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My dismissive scoff is not the only one; beside me, Ben shakes his head. “No way. Two, for sure. Look at her drool.”
“Y’all are too generous.” My sister, my shit-stirring, traitorous big sister, smirks at me from across the living room. “I say one.”
“Can we not talk about this?”
“Yeah,” Kate, my savior, chimes in. “As the resident doctor, I’m gonna advise against Irish twins.”
“Pfft.” Luna waves her off. “You’re a psychologist. What do you know?”
As the group dissolves into laughter and bickering, I sit back and watch. I bask in it. I wonder if I’ll ever get used to it, like I always do. I catch Willow’s eye and I know she’s wondering the same thing. In the kitchen, I see August playing with his friends and being doted on just as heavily as his sister, and I hope he isn’t; I hope he’s already used to it, I hope this is his normal. I see October and I know this will be hers. I see the man holding her, and I can't believe he’s mine. I just… I can’t believe this is my life.
Look,I murmur to the lingering memory of a lonely, scared sixteen-year-old.You did it.
54
SUNDAY
I’m havinganother one of those dreams again.
It starts as sex, but it’s not sexy. It’s Cass and me in bed, our room dimly lit by the rising sun, our breaths short and quiet as our bodies move. It’s slow and soft and loving, leaving me warm long after the images fade and morph into something else.
And then, I’m in the kitchen. Cass is there too, making breakfast and holding our daughter—our happy, giggling, six-month-old daughter. He’s holding her with his bad arm, but he doesn’t complain. He never complains, not when it comes to her, nor the boy watching them from the island, smiling. August doesn’t call him dad, but he talks to him like one. Looks at him like one.
“Mornin’, Mama,” he says, and it strikes me then that I’m not dreaming.
This is real.
As real as us laying in bed later that night, talking like we always do, but something’s different. Cass is different. He’s nervous, squirmy, hands skating over my skin in an offbeat rhythm, the bob of his throat portraying the catching of his breath.
“I have an idea,” he says, and it’s my turn to lose my breath because somehow, I know.
Watching as he reaches towards the nightstand on his side of the bed and delves deep into the bottom drawer, I swallow hard. “Go on.”
His closed fist mostly conceals whatever he retrieves, a flash of black velvet the only hint I get. “It might be complicated.”
“I like complicated.” All the best things in my life were born of complications. “What’s the proposal, exactly?”
“Well, the ring—” he starts, taking a deep breath before unfurling his fingers and, with a flick of his fingers, opening the ring box clenched between them. “—is perfect.”
Despite the lump in my throat—roughly the same size as the beautiful, pale amethyst glinting in the early morning light, obscenely large compared to the thin gold band it’s set against—I choke out, “Cocky.”
He doesn’t correct me. He just flashes that dimple I love so much, the skin around his eyes creasing. “We do what we want,” he continues. “We do what’s comfortable. We stress about our future and our kids, but we do it together.”
“You make it sound so easy.”
“Some things just are.”
For once, I agree.
Hand cupping my nape, Cass drags me closer, his forehead against mine, his breath my breath. “C’mon, Sunday. Be complicated with me.”
And what else can I do, but say yes?
EPILOGUE
AUGUST
Cass,
