“Are you sure you married into the right family?” Cynthia asked as she moved to stand next to me, watching the brothers with amusement.
I didn’t have one doubt in my mind about the choice I’d made. “Absolutely.”Epilogue 2* * *SadieI was five hundred and eighty-three years pregnant today. I felt like a prisoner in a movie making tallies on the wall to mark weeks or months of their sentence, except for me it’d been since I’d last seen my feet.
Medically speaking, I was thirty-eight weeks pregnant, and tomorrow I was meant to be going in to be induced, but I’d delayed it by three days so I could be here tonight.
My blood pressure had been high for the last three weeks, and I was supposed to be on bed rest, but today was the charity night at Rebels to raise funds for a young boy who’d lost his father last year.
The dad had been about to donate part of his liver to him when he’d taken on a last job that brought him to Gonzales County to make sure his family had enough money while he recovered. Sadly, there’d been a car accident, and he’d left instructions in a letter that in the event of something like that happening, they were to keep him on life support so the boy could still have the transplant back in Denver.
Long story short, the man had saved many lives through that request, including his son’s, because they donated more than just his liver to people waiting for different organs. We’d been planning this since to raise money for the family to help them financially.
It’d started as a small thing and snowballed into a three-hour-long event, so I’d gone against my OB/GYN’s advice that I get induced tomorrow and had postponed it until Monday.
I had Parker here to keep an eye on me, and I had the first OB/GYN that I’d seen here as well, so I’d be just fine so long as I rested during the journey back to Sarasota. Given that I’d slept the whole way here, that wouldn’t be an issue. Oh, and I had my trusty yellow file with me, which was now full of forms and paperwork because Elijah never let me leave home without it.
As Ariana stood on stage, talking about why the fundraiser was taking place, I looked around me at all of the people who’d come tonight. It hadn’t just been locals either, because many of the residents from Piersville where Hurst and Linda lived had come, too. In fact, some of them were taking part in it.
“And first, we’ve got Piersville PD,” Ariana introduced. “Raise your hands and welcome them to the Fight For Life fundraiser.”
I’d only met some of the men briefly when we’d gone to visit Elijah’s family there, but seeing the sheriff, Dave, and five of the men who worked with him—Garrett, Raoul, Logan, Alejandro, and Carter—come onto the stage wearing a native Indian costume, an old fashioned police uniform, a black leather outfit and hat, what looked like an electrical engineer’s outfit, a naval uniform and finally a cowboy outfit complete with chaps, I bit my fist. Why? Because at that moment, a sharp pain made it feel like someone had tightened a wire around my middle.
Then the first notes of YMCA started playing, and nothing, not even the pain, could’ve stopped the laughter that took over as I watched them act out the Village People’s dance. I’d give them credit, they all got into it and gave it everything they had, blowing kisses to the women who were throwing dollar bills and pairs of underwear onto the stage.
As they left the stage, Ariana came on, wiping her face with a fistful of tissues, and introduced the next act.
The Piersville Townsends came on dressed up as the Spice Girls, singing Wannabe.
“Holy shit,” Ebru, Cole’s wife, shrieked as she fell off her chair laughing. “He’s Victoria Beckham.”
And so it went, through another eight acts, before the one I’d been involved with was announced.
The Gonzales County Townsends, along with Hurst, were coming on.
The stage went dark as things were shuffled around and the props brought on. Then, the beginning of Queen’s I Want To Break Free started, and the lights began to go back on, one by one.
Hurst came out pushing an old-fashioned vacuum cleaner from the right side of the stage, with a black wig, black mustache, short leather skirt, sleeveless pink turtleneck, fish tights, and stilettos on.
That was me officially gone. Trying to suck in air as he moved over to where Noah was dressed up as an old lady as he sat on the couch reading a newspaper was almost impossible. And then came Tate, dressed in a Saint Trinian’s style school uniform, with their friend, Madix, who was only an inch taller than Elijah, in a silky pink nightgown.