I will never get enough of my dear, perfect Colin, and I can’t stop touching him and marveling at his body either. “Nothing frightening about it. Assuming you can get it up again in say…three minutes.”
“How about one?” He guides my hand to where he is indeed rallying with incredible speed.
I sigh. “Yes. That’s my man. That’s my glorious, lovely man.”
And he is both of those things, a fact he proves several times that night and again the next morning.
We’re married three days later in a simple ceremony in the town square—it took more time to get a license than we thought—and Colin gives notice at the Government Legal Service and sends for his and Beatrice’s things the day after. We move into my home together, Beatrice has bunking parties with George every weekend, and fifteen months later, I get a call from the adoption agency that the birth mother who chose our family for her baby has gone into labor.
Six hours later, I’m holding my baby girl, Sarah, my second daughter, my heart.
Swiping tears from my eyes, I look up at Colin in the maternity ward waiting room and whisper, “Again. Let’s do it again.”
He smiles and kisses my forehead, his own emotions reverberating in his voice. “I never took our name off the list with the other agency. I had a feeling we’d want to go big with this whole family thing.”
“I love you,” I say, still sniffling. “And I love our girls. I can’t believe this is my life.”
I can’t, not for a long time. It’s just too good, too happy, too full of love and laughter and simple, everyday joy.
But by the time baby Nate is settled in my arms just a few weeks after Sarah’s first birthday, I’m starting to get the hang of this happily ever after thing.
And it’s flat-out awesome. Five out of five stars. Would highly recommend.
Epilogue
Twitch the British Bunny, aka a hideaway in a Happy Cat backyard
My humans are frolicking again.
Well, they don’t know they’re my humans, but I know they are, and I love watching the sisters and brother play.
I’ve even acquired an accent like the eldest girl after listening to her read aloud to the younger ones and eavesdropping on her lessons on how to speak proper English. If it’s proper, then I intend to embrace every bit of it. I may be an orphan who was washed from my burrow as a babe and grew up wild and rangy in the woods, but I’m clever and good with a turn of phrase, if I do say so myself.
“Now, Sarah, if you want to say you’re happy, you say you’re chuffed. Isn’t that so much more lovely than psyched or stoked?”
Chuffed, I whisper to myself. I’m chuffed to have a family of humans, even if they don’t know they’re my family or realize I live in a hole beneath the treehouse where they gather to have their secret meetings.
“Chuffed,” a much younger voice says, and then a younger-still voice attempts to say it as well. “Hupped.”
“Very good, Nate! You’re getting it now!”
The two smallest humans were already walking by the time I found my way to this safe refuge from the foxes and coyotes and the other predators roaming the woods, but the youngest still isn’t quite steady on his feet. He has to have help getting up into the treehouse, and his biggest sister always carries him carefully down again.
She is truly a treasure. If I could choose any human to be my special friend, it would be her. I imagine she would tell me wonderful bedtime stories and pet me every bit as carefully as she tends to her little siblings.
“Isn’t that brilliant, Sarah?” Beatrice asks. She’s the eldest, and I adore her name. It’s so lovely. “You could barely talk at all when you were his age.”
“’Cause he’s a wanker!” comes the enthusiastic reply from the smaller girl.
“Sarah! No, no, we never call people wankers!”
“But Papa says wanker.”
“Well, Papa isn’t perfect,” Beatrice says. “Close, but not quite.”
I sniff the air for danger and inch closer to the discussion.
This sounds almost as juicy as the spinach leaves growing in the garden on the other side of the yard.
“What are you doing?” a raccoon chitters at me, materializing from behind a nearby bush like a chubby, and slightly scary, ghost.
I leap in fright, torn between dashing back to my hole and staying still to trick the raccoon into thinking I’m a statue. This is an excellent self-defense strategy, as long as the predator in question isn’t very smart. Or terribly hungry.
“Relax, bun-bun. Nobody’s gonna hurt you. Except maybe Lucifer, the cat. He’s a good egg, but Cassie put him on a diet, so best to steer clear of him for the foreseeable future.” The raccoon chuckles. “I’m George. What’s your name?”