Cassidyroundedthebarwith her final tray of empties for the evening, ponytail swinging behind her, the skirt of her summer dress swishing against the backs of her bare thighs. Jemma accepted the tray from her with a wink, knowing how eager Cassidy was to get off shift. After all, nine times out of ten, a hot man waited to escort her home.
The bar was beautifully rebuilt with warm, dark carved wood to resemble a traditional Irish pub. Darlene and the new owners, a local family, had given Slane free rein on the design, and she had knocked it out of the park. Grady assisted with the construction; he and Mac installed the security systems. Stained glass windows, cozy needlepoint cushions and chairs, mirrors, and a gorgeous curving bar gave the place a homey feeling.
And Cassidy had decided to come back.
The explosion was arson. Cassidy hadn’t been too surprised to hear Angel had been involved; shehadbeen surprised that David—the man who had hit on her, and who Mac had punched—had also been involved. The thefts were all Angel, the clumsy break-ins; David had been caught, which was the only way they knew anything. He was singing like a bird, and it all led back to Angel; of course, why wouldn’t he implicate her? Angel had since disappeared. Darlene pretended she wasn’t hurt by her family’s betrayal, but Cassidy knew better; everyone did. No one mentioned it, and the woman’s name wasn’t brought up again.
Elijah’s book had been released quietly, no fanfare, no extraordinary marketing. His fan base had found it anyway, and that’s all he would have wanted. Still, Cassidy and Mac had celebrated his success—not for themselves—but that he could inspire devotion beyond the grave. In a sense, Cassidy also felt it was a way to immortalize her life with him: herself, Elijah, Blake, and Fred. They were now out there, in print, although she and Mac were the only ones who knew it. Elijah had shared his family with the world, and in a way, they lived on.
Life with Mac was what he’d tried to prepare her for: many highs and lows. As time went by, the highs were more frequent and far outweighed the lows. With his lessons learned from Josie and their combined hypervigilance, triggers were noted and managed. Had she expected rainbows and unicorns after Marge, Silas, and Grady drove away that night? No. Nor did she get them. But what she had with Mac was honest and real because it came from a broken place; their shattered lives had somehow—against all sense—begun to heal together; their jagged edges fit together.
Happy endings were for movies. This was life. It was her life, and Mac’s, and they had today and gave each other tomorrow. Happy endings were overrated, anyway; dreams for fools. She was no longer that fool.
With the constant support of Grady and Silas, Mac’s issues got better. She saw that. Would he ever be the man he’d been? No. Would she ever be the woman she’d been? Also no. It didn’t matter. They were stupid happy anyway in their dysfunction, so maybe they were fools, after all.
Mac had also, at her and Grady’s insistence, reached out to his mother. After all, it had been Mac who had walked away. Cassidy had sobbed at their reunion which had his mother crying harder.
“Fuck’s sake,” Mac had said, telltale tears in his own eyes and he’d pulled Cassidy to him. He’d explained to his mother, “My girl feels everything.” There was pride in his voice when he said it.
Pride. Because he was the type of man who could let her—his woman—express her feelings without shame or embarrassment, and she loved him even more for that. He’d been afraid once that he couldn’t give her the words Elijah had, but this gift was just as great.
They still didn’t sleep in the same room, but he’d moved into the lake house. It hadn’t been his choice, but with the first heavy snow, the cabin had caved in. Luckily, neither had been in it, but they’d heard it, the collapsing of walls, sounding like the moans of a tired old man falling to his knees before giving up the fight altogether.
Mac managed to salvage his hammock—fond memories had been forged in that hammock—his footlocker, which contained his laptop, and a few other odd items. Grady’s carving of Kota had already been placed on the fireplace mantel at her house, and Cassidy’s habit of wearing his clothes meant he’d had plenty of his things already at her place. He’d set up a cot in the back bedroom under Cassidy’s pouting glower; she’d wanted him in the bedroom.
He wasn’t giving any quarter on that end.
But every night, he would lay in the bed with her—more often than not, bodies still flushed from vigorous sex—and they promised each other tomorrow. No forevers; never forever. Tomorrow was something their damaged hearts could handle and appreciate more than the promise of forever. Even if they were pissed off after a fight, they would frown at one another and make their pledge, which inevitably softened their hearts, or at the very least, led to angry sex, which erased any transgressions.
But tomorrow was always there. Tomorrow was attainable, manageable, and possible.
Of course, once the twins had arrived, they were bound together in a different way. Cassidy refused to take care of them all by herself. They were needy and whiny, and she wasn’t prepared for the multiple middle-of-the-night wake-up calls, and he was equipped to deal with them better than she. Her own lack of preparedness alarmed her, but he’d brushed it off, stepping in.
“Is Mac bringing the twins with him today?” Jemma asked.
Jemma loved the twins. Everyone loved the twins. The twins were the biggest hit around the lake at the moment.
“Yes,” Cassidy answered. She loved the twins, she did, but they preferred Mac. She had to admit she was jealous sometimes of the amount of time he spent with them. And he spoiled them rotten. They were three months old and completely ruined.
The bar door swung open, and Mac entered, the twins in a dual sling on his chest. Their little bodies were wiggling in excitement; they knew the bar. They knew Cassidy was there. Immediately cries went up.
Cassidy’s face broke out in a huge grin as it always did, seeing her sexy-as-hell boyfriend with a silly as fuck contraption, dangling two Belgian Malinois puppies, yipping and squiggling. Their twins: Ricky and Lucy.
Mac had insisted on the theme names that Elijah had tried to start, so Ricky Ricardo and Lucille Ball were their babies. The tribute to the legacy naming convention had made her fall even more deeply in love with him.
“Babies!” Jemma screeched out, running around the bar.
The puppies reached the height of excitement, sensing a ton of loving coming their way.
Mac grinned, his dark eyes a warm glow. “If you make them piss on me, Jemma…”
“Don’t want them peeing on you? Walk them like dogs.”
Cassidy approached, admonishing, “Slane is going to read you the riot act for bringing them in here again!”
Slane was the buttoned-up, dark-haired manager with ivory skin and sultry undertones who Grady was having a hard time landing. She appeared from the back, acting affronted, but she loved the puppies, too.
“Emotional support animals,” he supplied before she could protest. He bent over to smack Cassidy on the lips as Jemma tried to tug Ricky from his sling. They wouldn’t fit in the gadget in another few weeks, but they were raising these pups like the fur babies they were, and fuck anyone who called them crazy.