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“Thank you, hotcakes, for loving all of us.”
“For loving us enough not to turn any of us away,” Zach adds to his brother’s words.
“For being ours,” Anton says, looking at me with so much care in his eyes that I’m struck silent. Tears fill my eyes as I realize I’ve never been happier.
“I love you, all of you,” I say again, thanking Anton’s grandma silently for helping me get here.
EPILOGUE
6 years later
“Calm down!” I say with a giggle as Zach paces the bedroom.
“Calm down?! You’re in labor, bluebird!” he grumbles, making me shake my head.
“This isn’t Sapphire’s first rodeo, Zachariah,” my mother says with a chuckle as she walks into the room. The doctor who delivered both Scarlett and Harlan walks in, smiling as my kids come trampling into the room.
“Sorry!” Jer and Isaiah say in unison as they attempt to unsuccessfully wrangle our kids.
“Mommy!” Scarlett, my oldest at five, squeals as she jumps on the bed.
“Mom!” Harlan, my soon-to-be middle child, is three. They both climb the bed in an attempt to get to me but are scooped up by Isaiah and Jer. My mother, who moved in with us four years ago, waves the men away.
“Let them see their mother now. Once she’s pushing, then you can contain the little beasties!” She reaches for my son, making monster noises as she tickles him silly.
Scarlett crawls across the bed and sits beside me, rubbing my belly. “The baby is coming today?” she asks, and I nod.
“She is,” I say as I wrap my arm around her and kiss her head. I catch my mom watching me as I have so often over the years, with a look of sadness and regret swimming in her eyes. I send her a sympathetic smile.
Even though she left my stepdad, and we made up, she still has a lot of regrets. I’m not mad at her anymore, but she’s still mad at herself. Maybe she always will be. Turns out, they wanted me to marry Thad because my real father left me a substantial amount of money when he died.
The conditions were that I had to wait until I was twenty-five to get married, and once I was twenty-five, the money would be mine. To get their hands on that money, they wanted me to marry Thad. And by they I mean my stepfather and his business partner. Thad was promised money if he complied. My mother was told I’d never leave her if she pushed me into it.
She was scared too.
She whispers that she loves me, and I smile.
“Love you, too,” I whisper back, and we’re all distracted as Anton corners the doctor like he always does when I’m in labor and asks her the same questions he asked with these two. I tune him out, turning my attention back to Scarlett.
“Everett is being a bully again,” she mumbles, and I sigh. Everett is a little boy that lives a few doors down. We moved into a larger house in the middle of town before Harlan was born, and although most of the families here are amazing, not all of them are.
I glance up at Eli, who nods.
Everett isn’t a bad kid, he’s just got a hard life. The kind of life that turns a six-year-old boy into a bully.
“Papa is going to fix it, my love, don’t worry.” I kiss her head, and when Zach scoops her up, she doesn’t protest.
Harlan, however, squeals like a piglet when Jer lifts him off the bed and heads for the door.
“I love you!” I yell, and my mother chuckles.
“They are full of energy. Good thing they have five fathers.” She shakes her head. The number of men I call mine was a bit of a shock for her at first, especially Anton, but she adjusted quickly. I think she was just happy I let her back into my life and would have been supportive even if I’d had ten men in my bed every night.
“And what are we naming this little one?” Doctor Paris asks as she sits on the edge of the bed, not that Anton isn’t asking a thousand questions.
“Lavender.”
“That's a beautiful name, Sapphire,” my mother says, as she takes my hand in hers.
“Thanks, Mom.”
My life is a fairy tale I never could have dreamed up for myself, and I wouldn’t want it any other way.
The End
