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My chest swells with pride as my phone vibrates with a text from June.Unhingedanda mom. Welcome to the dark side.I smile to myself; of course she already knows.

“You know,” I say to Wren, putting the key in the ignition and looking at her sideways. “I expect to be called Mommy.”

At this, Wren laughs, and violins scream in the speakers as we take off down the highway.

I wave at Ford across the gym, wide smile on his face. Next to him, Blue lifts a gloved hand my way.

I grin; twins born twenty years apart.

After the deal with the Sellecks went through, Ford, after twenty years of trying to save people the way neither of us could save my brother, retired from the police department. We are now the proud owners of Fight Club . . . where Blue is a member with the family discount.

“How’d it go?” Ford asks, pinching off his gloves as he approaches me, knowing look on his face.

I raise my eyebrows. “How do you think it went when your daughter announced she wanted me to adopt her in the middle of a prison visit?”

“She wanted to surprise you,” he says, working his teeth over his bottom lip.Sexy bastard.“You going to?”

“Eh.” I shrug. “The dad might be a deal-breaker.”

He chuckles, smacking me on the ass as we head next door. Where we opened . . . a birding store.

Ford made the case for it being a necessity for anyone who goes through an intense round of sparring to also need a new bird feeder and bag of seed. I laughed when he said it—thought it was the most ridiculous thing I’d ever heard of—but it didn’t take long for the idea to grow wings inside of me and soar. Because he loved it so much. Because I wanted to be wherever he was with that smile on his face. And because ultimately, the birds were kind of growing on me.

We named the bird store Pecker Heads.

Believe it or not, that was all me.

At the end of the aisles of bird feeders, bird baths, birdseed, and more books about birds than I ever care to read, Glory stands behind the counter wearing a T-shirt covered in woodpeckers, slight scowl on her lips.

Along with seeing her and Lydia for regular Sunday dinners, she’s here a few days a week when she works in the store. She’s almost bearable.

“About time you showed up,” she barks, untying her apron. “I can’t be on my feet so long, Scotty Ann.” She doesn’t bother asking me how it went before marching outside to light a Lucky.Some things never change.

I chuckle, leaning a hip behind the register, Ford mirroring my movement and running his fingers through my hair, blue eyes smiling bright.

“You know,” he says, lowering his hands to mine and bringing my thumb to his lips. “Probably wouldn’t be too good for Wren to grow up in a home with an unwed mother.”

I fight a smile.

“Who am I to stand in the way of what’s best for the youth of the nation?”

“Yeah?” he asks, coy. Like he hasn’t known I was theirs all along.

I lean into him, angling my head so our eyes meet. “I’m not getting rid of you. What do I care if you want to be legally obligated to be my on-demand sure thing?”

He booms a laugh, vibrating all of me as his arms wrap around my waist and he presses his lips to mine.

It turns out, I’m not as doomed as I once thought. My grandpa Archie was right, there are a lot more things in this world than bodies to set on fire. Even though my brother is still gone. Even though my life had a starting point I wouldn’t wish on anyone except Jessicunt.

Wanda was on to something when she told me about her choice of living in the now to forever. In my now, I choose this. Ford. Wren. June. Hell, maybe even Glory. Over and over again.

“A man and a viper,” he says against my mouth. “Isn’t there a book about that?”

I smile—wide. There most definitely is.