks again to the wonderful guests we had on tonight—Sebastian Payne, founder of House Of Payne tattoo studio, DJ Maya, who’s just signed a major record deal with Epoch, and Bebe Zaiger, owner of the Thunder Club and her newest hotspot downtown adjacent to the Wrigley Building, Debonair. These three movers-and-shakers in Chicago society continue to make life for the rest of us a little bit brighter, so I was thrilled to have them on tonight, of all nights. Not only is it my last night before going on maternity leave, but tonight on Trend Tracks, the number-one rated podcast highlighting pop-culture trends in the Windy City, we are celebrating our one-year anniversary.” Headphones in place and mic angled in front of her, Hannah hit a button, and the sound of party horns filled her ears. “In fact, we’re going to continue to party tomorrow night with guest host David Messina, live right here in the Chicago Pulse studios, with our special guests, Grammy Award-winner Latrice Zendiah, as well as Dasha Scorpeone, founder of my favorite charity, Chicago’s Future. Later in the week we’ll also have Charlotte Crutchfield, current head of the CATE private prep academy. Hopefully she’ll be able to answer why the hell I didn’t get into CATE when I was a teen. Should be fun.” Glancing over at her producer in the sound studio, she caught sight of her best friend, Zenni Greer-Levesque, and broke into a happy grin. “But for now, it’s time for me to say goodnight. Thank you, each and every one of you, for hitting up the podcast and following along. It’s been a whirlwind of a first year, and the next one is promising to be even better. So until I’m back in this chair on the flipside of becoming a mom, this is Hannah Raven for Trend Tracks. I can’t wait until we can talk again.” She hit the stop streaming button, then waited for conformation of end of broadcast before pushing carefully out of her seat and setting aside her headphones. “Zenni! Tell me you brought the baby.”
“Really? That’s how you greet me? Okay, fine. I get it. You only love me for my daughter.” Shaking her head in mock-regret, she bent and hoisted up a pink leopard baby carrier for Hannah to see. “As if I could ever let Daisy go without having dinner with her favorite godmother.”
Absently cradling her now-enormous belly, Hannah made a beeline for her friend to shower all sorts of gooey love on her goddaughter. “There she is, my little fashionista. Do you want to be a guest on my show so you can tell everyone what makes you such a fashion icon, Daisy love?”
“Hannah, she’s three months old.” Amused, her friend rolled her eyes. “Her current favorite fashion item is a bib that says Daddy’s Little Monster. I can tell she loves it because she spits up on it every chance she gets.”
“Aww, isn’t she smart? What a good girl.” She kissed her goddaughter’s head covered in soft, curly ringlets of purest ebony, as dark as her mother’s hair was blonde. “You know what? You deciding to have this little angel was the best move you’ve ever made.”
“I’ll take the bows for it, though let’s be honest—coming back from my honeymoon knocked up wasn’t exactly planned. You on the other hand,” Zenni added with a meaningful glance at Hannah’s ready-to-pop baby bump, “are the one who’s planned everything out according to a freaking calendar. I still can’t believe your due date’s on your wedding anniversary. Talk about following a set course.”
“One more week and I’ll finally be able to see my feet again,” At last Hannah straightened, trying to stretch the muscles in her lower back that had been screaming at her for the past several hours. “You know, I’ve missed my feet. Misbehaving little buggers that they are, they tend to do things without my knowledge when I can’t actually see them.”
“The things they don’t warn you about when you’re pregnant.” Zenni laughed as she followed Hannah to her desk, where she picked up her purse and jacket. “How are those weird Dorito cravings you were telling me about?”
“I tried very hard not to eat an entire bag of them this morning for breakfast. Tried... and failed. My stomach’s been off-and-on punishing me for it ever since.”
Zenni shot her a concerned look. “Are you up to going out to eat with us?”
“Absolutely,” Hannah returned immediately, shoving the faint queasiness aside with a bright smile. To show just how ready she was for the night of fun that lay before them, she slung her purse over her shoulder and headed for the elevators. “Besides, I want to see what Talon’s restaurant pick is for tonight. Do you know where we’re going?”
“Tall Sally’s.” Zenni wrinkled her nose as they headed toward the elevators. “I had to talk him out of some new Japanese teppanyaki place where you sit on the floor and grill your own food right at the table. Girl, when I go out to eat after a long day of work and I’m exhausted, the food damn well better be prepared for me.”
“I’ve done the whole teppanyaki thing, and it’s fun because it’s novel, but I hear you.” Her back grumbled at her again, and she rubbed an absent hand at it as she and Zenni stepped into an elevator. “Besides, I literally can’t imagine me getting down on the floor—and then getting back up—in the condition I’m in. Not without the aid of a forklift, anyway. This little dude can’t come soon enough.”
“I was like that when I was in the home stretch with Daisy.” Zenni leaned over the carrier to make cooing noises at her sleepy daughter before glancing wryly at Hannah. “I would have tried jumping jacks to try to dislodge her near the end, but Talon was always hovering, waiting for any sign that I might overexert myself. You know, like sneezing or sighing too intensely.”
“I would’ve thought that as a doctor, Dalton wouldn’t be a helicopter father-to-be, but if anything, all that knowledge of what could go wrong has made him even more protective. Every time I make a sound, he wants to know if I’m okay. For the past month or so, whenever I sit down, I make this groan of relief, because my ankles have gotten a little swollen and it feels good to take a load off. I swear, even if he’s in another room he comes running to see if I’m still alive. How the hell can he even hear me?”
“Maybe he has your house bugged.”
“I wouldn’t put it past him.” But she couldn’t help but smile as she said it, because Dalton’s jumpiness as the baby’s due date approached came from an obvious place of love. No woman had ever been as pampered as she was. Whatever she wanted to eat, her husband found a way to get it to her within the hour. Her back, which had been surprisingly twitchy from the time of her second trimester, got constant massages, whether from him or from a weekly massage therapist Dalton had set up for her at their house every weekend. He went with her on every checkup as well, and he was the best partner she could have ever asked for in all their birthing classes.
The past couple of weeks, however, Dalton had given new meaning to the word hover.
When her ankles began to look a little puffy, he started checking her blood pressure every morning and every night before bed. The other night while watching a movie and snuggling on the couch, she’d thought he was going to hold her hand, but instead he paused at her wrist to check her pulse. He’d read out loud to her all the symptoms of preeclampsia, then related a horror story of a woman who had come into his ER who had died from it immediately after giving birth.
She’d had a nightmare about it that night.
According to her doctor, she wasn’t preeclamptic, and the only one in danger of dying was Dalton, because she was a hair away from murdering him if he kept up with all his unintended fearmongering.
Her back was well and truly on the warpath by the time she and Zenni made it to Tall Sally’s, a trendy barbecue joint with an unashamedly Texas spin on both the menu and décor. The scents of freshly grilled meat and woodsmoke mingled with the sweetly spicy scent of barbecue sauce and beer. Usually those scents would have made Hannah drool on her shoes, but her stomach had been weird all day, and the thought of simply turning around and heading home crossed her mind. But that would undoubtedly make Dalton hit all the alarm buttons, so she kept a smile in place as she followed Zenni to their table.
She could get through this.
For the sake of her husband’s sanity—and hers—she could get through anything.
“Hey, beautiful.” Dalton’s face lit up with a smile as she and Zenni approached. God, she loved that look on his face—loving, excited to see her, happy that she existed in the world. It was exactly the way she felt about him, so it made her heart sing every time she saw it reflected back at her. “Come on over and get off those feet. I already ordered you some lemonade, but if you want we can get you some decaf coffee. How are you feeling?”
“Fine.” Now that she was with him, all the crampy unwellness she’d been struggling with vanished as if it had never been. “Or, at least, I would be if my personal doctor would prescribe a kiss for me.”
“Not a problem.” The glow of his smile lingered in his eyes before he leaned in to claim her mouth with his. Warmth flooded through her while her heart did an exhilarating loop-de-loop, and she reached up to cup his lean cheek to hold on to that precious feeling. Damn, her man knew how to kiss.
When he at last raised his head, she couldn’t help but smile brilliantly at him. “Wow. You’re better than any medicine, you know that? One touch from you and everything else gets chased away.”
“Yeah?” A satisfied smirk curled his mouth before it was swallowed by that ever-present concern. “So, what needs to be chased away? What’s going on with you?”
Ugh. “Dalton, not everything I say is a reason to worry. It was just a long workday since it was my last one for three months. And besides, I’ll admit my back is killing me.” Her front was too, cramping away and making her feel increasingly nauseated. Maybe going home and dealing with his hovering wasn’t such a bad idea...
Predictably, the concern shadowing his face didn’t go away. “We can always order some food to go and bounce out of here. Hell, we can do that now and have something delivered—”
“Don’t be silly, sweetheart, we’re here with our best friends, so let’s just—ooh.” A sharp pain rippled from her lower belly to wrap around to the small of her back and squeezed, vise-like. It was so intense it took her breath away and partially doubled her over, a shock of pain she’d never felt before.
Holy crap, what was that?
“Rock-hard.” Dalton’s hands were on her belly, palpating gently. “Holy shit, you’re having a contraction. Hannah? Beautiful? Did you hear me? Your abdominal muscles are rock-hard, which means you’re having a contraction.”
Aha. So that was what that was. “Yep.”
Across the table, Talon stood like his knees worked on springs. “I’ll get the car.”
“I’m not...” Breathe, breathe, breathe. “Going to have... my water break... in your car.”
“Why not? Mine did.” Unconcerned, Zenni picked up the baby carrier. “But if you’re shy about that kind of thing, you can sit on my jacket if you want, just in case.”
“I’m driving her, so you guys just go about your business,” Dalton announced, hands still on her belly even as the death-grip of pain eased up enough to let her breathe. “Don’t worry, I’ve got this.”
“I think we should follow you, just in case,” Talon said, heading around the table to help Dalton get Hannah to her feet. “When Zenni went into labor I sideswiped our car on one of those concrete stanchion things outside the hospital.”
“He couldn’t figure out how to get to the ER entrance from where we were. In the end, he just sort of squeezed through a place that no car should’ve been able to squeeze through, but since he got us to where we wanted to go, I can’t complain.”
“I fucking work at the hospital where we’re going, so don’t sweat it. Come on, baby,” Dalton murmured to Hannah as he guided her carefully out the door. “Don’t worry, okay? I’ve got this.”
“I know,” she assured him between breaths, and even managed a smile. “How could I be worried? I’m with you.” It was true. With their first anniversary just a week away, she’d grown only more confident that this amazing man loved her in ways she’d never been loved before. He made her feel like the most interesting person in the world as he sat with her while she edited her videos up in the attic office he’d recreated for her, often laughing at a joke she’d made or nodding along with a point she’d wanted to get across. He’d also made it obvious that he simply loved being with her, even if it was on the drive to work or hanging out at home watching TV, and he absolutely loved sharing morning showers with her, to the point where she missed him on the few occasions when she showered alone. Wherever she happened to be, her man found a reason to be there, too,
God, she adored that new facet of her life.
Just as she’d acquired new facets to her life, she’d also lost a couple, but she didn’t miss them in the least. The biggest one, of course, was that Keisha had taken over the unofficial crown of Party Queen at Chicago Pulse. Her friend delighted in having the pick of the litter when it came to choosing what events to cover, while her former rival, Jodie Adams took whatever was left.
Losing Jodie as a daily source of irritation was a facet Hannah was only too happy to lose.
“I’ve got this, I’ve got this.” Dalton’s absent mutterings brought her back to the moment just as another contraction hit. “Oh shit, I can’t fucking believe this. I have no idea where the hospital is from here. Jesus fucking Christ—”
“Take a left on Roscoe, then a right on Lincoln Avenue, heading toward Lincoln Park... ow.” She leaned over again, gripping her stomach even as the car shot out into traffic with a blare of horns and a chorus of squealing tires.
“Shit. Right, now I know where we are. Don’t worry, beautiful, I’ve got this.”
“Uh-huh. I’m not worried.” Alarmed, amused and exasperated that he’d blanked on where they were, maybe, but not worried. Her confidence in him didn’t wobble as he cut off another driver and made a turn from the middle lane. Nor did it shake when he blew through a red light, then turned into an “Exit Only” ramp to get into the hospital. By the time she was finally ensconced in a wheelchair and whisked up to the birthing suite they’d reserved with her OB-GYN on the way, she couldn’t help but laugh at how Dalton had to circle around the hospital complex—twice—before finally getting them to where they needed to be.
“See?” Dalton gripped her hand tightly as the nurses got the baby’s heart monitor in place and settled her into bed. “I had it all the way.”
“My hero.” She said it through a grin, but they both knew that was exactly who he was for her—her hero. From the moment they’d met, that was who he’d been for her.
Anthony Dante Derico, named after Dalton’s grandfather, made his appearance just after midnight with a healthy howl. Exhausted, yet more exhilarated than she’d ever been in her life, Hannah held her son for the first time and knew all the way to her soul that she would never forget this perfect moment, even if her son’s volume was enough to make her ears ring. Then, just when she began to worry there might be something wrong with him, the baby was handed over to Dalton. Like magic, her son’s cries stopped as if a switch had been thrown, and though she knew logically that little Anthony couldn’t see anything yet, she could have sworn her son looked right into his father’s eyes and listened to Dalton when he promised his boy that everything was going to be all right, because he was there with his mommy and daddy, and they loved him more than anything in the world.
That was when she started crying almost as loudly as Anthony.
“I just can’t get over how miraculous this is,” she wept, staring up at Dalton and their son through an embarrassing rush of tears. “We made a little human, honey. We’re parents now, can you believe it?”
“I believe we’re going to be the best damn parents to this little boy that this world has ever seen. We’re going to love him and protect him and show him every inch of this world before standing aside so we can watch him take it by the horns and make it his own. And when we have another one,” he added, bending down to kiss her brow, while still cradling his newborn son securely to his chest, “we’re going to do more of the same.”
“Do me a favor,” she laughed weakly even as his words made her heart soar. “Let’s not mention having another baby while I’m still wrapping up delivering this one, okay?”
“We’ll talk about it,” he grinned with a wink.
