Falling into You (Falling Stars 3)

Then she stood up and started to sing with her arms stretched toward the heavens, her beautiful little voice off-key. “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make me happy, when skies are gray…”

Daisy giggled and spun, reaching for the small yellow bird that flitted and dashed overhead. “Look it, Mommy! She heard me! She heard me! Just like she said she would.”

I stifled a sob, and Lily and I squeezed our daddy’s hands tighter when he couldn’t keep his at bay.

We flanked him, holding him up.

It was such a strange thing to stand in the sadness and the joy.

To miss her but not to despair.

I glanced at Richard who was watching us. Sage eyes soft and knowing.

Fierce and sure and secure.

Daddy edged forward and knelt at her grave, whispered his fingers over her stone, set the single yellow rose on top of the ones that Daisy had left, and he murmured, “I hear you, too.”Richard paced out the line where we were on the opposite hill from my childhood home. He grinned back at us where the rest of us stood huddled together in the fading rays of the day as he carried the roll of architectural plans around like a prize.

“The wraparound porch will extend out to here.” He paced the next line, his voice nothing but excitement. “All the way out to here.”

My gaze traveled to the right. Over the rolling hills and acres of flowers that blossomed and flourished across our land. The magnificent tree sat in the distance. Standing beneath the sun that sagged low in the sky and lit it up in the most awestriking sort of beauty.

Pinks and purples and reds wisped with the melting blue.

That joy filled me to overflowing.

Sometimes I feared it would be too much. That I was gonna burst from it.

Impossible to fathom the depths of what I’d been given until I’d lost it and it’d been reclaimed.

That hole in the perfect shape of Richard filled, but when it’d been filled, he’d pushed deeper into those crevices, carving out more space, taking me whole in a way I hadn’t before grasped or understood.

Not until I was given a full picture of his devotion.

The measure of his loyalty and the span of his love.

“Can you see it?” Richard said, waving those hands again high above his head. “Two stories with a pitched roof. Five bedrooms.”

He cut me a smirky glance at that, his gaze drifting to my belly that was barely beginning to swell with our child.

Daisy went dancing his way, flailing her arms, too. “And my room’s gonna be right here, right, Daddy?”

He swept her up and tossed her into the air. “Yep, right here!”

“And my baby brother’s gonna be right next to me, right? And I’ll get up and get a bottle for him and everything. I’m awesome like that, you know.”

I barked out a laugh.

Yeah.

She was pretty awesome like that.

Daddy wrapped his arms around mine and Lily’s waists, pulling us closer. He planted a kiss to Lily’s temple and then turned to do the same to mine. We both settled our heads on his shoulders.

“My beautiful daughters. I am so thankful.” He stared out across at Richard and he muttered, “El regalador de alegría.”

The giver of joy.

No longer the thief.

No longer misunderstood.

“Now you’re gonna have to put up with my messes,” Lily teased, looking up at him. “Once we finally kick Violet here out, and I get her room permanently.”

“I’ll take it,” he said with a grin.

“Yeah, Daddy, me, too. I’ll take it.” Her voice was laced with a raw, tentative happiness. My sister was healing slowly, her hope growing like the flowers that bloomed around us.

The light dimming so we could all stand under the stars and the rising moon.

And we rejoiced in it.

This joy.

This peace.

In the faith that we’d fallen and landed exactly where we were supposed to be.Epilogue TwoRichard“What are you grinnin’ about?”

From the doorway, I stared down at my wife who sat on the edge of our bed in just a tank and underwear. That black hair tied up high on her head.

So fuckin’ pretty I felt her like a straight shot to the heart.

Those eyes holding me snared.

Enraptured.

Thunderstruck.

“Sometimes I still can’t believe you’re standin’ there,” she whispered into the swimming darkness that lapped in her old bedroom, the moonlight pouring in illuminating her silky skin.

I clicked the door shut behind me after I’d just tucked Daisy in.

Our daughter.

Our world.

This life more than I’d assumed or dared.

“And where else do you think I would be?”

The flicker of a smile lit at the corner of her delicious mouth. “Well, I’d think you could be a bit closer,” she teased.

“Hmm…that so?” I rumbled as I moved her way, pulling off my shirt as I went, because fuck, I was done wasting time.

Second I got to her, I cupped a hand on her cheek, glancing at the suitcases sitting against the wall. “Are you ready for this?”