Page 124 of Dissonance

She considers this, tilting her head. “Is it boring?”

“Hopefully not,” he says, and Paige makes a sound behind him. “But your Uncle Beau and Uncle Eli will play with you.”

“They’re too busy with Aunt Olive,” Callie whines, lower lip reemerging.

“Tell them Uncle Maddox says they’re out of the band if they don’t play with you.”

“Fine,” she huffs as he squeezes her shoulders and stands, hand immediately back in Paige’s, steering her toward the side gate.

“What was all that about?” Thea asks, sidling up beside me.

I wrap my arm around her waist. “Don’t ask.”

She leans into me, and I look down at her, hair loose over one shoulder, the California sun catching the simple band on her left hand, before looking back out. At the garden, at our friends and family here celebrating our wee girl’s birthday. The only one missing is Tyler, who’d sent an obscene number of gifts and a voice note from a tour bus somewhere in Europe, loud and happy in the way he’s grown into being. Thea had listened to it twice, pride shining from her eyes, and there was absolutely no Zane to be heard of.

Callie comes careening across the grass, green stains now littering the hem of her dress as she crashes into my legs, arms wrapping around them, face tipped up.

“Daddy, cake.”

“Five minutes.”

“Now,” she says with the absolute certainty of a little girl who has her parents wrapped around her finger. Then she catches the look Thea gives her, expression turning sheepish as she adds, “Please.”

I look down at her—dark eyes, Thea’s determination shining from them, the hard set of her jaw that’s one hundred percent her own—and know there will never be a time I don’t give my daughter, or my wife, anything they want.

“Okay, baby. Let’s go.”

She grins, gap-toothed and brilliant, taking off like a shot. I watch her tear back toward Ziggy, giggling as the pair disappears inside.

Thea’s hand finds mine, fingers threading through, and I hold on.

She looks up at me with the same look she had when she first told me she loved me in the cabin, in the quiet, the first time the armor was fully off all those years ago.

“What?”

She smiles, squeezing my hand. “Mo Chridhe.”

THE END