Beast Brothers 2

The brothers’ eyes meet. “Uncertain,” Lucas answers, and there’s a wealth of information in that terse response. “We’d talk to them about it beforehand. If they can’t deal, we don’t go.”

I swallow. “Okay. That’s fair.” I can’t help but remember all the times I urged Megan to go public. It feels different when you’re on the inside looking out.

But it’s about time I got my mojo back. I’ve been too willing to let my fears get the better of me where the twins are concerned — probably because nothing, and no one, has ever mattered so much before. I vow not to hold back with them anymore.

“So are you going to keep treating me like an invalid?” I ask.

Lucas grins at me, and Alex says, “If you mean are we going to have sex with you tonight, the answer is no.”

“That’s just mean.”

They chuckle. “We want you to rest and heal,” Lucas says. “So we can get back to more … exciting pursuits as soon as possible.”

“Stop making sense,” I order him, and he laughs outright. It makes him look completely different, young and carefree, and my heart swells in my chest. The words are there on the tip of my tongue, and I don’t try to hold them back.

“I love you.” I roll onto my back and put an arm around each of them. “Both of you. You don’t have to say anything; I just wanted you to know.”

Their eyes blaze, and then both of them are kissing me at once … and the Wolf brothers decide that my healing can, after all, be best accelerated by making love.

Life is very, very good.

Epilogue

Lucas

We’re sound asleep when Zoe’s phone goes off. “Hmmh?” she mumbles in my ear. She’s sprawled half on top of me, her face mashed into the side of mine. Alex is right behind her, spooning, and the dog is down at the foot of the bed.

With a yawn, Alex rolls to his left and retrieves her phone. “It’s Megan,” he says in a voice still thick with sleep, and instead of handing it to her like he usually would, he answers it himself. “Hello? Oh, hey, Brock.”

That wakes us all up. “Gimme,” Zoe demands, and Alex hands her the phone with a smile. “Brock? Am I about to be an auntie? Oh gosh. Oh, good, good … right. You bet. We’ll be right there.”

“It’s time?” I say as she clicks off.

“Yes, and it’s happening fast. Cody’s in the back seat with her, helping her breathe.”

“I’ll make coffee,” I say, and we all roll out of bed.

It’s been an eventful few months. Thanksgiving with Zoe’s mom was great; once she saw how we treated her daughter, she was fully on board with us, and I think her acceptance helped Zoe a lot.

Zoe got in touch with her father; they met for coffee and had their first real conversation in years. It wasn’t entirely comfortable for either of them, and still isn’t, but they’re working on it. Her stepmother was skeptical at first, but Zoe won her over, and since then she’s been getting to know her younger siblings.

When Alex and I called our parents to tell them we both wanted to bring the same girl home for Christmas … well, Mom was fine. She’s always been our biggest fan. Dad, he’s more of an old-school guy, which has its good points and its bad points. My concern was not how he’d treat his sons, but how he’d treat Zoe. Whether, in his mind, any woman who was willing to be with two men at once was somehow lesser.

We weren’t certain, from the conversations we had with him, how accepting he was ready to be. So my brother and I didn’t spend Christmas with our parents. Christmas Eve, we got together with Zoe’s mom and had dinner and gifts. Christmas morning, Zoe went over to her father’s house with presents for everyone there, and then we all met at her mother’s again for dinner.

Zoe got Alex and me a bunch of different gifts, but our favorites were the t-shirts with these kickass wolves painted on them. She called them our superhero t-shirts, and I made her blush by giving her a look that said I had a very specific kind of superlative performance in mind. “I meant you could wear them to work,” she said. “Like magical shirts to keep you safe.”

“We have bulletproof vests for that, babe,” Alex said with a wink, and she blushed again. Sure enough, that night we wore our new t-shirts to bed — for a few minutes, at least — and showed her the kind of supermen we could be.

Alex

We get to the hospital and rush to the maternity ward. A few minutes later, a nurse comes out and tells us, “It’s a boy!” And then a few minutes after that, “And another boy!”

“What else could have possibly happened?” Zoe says with a laugh. “I’m sure their DNA wouldn’t allow any other outcome.”

Megan’s father and stepmother are there, eager to see their new grandbabies, but finally it’s our turn. It’s hard to tell who’s more ecstatic — Megan, her baby daddies, or Zoe, who is cooing over both little boys like they’re all hers.

It does something funny to my insides, watching her with them. After we got to know her mom, she sat us down one day and explained how badly Zoe was scarred by her dad’s leaving, and that she’s never opened up to a man before, or trusted one the way she does us. Lucas and I slapped our foreheads and set out reassuring our girl that we are never, ever going to leave her.

She’s blossomed as the weeks have gone by and she gets increasingly secure with us. We see a lot more of wacky, exuberant Zoe these days. I love it.

I love her.

My brother does too. We talked about it once — would you want things to be different? To have her to yourself, or never have met her and each of us be in a traditional relationship? — and we both said no, absolutely not. What we have is … perfect.