Epilogue
Justice
Five Years Later
"We need to get dressed, baby girl," I murmur to Milan, running my hand across her belly. "Shep and Ainsley will be here with the boys soon."
"Mm," Milan moans, throwing her arm over her face to cover her eyes. "I don't want to move. You wore me out."
"You can nap later," I promise, chuckling. Every time she's pregnant, we spend most of our spare time either fucking or napping. I'm not complaining. With an almost four-year-old and a two-year-old in the house, finding time to be alone together is a struggle. Julian and Jayce are as obsessed with my princess as I am. If they're home, they want to be right beside her.
I don't mind. Our boys are adorable, and Milan is an incredible mother. Then again, I always knew she would be. She's always been a caretaker. She thrives when she has people to nurture. It makes her happy to spoil the people in our lives with love and attention. Even though she and Ainsley are the same age, she's still a little mama bear to my niece. She's the same way when it comes to me and our boys. She spoils all of us every single day and lets us spoil her in return.
Not a day goes by when I don't hold her in my arms and tell her how much she means to me. I went far too long without saying those words to her and hurt her deeply as a result. I don't think I realized just how badly it hurt her until the first time we had a fight about three months after we found out she was pregnant with Julian. I stepped out to cool down. She thought I left.
I found her sobbing on the phone to Ainsley an hour later, asking what was wrong with her that made everyone want to leave her. Even though it was partly the hormones talking, it fucking broke me to see her so distraught. I picked her up off of the floor and held her. She fought me like a little hellcat until she finally cried it all out.
When she was done, I promised her that I would never walk away from her. She told me that she knew I loved her but that seeing me walk out the door like that reminded her of all the times her dad would come home to visit and then disappear again without a word. He would just get up and leave. I had to talk myself out of killing him all over again when she told me that.
A few days after that fight, she asked me if she could talk to somebody about her abandonment issues. Her therapist helped her work through a lot of the resentment and pain her father left her with. I felt like an asshole for not getting her in to see someone long before then. Taking care of her is my job. No. It's the highlight of my life. I should have made sure she had someone to talk to, even before I made her mine.
We rarely fight, but when we do, we stay and hash that shit out. I will never again let her think for even a second that I don't want her or don't want to be near her. She knows she's the center of my world and is content in that knowledge. She knows I'm not John Cooper and that I'll never leave her, but I still make a point to remind her every day that there is nowhere I'd rather be than at her side.
She's grown a lot in the years since. She still gives me hell at every available opportunity because we both get off on that shit, but she's so happy all the time. She's settled in a way she never was before, at peace with herself and her life and the way she grew up. She is the most incredible person I know. She's my baby girl, my warrior, the mother of my children. She is everything to me.
And I'm still her daddy. Our entire lives changed when we had kids, but not that. Never that. She still pushes my buttons to rile me up. I still spank her gorgeous ass until she's pleading for relief. We still fuck and fight and love. God, there is so much love between us.
I'm still not sure I deserve it. With the things I've done in my life, part of me knows I will never deserve the life I have with my baby girl and our boys. But I work everyday to be a better man and to be as worthy of them as possible.
As for her father, he decided he wanted to try to be a real father when Milan told him she was pregnant with Julian. She didn't expect much but gave him a chance. That ended the day he showed up three sheets to the wind. I've never been as proud of her as I was that day. She stood up for herself and our babies and told her father, for the first time, that she deserved better than the neglect and grief he gave her.
He's checked himself into rehab more than once over the years. It never takes. The sad reality is that it never will until he's ready to deal with the guilt that drives him. I keep tabs on him for her. She doesn't ask about him often. He calls every couple of months, promising me that he's going to get sober and come see her. I remind him every time that he's not to step foot on the property until that happens. It hasn't yet.
Milan still holds out hope that he'll change. I hope it too because she deserves so much more than he's given her. But he no longer has the power to hurt her. She knows now that his issues are his own and have nothing to do with her.
We've built our own family out of the people in our lives who matter. Surprisingly, our family is quite a bit bigger than either of us ever expected. Milan became close to Jax Archer's wife, Jessa, our first trip to Tennessee. Jessa and Jax brought Cyrus and his wife along. And then Mac Sterling and his wife joined the fold. Our circle has grown from there. Milan calls us the Billionaires' Club.
Ainsley and her husband are a big part of our lives too. Not long after Milan and I got married, Ainsley found her home in Valor, Wyoming with Shep Stratford. Once I learned that he was in a motorcycle club, letting her stay took every ounce of strength I had. I wanted to run in, guns blazing to bring her home. Milan talked me down. I'm glad she did.
Shep isn't what I would have chosen for Ainsley. Somehow, he's better. He loves my niece the way she deserves to be loved. And it doesn't hurt that there is an entire army of men at his back, willing to kill to protect her. She's happy with him and thriving in a way she never did here.
Shep and I butted heads a lot in the beginning. We're both used to calling the shots. When Ainsley and Milan turned up pregnant at the same time, that ended pretty quickly. All it took was making them cry once. They made Travis take them to get ice cream and manicures, leaving us to figure our shit out. Shep and I both felt like assholes. We struck an agreement before they got home, and we've stuck by it. Somewhere along the way, we both realized we're not all that different. In the years since, we've gone from grudging allies to close friends. So long as he makes my niece and their babies happy, we're good.
Part of me will always regret that it took Ainsley running for me to realize that I was causing her pain. I spent so long just trying to make it through each day that I forgot how to live. And then I forced that same half-life on her, afraid to let her live. Afraid of what I would turn into if something happened to her. That wasn't her burden to carry. She forgave me long ago for making her carry it. If Julian and Marissa are watching us, I hope they've forgiven me too for the pain I caused their daughter…and for what happened to them.
The man I was back then and the things I did nearly destroyed me. They cost me my brother and sister-in-law. They cost Ainsley her parents. That will never be okay. It's a wrong I will never be able to right. But I try like hell to be someone different. Someone better. I hope like hell Julian and Marissa see it.