IVAN POV
One Month Later…
“Are you sure about this?”I chuckled as I placed another box inside Miranda’s living room, which was getting fuller by the moment. “Cole and I don’t need to move in…”
Miranda couldn’t wipe the smile off her face as she looped her arms around my neck and pressed her lips to mine. “You know I want you living here. I need you living here. You and Cole both make my life so much better. You’re here all the time anyway, so I want you guys to just stay here already. We’ve talked about this before.”
“I know, I know.” God, I loved looking into her eyes, it was everything to me. She was everything to me. “We have talked about it a lot, but the reality of it might be different.”
She giggled in a delightful way, looking like she was soaring on cloud nine. “Timothy will be very unhappy if you back out now. He can’t wait to have you and Cole around more.”
While Timothy had not seen much of the danger, it had not escaped his attention that something was going on between his mother and Cole and me. He had to understand that we had been there to protect his family. But I didn’t get the sense that the only reason he wanted Cole and me around was to keep his mom and him sage. We got along really well. Timothy had opened up a lot to us over the last few days and was starting to see Cole and me as permanent fixtures in his life.
I loved that. I never realized that I wanted kids until all of this happened. Then again, I never thought I would end up in a relationship like this. I never really planned to end up in any relationship, so I never thought about what my life would look like with someone by my side, a family. But I was really pleased with the shape everything was taking. It was wonderful, unexpected but incredibly wonderful.
“Okay, well, I wouldn’t want to let Timothy down,” I said with a chuckle. “So I guess Cole and I will need to get all unpacked and organized before he gets home from school.”
“Are you talking about me?” Cole asked as he entered the room with a box on his shoulder, carrying it as if it weighed nothing. Showing off, I was sure, but that didn’t irritate me, it made me laugh. “Because I’m not going to take up too much room, I swear.”
Miranda and I looked at the stack of boxes and laughed. We were already filling up the house, but if it was what Miranda and Timothy wanted, then that was that.
“We need to make sure we don’t take up too much room before Timothy gets back from school. We don’t want him to come back to all of this. It’s a mess.”
Cole rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I know. Don’t worry, it’ll get done.” He leaned down and pressed his lips to Miranda’s. He could not stop smiling around her. “How are you doing?”
Miranda nodded and smiled. “I’m doing really good, thank you. Much better than I was before. Having you two living here is just incredible. I can’t believe how amazing my life has become. When I think about what it was like before, compared to now…”
She glowed as she talked about her life now, which was a really great feeling. To know that she had seen the light at the end of the tunnel as she escaped from the hell she had endured with Brady. The asshole that was now going to be locked away forever.
The police were still trying to get all the information they could from him about the murders of she-wolves. Brady didn’t want to talk as eagerly as the police officers might have hoped he would, but they were getting there. Slowly but surely. I had a lot of confidence in Owain and the police officers in this town. They would solve these crimes and keep Twin Lakes safe once again.
“Come on, let’s get everything unpacked,” Miranda said happily. “Then we can get our real lives started. I really didn’t think this would happen. Even when I tried to settle here in the beginning, I didn’t think that it would really last.”
Thank God Brady didn’t take her away from me, from us. The fact that he could have made my stomach flip over painfully. I knew for sure that I wouldn’t have been able to breathe if she left. I wouldn’t have been the same man.
“But now it looks like Timothy and I are here in Twin Lakes forever. Thank goodness.”
Cole slipped his hand into one of hers, and I took the other, uniting us all. We were all grateful to have Miranda here with us, and Twin Lakes was a better place for her presence. She was also good for my relationship with my twin. I couldn’t think of a time when things were this good for us. Cole and I had our own demons, but being with Miranda helped to heal us. We were all helping one another. It was perfect.
We all turnedtoward the door, wondering who might be knocking in the middle of the afternoon.
“Oh! Simon,” Miranda realized. “I forgot he said he would pop in before his date tonight. He wants to show me what he’s wearing and make sure he looks good.”
“Do you know who the date is with?” Cole asked eagerly.
“No, he never told me and I didn’t ask. I figure he will tell me when he’s ready to talk about it.”
Miranda went to answer the door and it wasn’t long before Simon waltzed in with a big, excited grin on his face. Despite living here our whole lives, aside from the time we were in the military, Cole and I didn’t really know Simon before everything that had happened with Miranda. We knew his wife had been killed, but we didn’t know the true horror of the story. We knew he had been through a lot, but we had no idea how dreadful it was.
The bond we had created was the one good thing that had come from Brady being here. It was a friendship that would last forever no matter what. Funny, really, when I thought about how things happened. How Simon could have been a threat to Cole and me and our happiness with Miranda. But he was one of the best people I knew, and as Cole slung an arm around his shoulder to greet him, I could tell he felt the same way.
“Looking good, Simon. Tell us all about your date.”
Miranda headed into the kitchen to make coffee while we discussed Simon’s upcoming date. Whether this woman was going to be the love of his life or not, I wasn’t sure, but it was good that he was getting back out there and enjoying himself. I saw a shine in him that wasn’t there before. He really was happy to move on from what had happened to him in the past, and to finally live his life once more.
“Did you hear the big news today? About the court case and everything?” Simon asked Cole and me.
I sat up a little straighter since this was about Brady. It had been hard to wait for things to progress with him, for us to know what was going to happen. I hadn’t even asked Owain for a couple of days because I was sick of being disappointed with nothing. But it seemed like something had happened since I last checked in.