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Epilogue

“Our second daughter!” my mom said after she’d hugged me. Echo and I had come to pick them up from the airport, and Echo had looked like a deer in the headlights, but she put her arms around my mom anyway.

Dad was more subdued, but he hugged Echo as well.

“I told you not to do that,” I said in my mom’s ear. “You promised.”

Mom waved me off and Echo showed off her athletic prowess by loading the bags into the trunk of my car.

“Are you okay?” I asked as my parents got in the backseat.

“Yeah, it’s fine,” she said. “I’m really good, I promise.”

“Just used the safe word if you need to bail.” That made her laugh.

We were still together and my parents had come up, partially to help Echo move all her shit into my house. She’d given up the lease on her apartment, and we were moving in together. I’d gotten rid of some of my “old lady shit” as she called it, and so she was moving some of her sleek and fancy pieces to my cottage. Our styles were completely different, but Katie was going to help us merge them somehow. Murphy had already moved in, and he got along with his kitty siblings really well.

School was starting soon, and Echo was going to have a longer commute, but she swore she didn’t mind. She’d made a lot of sacrifices for me, so I was trying my best to give her space in our home.

Meshing of two lives was bound to cause some bumps in the road, but we were committed. She was still going to coach the Bulldogs and I was still going to coach the Tigers. People would talk, there would be rumors, but we didn’t care. We were gross and in love and all that other crap didn’t matter.

“So now that you’re living together, that means it’s not long until we’ll be having a wedding and then some grandbabies? I’m not getting any younger.” I locked eyes with my mother in the backseat. She had a terrifying gleam in her eyes.

“Mom! Seriously. Too soon.” I looked at Echo, but she was trying to hide a smile.

“I’m just saying,” Mom said, getting huffy.

“Not the time, Mom. Can you just cool it?”

She stared out the window. “Fine, fine.”

Five minutes passed.

“But can you maybe give me a timeline?” she asked.

“Mom!”