“I wanted to do this the moment I got back, and with the news you just shared… Fuck… I mean,fuck, could this be a more perfect moment? We’re going to get married, babygirl. You and me.”
He snaps open the box, and rather than bursting into tears, I start to giggle uncontrollably. I grab it out of his hands and don’t wait for him to put the ring on my finger, sliding it on myself instead. He didn’t ask. There was no question. Just a statement of fact. We’re going to get married.
There’s no fight left in me. He’s fucked and loved it all out of me. “All right. I accept,” I tell him, still giggling as I turn my hand back and forth, admiring the way dime sized pink diamond glints in the light.
The tears just fall right down his tanned, wind-burnt cheeks. He presses his lips to my soft belly and wraps his arms around me. “I didn’t know I could ever be this happy, Kitty Kat.”
I pull him close, savoring the familiar sensation of his stubble on my skin now. On the soft flesh of my inner forearm, under my fingertips. “I love you,” I whisper.
“Fuck,” he whispers back. “I love you, too. More than life itself.”
CHAPTER25
Trent
Epilogue - 21 Years Later
We’re having a party, and I’m so hard for her that my balls ache. As usual.
That’s been the one constant in our lives, aside from our never-ending love for one another. Through all the kids growing up—Caroline and Mackenna, who are 21 now, and David, who’s 18 and off to basic training tomorrow—through all the holidays and the houses and the money andlife,there’s not been a single fucking moment when I haven’t looked at Kat and gotten hard for her.
Every single time.
Including now.
I squeeze her hand. On our fingers are matching wedding rings that we’ve worn every moment from the day we said our “I do’s”, but that’s not our only anniversary. Hell no. The other anniversary we celebrate is the day we first met—all the way back at the beginning, damn near 35 years ago now.
Because that was when it all started. That was when I knew I was bound to her, for life.
She’s standing at the drinks table talking to some of our neighbors. Just before the twins were born, we moved up to Montana, to a big house with a view of the Beartooths. We started a new life here and we’ve been fucking happy. As happy as two people could ever hope to be.
Everybody here, they think we’re a couple, a normal couple. We share the same last name, and why shouldn’t we? Nobody knows our secret, except Edward and Luke, who will take it to their graves.
We have like eight fucking dogs, ten horses and donkeys, damn chickens that are a pain in my ass and last year, Kat added some recused alpacas to our collection. They fucking hate me and I can’t tell her, the feeling is mutual.
But, I smile and scrub the green scum out of their water buckets, fix the damn fence they knock down once a week and tell my wife I loveallthe animals. Happy wife, happy life. It’s my mantra.
Kat started a pro-bono sort of tax service for small businesses after our first was born. It was just a simple thing for her to do that made her feel like she was contributing even though that was wildly unnecessary. But, it evolved into this small business training school. All free, customized to every state where it walks you though how to set up your business, do the forms, provide the forms all the way to finding funding for expansions and she even has a plug from the Shark Tank show.
It's run by about a thousand people now and she’s really just the face and the compass for it all but I’m proud as fuck of my baby girl. Always have been.
We still make time for just us. I still love brushing her hair. I’ve painted her fingers and toes so many times I could probably get a license to own my own mani-pedi shop but touching another woman in any intimate way has never occurred to me and never will.
I have so many sketchbooks full of my drawings of her and the kids they fill an entire bookshelf in our library. Caroline’s picked up the artist gene and went to this fancy fucking art school in New York and her paintings are selling out as soon as she can finish them.
Kat and I have no secrets anymore except for one. Back when I emptied the storage unit of everything from the old house, I found the paperwork from the investment advisor that bankrupted my parents.
Didn’t take long with my contacts to find the motherfucker living in a sweet set up downtown thinking he was king shit.
After a little Q & A session in an abandoned building with him tied to a metal chair and maybe, just maybe an auto battery hooked up to some very sensitive body parts, he drooled and babbled out all the people he’d fucked over the years. Hundreds. Hundreds.
He didn’t fuck anyone over again. Ever. It was my last kill but I’d kill again if anyone ever threatened what’s mine.
I squeeze her hand and she gives me a glance. An open, willing, submissive little glance that makes my balls ache. Such a good fucking girl.
But she’s in the middle of something—being the hostess with the mostest. Making sure our Justin gets a good send-off before basic. She blinks a few times at me. “Trent.”
I lift one eyebrow and lean in. “Pantry. Now. Don’t you pretend you aren’t soaked for Daddy already...”