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A few more lines into the song, he stops when June makes a whimpering noise I’ve already become familiar with.

She’s hungry.

Ready to push through the door and help out, I once again stop myself when I hear the cap on a bottle pop and the whimpers die down.

“Shhh…we don’t want to wake Mommy, do we? You’re both going to be good when Daddy has to go away next week, yeah? Aunty Felicity and Aunty Luna will be here to help Mommy,but I know she’s got this. You both want to grow up to be like Mommy, and you both want to find someone who feels the same way for you as Daddy feels for Mommy. I know you both will.”

I consider leaving them in peace and heading back to bed. But I’m too desperate to see what I can only picture right now.

As I quietly open the bedroom door, I see it—my husband in his gray athletic shorts, sitting in the rocking chair, June and Will tucked under each arm, feeding from a bottle of my expressed milk.

This sight alone is enough to make me want to lay down and ask him to give me all of his babies from now until the end of time. But truly, it’s the look of awe in his eyes as he watches them both fall into a milk coma that has my legs almost giving out underneath me.

“Hey,” I whisper.

He looks up, startled to see me watching them.

“Hey, Princess.” He smiles sweetly, but I can tell he’s as exhausted as I am.

“You could’ve woken me. I don’t have work tomorrow, and you have early an morning skate in, like…baby, in like an hour.”

“I also didn’t give birth a couple of days ago, Princess. Go back to bed. I’ll bring June and Will back in when they’re settled. I think you might be able to get a couple more hours of sleep.”

I shake my head. “No. Can I get you anything? You need something to eat or a coffee, at least.”

“I’m good.”

“Jensen,” I scold.

He raises a brow. “JJ. I can look after it myself.”

Propping a hand on my hip, I offer him the same look. “You do know I’m just as stubborn as you and equally refuse to ask for help even when I need it, right?”

“Perfectly aware.”

“Right. So what coffee do you want?”

He laughs silently. “You’re going to be the death of me, you know that?”

“Oh, I know.”

Turning to head to the kitchen, he stops me before I leave. “Kate?”

I’m always surprised when he calls me by my name. “Yeah?”

He pinches his lips together and looks around the sage green nursery, at the light wooden furniture, and at Will and June’s names above their bassinets, something Jessie stopped by to gift us earlier today. He then looks back at me, a glossy sheen to his beautiful brown eyes.

“We have our whole lives ahead of us, everything to share and look forward to together and with our family. But I just want you to know, this moment right here, you standing in the doorway of our nursery, me holding our babies as they sleep. If I died tomorrow, I’d have lived a life filled with happiness many can only dream of. Thank you for letting me prove you wrong.”

EPILOGUE

JUNE

“What’s that look for?” I turn to Jensen, who’s unloading the trunk.

Days out with two four-month-olds are not for the faint of heart. I swear we packed more into this SUV than we did when I finally sold and packed up my apartment.

“Just thinking about you in a bikini and me rubbing sunscreen on you.”