64. Epilogue

64

Epilogue

"I, Francis John Kingston, take you, Nadia Marie Harrison…"

It was only when I was sitting in a pew in a beautifully decorated church that I really understood weddings. I still didn't want one, but… The flowers, the pomp and ceremony, the dress, I could see its appeal. Then Frankie and Nadia stood in front of the priest and recited their vows. Tears pricked at my eyes, and when I surreptitiously tried to brush them away, Hayden smiled at me and squeezed my hand. Because underneath all the frippery was this: a declaration of love.

You could see the change in my brother, and it wasn't just the nice suit he was wearing. For someone who'd rampaged through life being a dick, suddenly he was deadly serious. He was open, completely vulnerable, as he stared at Nadia, probably for the first time realising just how much he was punching above his weight with her. If she was prepared to become his wife, wear his ring and forsake all others, he needed to be the best husband he could be. That's what he said in each word of the ancient ritual, and right then my heart swelled. I looked away, down the pew, and saw the same thing.

My guys might not be standing before a priest, but they'd deliberately placed themselves around me in our aisle, making sure no one could get close. Mum had been allowed to attend the wedding ceremony but not the reception. Instead of sitting in the front row, though, she was banished to the back, with only one of her sisters for company. Dad was in the front row, my brothers and my sisters-in-law beside him, but I was comfortable in the middle, surrounded by my aunties, uncles, and cousins. The ceremony went off without a hitch and when the happy couple walked back down the aisle, now joined in marriage, we followed.

"Auntie Jamie!" Ava was one of Steve and Amber's kids and she rushed over to me, throwing her arms around my legs and holding on. "Can you please take us to the reception, please, please! Mum says we have to go with Nanna, but she's mean to us."

My hand went to the little girl's hair, stroking her head, right as her little sister joined her. I now had two kids clinging to me like monkeys.

"Ava! Bella!" Mum's sharp voice cut through the crowd milling around the church, making my own spine stiffen, along with the girls. "Let's go."

They were embarrassing her, that's what prompted Mum's response. I pushed the kids gently behind me, putting myself between them and their grandmother. I stared her down then, not seeing my mother, the woman that raised me, but a threat. The girls were going nowhere. If a babysitter was needed, we'd work it out between us.

"Come on, girls." Amber strode over, talking to them in a long-suffering tone. I got it, I think, at least on some level. Parenting was such an intense, all-consuming job, so maybe that's why my sister-in-law sounded so irritated. "You'll go and hang out with Nanna for the afternoon so Mummy can have a break."

"You can have a break if we stay with Auntie Jamie," Ava insisted, then turned back to me. "Pleeease…"

"For goodness sakes, Ava—" Amber said, looking around for support, but of course, Steve was nowhere to be found.

"We've got this," I said, then glanced at the guys for confirmation. Brock nodded slowly while Hunter dropped down to the girls' level.

"You want to look after your nieces, Jamie?" he said in that chipper tone adults used with kids. "But I don't see any little girls, just a couple of monkeys!" The girls giggled, then pressed their faces into my legs due to shyness, but Hunter had them in the palm of his hand shortly afterwards. Hopping around and making monkey noises was the way to a child's heart apparently.

"Do you even like children?" Amber asked, looking down her nose at me.

"Do you?" I said that before I'd really thought about it, flushing at how rude I was being.

"You'll be in the same shoes one day," she said in a deadly calm voice. "You think you're shit hot with your three sexy boyfriends, but one day you'll be knee deep in nappies and baby shit and wondering how you got there."

Right.

I knew that would never happen to me. The implant in my arm wasn't going anywhere, but that didn't mean I couldn't help someone out who was struggling with that.

"So let me look after the girls today," I told Amber. "You can sit with Steve and kick back and relax. I'll check if Nadia's OK with it."

My sister-in-law stared at me; her gaze completely flat before she sighed.

"Fine, but you won't be able to have a late one. They need to be in bed by seven."

"We can put them down in one of our spare rooms," Brock said.

"Ava can't eat seafood, despite thinking otherwise, not unless you want to be holding her hair back as she vomits all night. Bella's not as bad with eggs, but they don't sit well with her."

"We won't have any time for stinky seafood or eggs, will we, girls?" Hunter said, pretending to be a monkey pushing food into his mouth. "We'll have chocolate cake for dinner!"

"Chocolate cake!" the girls cried.

"God, they'll be hyper all night, then sick," Amber said, but then shrugged. "I'll pick them up tomorrow."

"We've got this," Hayden said, holding out a hand for Bella.

"Who are you?" she asked.

"I'm Uncle Hayden."

"Hay Bale," Hunter added, the girls cackling in response.

"That's Uncle Brock."

"Rock," Hunter corrected.

"And this is Uncle C…" Hayden's voice trailed away as he stared at his twin. "Uncle Monkey."

"Can you do horsey rides, Uncle Monkey?" The girls rushed Hunter, climbing onto his back, forcing him to grip them tight. He made a show of groaning under their weight, even though I knew he could lift far more with ease. "No horsey rides, only monkey rides!"

He galloped away, leaving just the adults present.

"So I'm to go back to the hotel on my own?" That was the first time I'd ever heard a waver in my mother's voice.

"You were bloody lucky you were allowed to attend the wedding at all with the way you've been carrying on," Dad grumbled, appearing by my shoulder.

Their divorce was well and truly in progress. Dad had moved out and left her the house, but I was willing to bet it was awfully empty now. Mum blinked and blinked, the only indication of what she was feeling, and I knew what it was. She was trying to hold back tears, which should've torn something inside me, but it didn't.

I was surprised that I didn't grieve for the loss of my mother, but even when I searched within, I found nothing but relief there. I was free, that was what rushed to the surface, not loss. It took a while, but I worked out that the grieving process had been happening for a long time. I was a wild child when I was a kid, bucking and fighting her need for control, but when I declared a ceasefire as an adult, that was her time to lay down her weapons too.

She didn't.

Instead, she just kept on stabbing me, covering it in sickly sweet concern and honestly, I was glad to not be attacked anymore. So this could've been my moment, where I vented my spleen, raged at her, told her exactly how I felt.

But how did I do that when I felt nothing?

"What did you always say to me, Mum?" A childish sense of hubris threatened to silence me, but I forged on. "Treat others how you want to be treated? Might be time to start working on that."

And at that, I turned on my heel and walked off after Hunter.

The reception was amazing. We sat at the kid's table and honestly, it was the best place to be. We were free to act like dickheads, all in the pursuit of amusing the children. Frannie's and Dave's kids were there as well as some of my cousins' children, but that table soon got bigger. People from all over the venue came to sit down with us and chat. About family, about me and how my life had changed, to meet the guys, or just to touch base with their own kids. Sitting at the table, I realised weddings weren't that bad at all. Under all the stress, there was something in common.

Family.

Found, or the one you were born into, a wedding symbolised the welding together of two families to form one. It was a place to put aside petty differences, but maintain boundaries against major ones. Nadia's family and mine milled around each other, chatting, eating, drinking, and cheering the happy couple, right up until the DJ started calling for people to come up on the dancefloor.

"So, wanna dance with me, baby?" Hunter asked, fluttering his eyelids.

"You do not want to see me dance."

"Too late." Brock shot me a small smile. "Remember when you and Millie were obsessed with the Step Up movies?

"Shut up," I growled. "Shut the hell up."

"My mum says we're not supposed to say shut up," one of my nephews said.

"Right, and you, we shouldn't." I shot Brock a dark look. "And I won't if you stop talking about that."

Of course, that's when the dulcet tones of Miss Tina Turner started singing Nutbush City Limits .

It is a strange thing in Australia. At some point in our history, every education department on the continent decided all small children would learn this weird little line dance to the song. Every wedding, every party of significant size, had people performing it. Olympic athletes even did it, so when the guys got to their feet, I knew we had a duty to perform for the next generation.

"Who wants Aunty Jamie to show you a dance?" I asked and the kids all dropped their cutlery or put down their drinks, hands shooting up all around the table.

"Me! Me! Me!"

"OK, then…"

"I knew my evil plan would work," Hunter said with a grin.

"So you did pay off the DJ?" Brock asked.

"You what?" I turned on him, then remembered all the little ears around us. "What did you do?"

"Made sure you'd have a good time."

He offered me his arm, then all four of us herded the kids out onto the dancefloor, now filled with adults and then we got them all lined up as we showed them the simple moves.

The kids screwed it up completely, which made sense. Perfection was never the point, fun was. They giggled, we laughed and danced, bumping into each other and missing turns before forging on. Nadia and Frankie rushed over and joined us, performing the age-old steps over and over. Even Dad got up to boogie along with us. The calls to the DJ to repeat the song deafening when it was done.

We had fun.

We were family, we were happy, and we had fun and in the end, wasn't that the point?

"They're pretty cute," Hayden said as we stood inside the door of the spare room hours later. The girls were nestled down in one of the beds.

"When they're asleep. I'm sorry, your SIL was right," Hunter added. "Those girls were nuts on sugar."

"The whole sugar equals hyperactivity thing has been disproved," Brock said, watching the girls sleep on. "And yeah, looking after your niblings? I'm down with that." His eyes met mine. "No interest in having our own, though."

"That's why I love you."

I kissed him on the nose and then Hunter was demanding attention, forcing me to turn to Hayden to ensure he didn't get left out until we were all cuddled up, right before we shut the door. The girls were exhausted and so were we, so we retired to our own room just down the hall.

"So we're leaving in the morning to head for the coast," Brock said. "We better get some sleep. It's gonna be a long drive up to Canberra."

"We're stopping for a surf on the way, just so that's clear," Hunter said.

"We can't stop?—"

"We can." I smiled at Brock until the line between his brow smoothed away. "We can do anything we want to because we're all on leave right now, so…" I glanced down the hallway to our bed, then took off at a run. "Last one in bed sleeps in the wet spot!"