“Tell me again, then. Tell me that you love me. That you love this baby. That you want to succeed. Keep telling me it. Keep telling me over and over and over.”
“I’ll tell you every day, all day if that’s what it takes.”
Lexi dipped her head. “Fine. Good. Yeah…” The silence lingered between them until she took a wavering breath. “I’m going to seriously be late.”
“You’re still taking that job?” Curtis sounded beyond disappointed. “Even after I showed up here and declared my love for you like some modern day knight?”
“Yeah.” She grinned down at the pavement. “I was going to go in and tell them that I can’t take the job after all. I was going to rehearse this huge apology on the drive over. I was going to tell them that I’m very sorry and thank them for the opportunity but tell them that I’ve had a change of heart. Or actually, that I haven’t. My heart never changed. It was always yours and I still really, really want to take that position in marketing if it’s still open.”
“It’s open,” Curtis assured her. “Does this never changing heart also include me?”
Lexi had to look up. She couldn’t smother her smile. “Yes. Unfortunately, it does. It always has.”
Curtis crossed the two feet between them in a blink. All of a sudden, his hand was on her chin, tipping her face up to him. His eyes shone with genuine love and hope. The most unguarded emotion she’d ever seen there.
“Unfortunately? Unfortunately? I think I have something to wipe that word out of your vocabulary. At least the un part of it.”
“Oh really?” she asked breathlessly. “What’s that?”
The skin around Curtis’ eyes creased when he smiled. Her heart stopped completely before it kicked back into some thundering semblance of working order. He gave her that grin, that goofy, stupidly happy, heart-melting, mushy, amazing grin. Curtis James. Her Curtis. Her TFB. And then, when his face must have hurt from all that smiling, hurt as much as her heart did- in a good way- he bent his head and kissed the un part right out of her.
EPILOGUE
Curtis
There wasn’t exactly a tangible meter for it, but Curtis was pretty sure if there was, some sort of scale or way of measuring fatherhood, he might not actually be the worst one ever. In fact, his wife told him the exact opposite, weekly, just in case he forgot.
Three.
He never thought he’d have one kid, let alone three. Turned out, life or the universe, happy chance, hard work, love or maybe all of it, had other ideas. Thank freaking goodness for other ideas. Without other ideas, he never would have known the love of his wife. His amazing, kind, compassionate, talented, beautiful wife.
He always knew Lexi would be the best mother, but he had no idea. No idea until they got home with twins. Yeah. Twins. They’d been shocked as hell to find two heartbeats at their first checkup together, not one. Two. Two miracles. Two perfect miracles.
Lexi was the best. Her parents were the best. Even his parents came back to Seattle to help out. They were all freaking rock stars and somehow they got through that first difficult year. Apparently, they must have liked losing weeks of their life to screaming babies, running around like haggard chickens, and having zero time to shower or even process a thought, because, when the twins were two, they decided to do it all over again.
Nine months later, Izabella Jade was born. A wrinkly, one week overdue, red faced, screaming bundle of joy that her big brothers adored. They were so fascinated with their baby sister that for a whole week, the holes in the wall and the parade of broken everything actually stopped.
Curtis couldn’t exactly say he minded when it started back up again. Holes in the wall, spilled breakfast, lunch, and dinner, screaming, shouting, lack of sleep and broken crap was a small price to pay for all the happiness in the world.
“Your daddy once told your cousins that they belonged in a zoo.” Lexi was talking to one year old Izabella and their set of nearly four year old terrors, Jace and Bryce. “He said it and it was actually really funny and then he had to take them to the zoo.”
“I tried to feed them to the lions,” he joked, coming up behind Lexi and wrapping an arm around her waist. “So make sure you behave.”
“I want to live with the lions!” Jace screamed, fist punching the air, missing his brother’s face by an inch. They weren’t identical twins, but Bryce punched the air too, right after his brother. They had very similar mannerisms. They liked to stir each other into getting in trouble, at the very least.
“Yeah! Lions are cool!” Bryce agreed.
“Li-li-li-li,” Izabella babbled.