Page 154 of Where You Belong
“He’s such a ladies’ man,” Harper says, shaking her head. Then her eyes go round when she sees Jules making her salad. “Oh my God, you’re my favorite sister-in-law.”
“I heard that,” Billie says as she swings through, then kisses Michaela’s cheek.
Iloveseeing my siblings with my kids. I love being withtheirkids.
Billie has three of them already. It took her a while to get pregnant that first time, and then it seemed she was pregnant every time Connor just looked at her sideways. With Bridger’s two, Beckett’s daughter, who never stops dancing, and Blake’s one with one on the way, we’re a full house.
My parents are thrilled with ten grandkids.
Ten grandkids.
I shake my head and then grin and open my arms when Birdie walks into the house and straight to me.
She’s still my special girl, even if she is twelve.
“Uncle Brooks?” she whispers, pulling me away from everyone else.
“Yes, peanut?”
“I have a boyfriend.”
“I. Will. Kill. Him.”
She dissolves into laughter, making me glare at her and cross my arms over my chest. This is an ongoing joke we have running, but someday, she won’t be joking.
And then, I really will likely go to jail for homicide.
The kids filter outside to play on the structure my brothers and I built last year, and as I stand on the patio watching them, Jules joins me and slides her hand into mine.
“This was the dream,” she says and laughs at Beckett and Skyla’s daughter, Ashling, doing pirouettes across the grass as Belle turns cartwheels. “This is what we wanted all along.”
I glance around at all of the kids running around. At Birdie sitting at the table, her nose in her phone, and then my siblings with their spouses, and my parents, each with a baby on their hip. They’re smiling so big, it makes my chest catch.
And then I gaze down into my wife’s gorgeous blue eyes. My soulmate. The one who fits me in every way, and I bend over to kiss the top of her head.
“We did this together,” I murmur so only she can hear. “You and me, Wildfire. It was worth waiting for.”
“You know, I’ve been thinking.”
I lift an eyebrow as she smiles up at me with fire in her eyes. “What’s going on in that gorgeous head of yours?”
“Maybe we should give the kids a baby brother or sister.”
Blinking rapidly, I feel the blood leech out of my face.
“Baby, are you?—”
“Yeah. Is that okay? Are we too old? Shit, we’re gonna be tired forever.”
“It’s more than okay.” I pull her against me and tip her chin up so I can nibble her lips. “We’re notthatold, and we may be tired, but we’re damn happy.”
“The happiest.” She puckers, waiting for me to kiss her again. “Let’s go tell the others.”
