“Nowhere near as beautiful as you are, baby. You’re always so sweet, caring for everyone else around you. You’re going to have to let me care for you a lot more, okay?”
“Not a lot more. Maybe a little more,” she giggled. Instantly her newly decorated hand flew to my knee. “So you were faking that your leg hurt just now?”
“Yes. I’m terrible.”
She shook her head. “You honestly scared me. Don’t do that again.”
“Only when I’m busy proposing to you, I promise.”
“If you ever do that again I’ll make you do more exercises, I swear.”
Kissing along her throat, I murmured, “You were so cute and shy the very first time you bullied me into doing them. Maybe I’ll be a jerk again.”
Molly captured my face in her hands. “As long as you’re my jerk, and you never stop snuggling me.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She fell into my arms, kissing me as if she never wanted us to stop, and I agreed completely.
EPILOGUE TWO
* Molly *
* Six Years Later *
It’s absolutely amazing how much can change in a few years.
Watering the herbs in the huge kitchen window, I looked out into the backyard. Britta and Charlie were running in circles around their dad, trying to attack him from different directions.
James had the patience of a saint with our two rambunctious toddlers. He listened to every detail of their elaborate fantasy stories, would read them the same book over and over before bed, and was working on his illustration skills for drawing on the white tile with soap crayons during bath time.
He was the best father I could have ever dreamed of. He was also the sweetest, sexiest husband I would never have had the nerve to wish for. The four of us were constantly hugging, always physically connected when we were together, which filled me with the deepest calm I’d ever known.
Laughing at the sight of our two little ones circling their giant father, my heart swelled with love for all three of them.
But my medically trained eye noticed something just as sweet.
James was taller than he was when we first met. No more slouching, trying to disappear from the world. No more cane, except for a few times a year if he really overworked his leg and the weather had been cold and rainy.
My soldier stood up proud and tall, towering over his babies.
Watching him running in circles, chasing them to the far fence and back without a trace of a limp made tears prick my eyes. His shoulder rarely hurt, and never when he was holding them, or me.
Just a few weeks ago, the four of us had gone on an easy forest hike. We took photos of the kids and the trees, and even after several hours on his feet, James was completely fine.
I knew that he’d been scared he would never fully heal, physically or mentally. Some injuries never completely disappear. But after he poured all of his darkness out onto the pages of those journals, he had kept up with the habit.
Since the initial purge, he seemed to only write a few times a month, but he did keep it up, taking a new notebook from the stack on the living room shelf whenever he needed it. He was now able to drop a few memory fragments into our conversations without getting that lost, lonely look in his eyes.
Dashing from the kitchen window, I ran down to the back door to open it for him, since James had a child slung over each shoulder, carrying them as if they were sacks of potatoes.
“Are they trees today?” I asked. “Are you a lumberjack?”
“Yes, but I think they’re only shrubs.”
The giggles erupting from Charlie and Britta were nearly hysterical. Their dad called them something else every day or two, from rocks and trees, to bags of sand. I had no idea why it was so hilarious to them, but perhaps it was an in-joke that mothers weren’t privy to.
He dragged them down the hall to drop them one by one into their beds for nap time, listening to them fake snore for him. Then they all laughed from trying to decide what a snoring shrub sounds like.