The Tease bonus!
I’m excited to share this bonus scene with you.
Bonus Epilogue for The Tease
A few years later…
Jules
I pace in the kitchen, sun streaming through the window on a Sunday morning, waiting for Finn to return from his coffee run. Zach slept at a friend’s house last night so it’s just the two of us.
I can’t wait. I check the time again. Why isn’t he back yet? Okay fine, he’s only been gone a few minutes, but still. Captain Dog sits patiently at my feet, thumping her tail.
The creak of the door signals Finn’s return, and I have to refrain from running into his arms. Well, he’s holding hot drinks and all.
I dig my heels in and wait by the counter so I can do this properly. When he walks into the kitchen with two cups of steaming coffee, he says, “It’s your Sunday morning gift.”
Once he sets them down, I answer him with, “And here’s your gift.” I hold up a stick with a white bow around the middle and two pink lines.
Finn doesn’t move for a few seconds. His eyes widen. Then, a smile dawns. He advances toward me. “Seriously?” His question is full of reverence and wonder.
I nod, barely able to contain the grin sweeping across my face. “Yes!”
He lifts me up in his arms like he did the day we came back together, planting adoring kisses on my lips, my cheeks, my forehead. “I’ve been hoping for this so badly,” he confesses in a whisper.
My heart glows.
“Me too,” I admit.
It took me a few years to find my way to this. To growing our little family. To becoming a mother. Now it’s what I want desperately. And judging from the way he embraces me, it’s all his hopes and dreams too.
Maybe even the dog’s, since she whimpers happily.
A few months later, when I enter the second trimester, and all is well, we tell Zach at the dinner table that he’s going to be a big brother. “Can I name the baby?” He asks.
With a laugh, Finn replies: “What would you name the baby?”
“Captain Dude,” he declares, then pops up and rushes to the dog bed in the corner of the kitchen where Captain Dog gnaws on a stuffed dinosaur squeaky toy. “Did you hear that? I’m going to be a big brother, and you’re going to be a big sister,” he says.
His father and I crack up.
Five months later, we move into a new home outside the city, and as Captain Dog and her trusty boy companion explore the huge backyard with its willowy trees and blooming wildflowers, my husband comes up behind me on the deck, wraps his arms around me, and plants a kiss to my neck.
His hands cover my belly.
Well, they don’t really. My belly’s pretty huge. And Finn loves to touch it. He kisses a path up my neck and whispers in my ear. “I cannot wait until he goes to bed tonight so we can christen the house.”
“I think me being pregnant makes you randy,” I say.
“You being you makes me randy.”
True. Very true.
But he also really likes me pregnant. And I really like him. So it’s all working out. The next week, I venture into the city again when my friends throw me a baby shower. It’s so good to see Layla, Harlow and Camden again. I don’t see them as often as I’d like, but we’ve all become busier with our lives and our families. So I cherish the moments when we can connect again.
A month later, I come home from the hospital with a healthy baby girl. That evening we open the door to a special guest.
My father. He looks nervous, but ridiculously excited as he beams at me. “I’m so happy for you, sweetheart.”
“Me too. I can’t wait for you to meet her.”
“I can’t either,” he says, with so much emotion.
I’m tired and wrung out, but full of new energy too as I walk through our home. “Her dad is holding her right now,” I say, then I take my father out to the back deck where his one-time best friend is holding our daughter.
My father smiles at Finn. “How’s it going, Tate?”
There’s nothing cold, nothing distant in Finn’s tone, or in my father’s when he replies, “Couldn’t be better.”
The two of them have become closer again. They’re not best friends. I’m not even sure if they are friends. But my dad comes around more for family dinners, for get-togethers, to spend time with me and his step-grandson, Zach.
Sometimes he and Zach go for bike rides together, and it’s the sweetest thing to see. Well, not quite as sweet as my husband rising up from his Adirondack chair and handing my little bundle of joy to my father.
As my father takes my baby girl and holds her in his arms, his eyes flood with tears, and he says in a sweet baby whisper, “Hey there, Daisy.”
I take my husband’s hand as my family comes back together.
Three years later, our second daughter, Lily, is born.
My father takes care of Daisy and Zach while I’m at the hospital, and he’s there when we bring her home too.
And I’m sure Willa is, as well, when I look to the stars at night.
***
Want more from these characters?
The RSVP: Bridger & Harlow
The Tryst: Nick & Layla
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