“What? Show me! I can’t move!” I said.
Travis pulled out two tiny pairs of gray linen baby shoes, pinched between all four fingers.
I covered my mouth again. “Two?” I shrieked. “Twins!”
“Holy shit, brother,” Shepley said, patting Travis’s back. “Way to go.”
Travis choked, overwhelmed with emotions. Once words came to him, he guided Abby to his recliner. “Sit, baby. Rest. This house looks amazing. You’ve worked hard.” He knelt in front of her. “Are you hungry? I can cook you something. Anything. Name it.”
Abby laughed.
“You’re making me look bad, Trav,” Shepley teased.
“Like you haven’t made a huge fuss over me this entire time,” I said.
Shepley sat next to me, hugging me to his side and kissing my temple.
“Grandbaby number five … and six,” I said, beaming.
“I can’t wait to tell Dad,” Travis said. His bottom lip quivered, and he pressed his forehead against her belly.
“This ragtag family has done okay,” Shepley said, touching my belly.
“We’ve done fucking amazing,” Travis said.
Shepley stood, disappeared into the kitchen, and then returned with two open beer bottles and two bottles of water. He handed a beer to Travis and then the waters to Abby and me. We held up our drinks.
“To the next generation of Maddoxes,” Shepley said.
Travis’s dimple sank in when he smiled. “May their lives be as beautiful as the women who carried them.”
I lifted my water. “You’ve always been good at toasts, Trav.”
We all took a sip, and then I watched as Travis, Shepley, and Abby laughed and chatted about how amazing life had become, our impending parentage, and what life would be like from now on.
Travis couldn’t stop smiling, and Abby seemed to be falling in love with him all over again while watching him fall in love with the idea of being a father.
For people who had struggled for every step forward, we didn’t have one regret, and we wouldn’t change a thing. Every wrong turn had led us to this moment, proving that every choice we’d made was right. We had cried and hurt and bled our way to happiness, the kind that couldn’t be stopped by fire or wind.
However it had happened and whatever it was, we were something beautiful.
THE END.
Something Beautiful is my seventeenth published work. Just six years ago, I sat down to write Providence, and life is so different in the most wonderful way. The overwhelming support and loyalty of my readers have played a major part in allowing me to write seventeen novels and novellas in six years, and for that, you have my sincere thanks.
Thank you to my dear friend Deanna Pyles, who helped me mold Something Beautiful from page one. You’ll never know how much I appreciate your excitement and enthusiasm.
A special thank you to Sarah Hansen, Murphy Hopkins, Elaine Hudson York, and Kelli Spear for helping me package the Something Beautiful ARC in time for Vegas. I was certain my last-minute idea was going to fall apart, but you dropped what you were doing and worked late hours under tremendous pressure to make it happen. You made one hundred readers very happy. Thank you is not enough!
As always, thank you to my husband and children for your endless patience and support. It’s not as easy as it sounds to have a wife and mom who works at home, but you have to pretend she’s not there. We’ve perfected our process, and I love you more than words can say for rolling with my strange schedule. I couldn’t do this without you guys. I wouldn’t want to.