Epilogue

EPILOGUE

LIBBY

Many years later

“ Y ou didn’t save me a seat?” I tease my husband, who has been trying to get me to come sit down for the past twenty minutes.

“I am your seat.” Ace pulls me down to sit in his lap. I roll my eyes, pretending I’m annoyed at his behavior. He wraps one arm around me so that I stay snug against him. His other hand comes to rest on my stomach. I’m only four months along, but I’m already showing. “How is your leg?”

“It’s fine.” My leg is actually better than fine. A few months after everything calmed down, Ace got me into a doctor who had me undergo a microsurgery. The repair did wonders.

“I’ll be the judge of that later.” I know he means a rubdown. I cannot wait for that.

“In the tub,” I suggest with a sigh. It has been a long day. Yes, a long soak in the tub sounds delicious right now. I have been on my feet all day, but I have loved every second of it.

It’s Christmas Eve, and it’s the town's annual holiday show. It’s a tradition that Winter and I started. Fate has a lead role this year. The whole town is jammed into Town Hall.

This town really came together to help the victims of Heaven’s Temple. I will forever be grateful to everyone in it. A lot of the members now live here permanently too. It’s nice to have everyone settled. It has taken time, but we’ve done all we could.

That is one of the things I love about living here. Heaven’s Temple drilled into us that we had to stick together. The outside world was a horrible place. We were stronger together. The freaking irony is this town is actually everyone supporting each other while maintaining their individual freedom. This is what a community is supposed to be.

“And where is my wife?” Garrett starts to get up with our niece Rose in his arms, but Winter comes hurrying toward us.

“I got cookies.”

I laugh, taking one from her.

“You think I didn’t get you some?” Garrett holds them up with his other hand.

“Now we’ve got extra.” Winter is more pregnant than I am. “I’m just going to say it.” My sister leans over to whisper to me. “Fate and Daisy are the cutest ones here. Those dresses.” She smirks.

Of course she loves the dresses. She made them. I, however, wrote the play they’ll all be performing tonight. It was one of the many stories I made up long ago when Winter and I would lay in bed at night pretending those stories were a mini escape. A few years back, Winter talked me into putting them down on paper. I had no idea what it could turn into. I've recently sold two of them to a publisher for children's books.

“That goes without saying.” Both Winter and I had grown attached to little girls that needed homes. We both adopted. A few other families in town had done the same. Even Joe did when she fell hard for June who had two little girls of her own. They got married, and she adopted both girls.

Fate was always meant to be ours. We love her so freaking much. That girl lights up a room when she enters it. She was so excited when she found out I was pregnant. I was worried how it might go over. She’s had all of our attention, but she’s been over the moon about it. I might have cried, but that’s normal these days. She’s been helping me decorate the room, even painting a mural on one of the walls.

We watch as they come out on stage. Ace pulls out his phone and makes sure to catch every second. Seeing the way he is with Fate only makes me fall in love with him more. We all stand up and cheer at the end. The girls come running over to us. We all celebrate together and cheer with the town before it’s time to head home.

“We’ll be over in the morning,” Winter says, giving me a kiss on the cheek.

It’s my year to host Christmas. We switch off. If the drive wasn't so short from their house to ours, I’m sure they’d be staying over, but it’s only half a mile. It’s nice that we live so close. It makes the girls closer than cousins. They’re pretty much sisters. We all do everything together.

“She’s out. I’ll carry her in,” Ace says when we pull into the garage. “You go get ready for me.”

“We have Santa duty,” I whisper to remind him.

“Babe, I got it.”

“Right.” I lean over and kiss him. He is always three steps ahead.

“She’s out like a light,” Ace says when he enters the bedroom. “I can’t wait to see her in the morning.”

“Because you bought the whole store?” Not only that, the man drove six hours last weekend to get a dollhouse. It was the last one left. He’d been a man on a mission, only his missions are different these days.

“I got something for you too.” I laugh, already knowing what it is.

He scoops me up into his arms, carrying me into the bathroom. This is one of my favorite rooms in the house. I always joke that our tub is a mini pool. He sits me down on the counter.

I watch as my husband draws a bath for us, adding all the extras that I like in it before he starts to get undressed. He tugs at the tie of my robe so that it falls open.

“Fuck, you’re gorgeous.” His fingers trace down my side and over to my round stomach. I let the robe slip the rest of the way off. Ace picks me up and carries me over to the tub, stepping in and sitting down so that I’m straddling him. “How are you feeling? It was a long day.”

“It was, but I loved every second of it.”

“How’s my other girl doing?”

“She’s good.” I place my hand over his on my stomach. “I was thinking… Now that we know it’s a girl, I thought of a name.”

“What are you thinking?”

“Destiny.” His eyes fill with surprise. It’s his mother’s name. “It fits perfectly with Fate too.”

It is, after all, because of Destiny that all of us were brought together. A woman driving through a town with her two sons, telling them how much she loved it. That it would be the perfect place to live.

“This family is going to be overrun with girls,” he says with a giant smile on his face. I lean down and kiss it.

People think destiny is a matter of chance happening. It's not. It's a matter of choices you make in life. It's not to be waited for... it's to be claimed.

I hope you loved Libby and Ace’s story. Curious about Winter and Garrett? Read their story, Say It’s Forever , available now.

Thank you for continuing to read my stories. Warmest wishes for a joyous holiday season and a happy New Year.

Want more of Lucy Darling? Keep scrolling to get a sneak peak of the first book in my Untouchable Series, Born Into Sin , available now.

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