AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Only one thing matters—being close to her now. If these are the last moments I have with the love of my life, I’m going to be just outside her door.
I bury my head into my forearms, clasp my hands together and do something I’ve never, ever done before.
I begin to pray.
Goddamn bunnies.
They’re friggin’ everywhere. Little brown and tan garden-eating devils. I sink to my knees and survey the damage. All the cauliflower, peppers, arugula, and broccoli seedlings have been decimated. Ironically, a few of the carrots have survived, but for how long?
I make a decision as I brush off the dirt from my bare knees. Within thirty seconds, I burst through the front door with purpose. “Jace? Lena? Where are you guys?”
“Back here,” my golden Viking drummer god yells from our little girl’s bedroom. I arrive to the most precious scene. Helena sits on her daddy’s lap sucking her thumb while he braids her hair into two pigtails. I sigh happily and lean against the door, watching them.
Whenever I see them together, I melt. Our little family iseverything. Even though Lena isn’t our biological child, she’s ours in every sense of the word. Our baby. Our daughter. Our life.
Despite the strange circumstances which brought her into our lives, she adapted quickly. Even her caseworker marvels at how fast she’s acclimated to our home. I know it’s because she’s meant to be with us, even if we don’t share the same DNA.
Lena’s bio mom was Jace’s sorta-ex, Cassie, a fangirl he hooked up with before his band, Less Than Zero, made it big. He broke it off around the time my BFF Zoey and I met them. Zoey and Ty, LTZ’s singer, fell in love at first sight.
Me? Gawd, I had such ahugecrush on Jace, but he wasted no time in friend-zoning me. But I’m me and wasn’t about to be denied. So, before he went on tour, I seduced him. Gave him my V-card. Setting off our years-long on-and-off friends-with-benefits thing.
Yeah, it wasthatmind-blowing.
After quite a bit of back and forth, we attempted to be a committed couple one summer. We didn’t tell anyone, so we had time to figure out our relationship for ourselves.
Turned out, I wasn’t ready for it. I don’t think he was either. It ended after I thought he’d gotten me pregnant. The test came up negative. Jace was super bummed. As for me? I’dalwaysbeen honest with him. Rescuing animals was my thing.Notchildren.
Especially with a guy who toured ten months of the year.
With divergent dreams for our future, we went our separate ways. We lost touch for a long time. It sucked, because being with Jace ruined me for all other guys. No one could hold a candle to him. Not even close. That’s when I realized how much I loved him.Reallyloved him.
When he and I reconnected at Coachella a couple years later, everything clicked back into place. Like destiny. He moved in with me here at the ranch and we were about to officially unveil our not-so-secret romance when the bottom fell out.
A couple of months before our reunion, that girl Cassie showed up at one of his shows. As Jace tells it, he was lonely and made the unfortunate decision to have dinner with the “manipulative cunt” and her equally “diabolical” sister. They roofied him. He woke up naked in bed with her the next day, with no memory of what happened. A year later, Cassie died in a car accident. Leaving behind a little girl, Helena, whose birth lined up perfectly with the roofie incident.
Just as he and I were finding our groove, Cassie’s family threatened to extort Jace with a public paternity scandal. He kept it from me because they threatened me too. Not to mention, he was convinced I’d leave him if he was the girl’s father.
I’m not gonna lie. The whole debacle nearly ended us forever. Because straight up, he should have told me. That being said, I’d been soadamantabout never having kids. And as social media manager for his band, he was used to handling things with little input. So even though I understood where he was coming from, we came to a different understanding.
No more secrets.
Long story short, Jace’s DNA didn’t match. Instead of relief, to my own surprise, I was sad she wasn’t his bio daughter. So was he. Both of us thought Helena deserved a lot better. Jace’s dad got involved and helped him make her shitty biological family an offer they couldn’t refuse.
We’ve never had a moment’s regret of adopting our darling, perfect, almost-two-year-old daughter, who we now call Lena.
“Are you going to fill us in on today’s plan?” I snap back to reality at the sound of Jace’s voice. He cocks an eyebrow and kisses the back of Lena’s head.
She reaches up and twists a lock of his long, blond hair around her finger and I can’t help but laugh. “Lena, you’ve literally got your daddy wrapped around your finger.” I stride over and smooth her hair. “What do you two think about getting a couple of cats?”
“Yah. Yah. I want kitty-cat.” Lena claps her hands together. “Kitty-cat. Kitty-cat.”
Jace can’t help but laugh. “Did the bunnies strike again?”
I nod. “Yup.”
No need to fill our daughter in on why weactuallyneed a couple of cats. What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.
An hour later, we’re at the Kitsap Humane Society filling out the paperwork for Benjamin and Franklin, adorable year-old paired black-and-white barn cat siblings. I’m paying the fee when Lena shrieks happily, pointing at a German Shepherd puppy. “Pup-pup!”
