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Mark nodded. Something in him had shifted, something moving to accept this version of reality.
"I’m going to be keeping my eye on you," he told Scott, and Scott grinned.
"I won’t give you any reason to keep a lookout over me," He replied. "It’s different now, Mark. The guy you met when we first started working together is not the man sitting in front of you right now. The man in front of you now wants to be a father. He wants to make a difference in Vegas."
Mark’s eyes moved back over to me, and I could tell he had seen the light.
"A baby?" he murmured, as though he couldn’t quite believe it. He laughed, his voice so full of joy for a moment it caught me off-guard. It had been a long time since I had heard him like that, heard him so happy. He had been carrying the weight of the world, the weight of our family’s legacy and hotel on his shoulders for so long, but he didn’t have to. Not anymore. Not now that Scott was here to help us.
"A baby," I repeated, a smile spreading over my face. "You’re going to be an uncle."
"The best damn uncle this world has ever seen," he corrected me, waving over a waiter. "I think this calls for a toast. Champagne?"
"I can’t drink, remember?" I reminded him, and he slapped his hand to his forehead like it had totally slipped his mind.
"Shit, of course," he muttered. "Okay, so what do you drink when you’re pregnant and celebrating...?”
The rest of the evening, the three of us just talked—about the past, about the future, about everything we had planned now that he knew about the baby. It felt a little surreal to discuss this with Mark, and him not freak the hell out about all of it—but I wasn’t going to complain. No, as far as I was concerned, this was exactly where we needed to be, and I didn’t want to let anything ruin this moment.
Mark slipped off to the bathroom, leaving Scott and me alone for a moment as the meal ended.
"I think he’s taking it well," he remarked, and I nodded.
"Way better than I thought he would," I agreed. "He just needs to believe it, I think. Believe that you’ve really changed."
Scott brought his lips to the back of my hand, planting a kiss on my ring finger.
"You believe it, don’t you?" He asked softly, and I nodded, smiling.
"Of course I do."
"Then that’s all I care about," he replied. And, as he smiled at me in the dim light of the restaurant, it was as though I was the only person in the room he could see.
And he was the only one I cared about.
Epiloge Thea
"Is Natalie ready to go?" I called out to Scott as I clipped in my earrings.
"Nearly!” He yelled back. "Just getting her bag ready and everything..."
I ducked into the bedroom and laughed when I saw the two of them together. Scott was lying with our daughter on the floor, playing with her favorite rattle, making her gurgle up at him delightedly.
"That doesn’t look like you’re getting ready," I scolded him, but he knew I really didn’t mind. I crouched down beside them, and tickled under Natalie’s chin, making her wriggle happily, letting out a few more joyful gurgles.
"Yeah, well, Mark’ll understand if we’re a little late," Scott replied. "How can you blame us? She’s so cute."
"She really is," I agreed as I smoothed back Natalie’s little puff of dark hair. She was getting so big now. It would be her first birthday in just a few months, and I could hardly believe she was going to be a whole year old. This first year of her life had gone so fast—but with everything happening, maybe it shouldn’t have been a surprise.
It had been a crazy eighteen months, honestly—the kind that I knew I would remember forever as the start of the life I had always wanted to live, even if I hadn’t known it for a long time. I’d spent most of my pregnancy working my ass off to get the charity division of Scott’s new business up and running. He was now the proud head of an investment firm focused on cultivating business talent around the city. We had already invested in a couple of small businesses that were flourishing now, and the shift in his reputation had been huge—people viewed him as a positive force these days, as opposed to some mobster who was out for whatever he could get.
And the kindness he had shown me over the course of my pregnancy—I would never in a million years have thought someone like him could have been capable of something like that, something as sweet and as gentle and as loving as he gave to me. Every chance he got, he went out of his way to take care of me, to do everything for me. He bought us a house and helped me every step of the way as we renovated it and turned it into the perfect little home for our daughter. Even before we knew her gender, he was certain we were having a girl, and he had picked out the name Natalie from the drop.
"It’s beautiful, just like she’s going to be," he had told me, and the smile on his face had me convinced. Natalie, it was.
Mark had been a big help, too—even though it had taken him a little longer to come around to the thought of having another generation of the family, it seemed to be healing in some way for him. Losing our parents had wounded us both so deeply that the only way to make it better was to raise a new part of our family and help my little girl flourish and bloom in the world. It was bittersweet doing this without my mom and dad at my side, but I knew we didn’t have a choice—and I knew I wasn’t going to let it get in the way of giving my daughter the best life she could have.
"Mom would be so proud of you," Mark told me once when I came by the hotel to catch up for a coffee.
