Quit Bein' Ugly (The Southern Gentleman 3)

Her into her booty shorts, and me into a pair of knit shorts and no top.

And in the end, we all ended up doing lifts, eating pizza, drinking beer, and having a grand ol’ time.

Best wedding day ever.

EPILOGUE

Nice girls put out.

-Text from Croft to Carmichael

CARMICHAEL

I woke up to someone kneading my stomach.

I blinked my eyes open, thinking that it was Croft, but came up empty when he started snoring softly.

I looked down at our son, Gavin, and blinked.

“What are you doing?” I asked as his pudgy little hands continued to knead my stomach.

The snoring abruptly stopped as Croft woke.

“This feels like that bread dough that I helped you make yesterday,” Gavin said, burying his face in my flab. “I want to make bread. Can we do that again today, Mommy?”

The awful man beside me started to laugh.

I looked over at him to see him burying his face into the pillow under his head.

“This isn’t funny,” I hissed at him.

He pulled the blanket down, allowing me to see one laughter-filled eye.

“I don’t know why you would say that,” he countered. “Because from my end, it’s absolutely hilarious.”

“That’s because a ten-pound bowling ball didn’t rip its way out of your vagina after stretching the hell out of your stomach for nine months,” I countered. “You still have nice, perfect abs. What do I have, Croft?”

He moved until his face was close to mine.

“My heart.”

I sighed.

How could I be mad at him for saying sweet stuff like that all the time?

I slowly got up, stretching my arms high over my head.

When I heard Croft growl, I looked at him over my shoulder.

“Is it your day to take him to daycare, or mine?” I asked.

“Mine,” he answered. “What time are you leaving for school?”

I looked at the clock on the wall.

“About an hour,” I answered. “It’s a good thing he woke us up because I would’ve overslept.”

Today was the first day of the new school year.

Today meant that I was finally getting to do what I loved.

After speaking with my bosses about what I wanted out of my career, they went ahead and decreed that after the next English teacher left, I could have her job.

Only, her job wouldn’t come up nearly as fast as I thought it would because she’d decided that she needed just one more year to get thirty years. Then she was done.

But I was okay with that.

After returning to work, news of my accident had spread like wildfire among the students. After they’d heard what Alfie had done, they’d all rallied around me. Even my theater students.

I wouldn’t say that the rest of that year had gone smoothly, but they definitely weren’t pulling chairs out from under me after that.

Then I’d gotten pregnant with Gavin, and I’d gone from being able to do a lot of things to not being able to do anything.

I’d gotten super duper sick to the point where I’d had to be hospitalized twice for dehydration, and from there I’d been put on bed rest.

Once Gavin was born, I’d decided to take a few years off of teaching to spend at home with him, and that’d been the best decision I’d ever made.

So it all worked out in the end, and today I would finally be starting my job as an English teacher.

“You excited?” Croft asked, coming up behind me and wrapping his arms around my flabby waist.

“Ecstatic,” I admitted. “I’m so excited I can hardly stand it.”

“You’ll do great,” he promised. “I can’t wait to hear about your first day.”

“Me neither!” Gavin cried as he started to jump on the bed.

We both turned to look at our little boy.

When he was born was the happiest day of my life, other than marrying the man with his arms currently locked around me.

The best thing in the world was seeing our boy placed in his arms for the first time.

“What are you wearing to school today?” I asked my kid.

“I want to wear my Nanos, a pair of sweatpants, and my Rogue t-shirt,” Gavin declared.

I rolled my eyes.

Of course, he did.

My kid literally survived in gym clothes.

Hell, I couldn’t say much. I did, too.

And when Croft wasn’t in his stuck-up suits, then he was in the same type of attire.

“How’s your shoulder feel today?” I asked.

Yesterday had been competition day for Croft.

It’d taken him two years to get back to where he was, but he did finally find a way to get back to the competition he missed.

“It feels surprisingly well,” he admitted. “The damage that was done to it by the bullet is likely permanent, but I’ve found a way to work around the pain.”

I wrinkled up my nose. “I fuckin’ hate Alfie.”

Alfie had gone to prison. And hopefully he’d be there for a very long time and wouldn’t get the parole at thirty years like he was told he might.