But once again… I wouldn’t change it all for the world.
We only had this one moment in time, this slice of life that would never happen again.
I’d never see my son at this exact same age. I’d never hold my wife in this way ever again. And I never wanted to take it for granted.
“If I could marry you all over again, I would, Lia,” I found myself saying before I even knew the words were out in the open. She slept soundly, not even me lifting her arm waking her. And I couldn’t deny I liked the fact she felt so utterly safe and protected in my arms, that she could be this deep in sleep.
I wrapped my arm around her again and buried my nose in her hair, inhaling once more.
“I love you more each and every day,” I whispered into the strands. “Thank you for being my best friend, for being my wife, and for giving me Caleb. Thank you for making me a husband and a father.” My arm tightened around her reflexively. “It’s always been you.” I leaned down to kiss the soft skin on her shoulder. “And there will never be anyone else for me for as long as I live.” Truer words had never been spoken in the history of mankind.
Epilogue Two
Jameson
Ten years later
This never got old… never got any less incredible.
Not to me. Not ever.
I sat in what I knew was one hell of an uncomfortable hospital chair, but I was so deliriously happy that I could have had my ass on barbed wire and I wouldn’t have felt anything but joy.
The little bundle cradled in one of my arms was so tiny, so light, it was almost like I held nothing at all. I stared down at my son, Abel, who had a head full of dark hair like Lia, and who, when I’d seen his eyes open, had looked as blue as mine, just like his older brother’s. I loved him so much already. A tiny shift in my other arm had me looking at our daughter, Cellie, who, just like her older twin brother, had a head of dark hair, but eyes that looked like they’d be Lia’s shade.
She already had me wrapped around her little finger.
The twins had been a surprise, the pregnancy not planned, but they were the best kind of shock, the kind that made you feel whole in every single way.
God, I didn’t think my heart could have gotten fuller after finally making Lia mine and starting a family with her with Caleb, but here we were, all these years later and everything feeling like it was absolutely the way it should be.
I lifted my head and stared at Lia. She wasn’t just my wife, my soulmate, my best friend, or the mother of my three children. She was my absolute, without fault, everything.
My everything.
And as I stared at her holding our oldest, Caleb, both of them snuggled together as they slept, Caleb so big already that he would soon tower over his mother in the next couple of years, I felt myself smile. He might be the oldest, but he was, and would forever be, a mama’s boy, and didn’t that just make me smile even more.
I looked back down at Abel and Cellie, the twins sleeping soundly, at least until they roused because they were hungry; but right now, in this moment, with the stillness and quiet surrounding them, I could just let myself go and know that everything would be okay.
Because these four people in the room with me were my world and I'd do everything in my power to make sure they were always safe and protected.
They’d never doubt how loved they were.
The End.