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Epilogue - 21 Years Later

We’re having a party, and I’m so hard for her that my balls ache. As usual.

That’s been the one constant in our lives, aside from our never-ending love for one another. Through all the kids growing up—Caroline and Mackenna, who are 21 now, and David, who’s 18 and off to basic training tomorrow—through all the holidays and the houses and the money andlife,there’s not been a single fucking moment when I haven’t looked at Kat and gotten hard for her.

Every single time.

Including now.

I squeeze her hand. On our fingers are matching wedding rings that we’ve worn every moment from the day we said our “I do’s”, but that’s not our only anniversary.Hell no. The other anniversary we celebrate is the day we first met—all the way back at the beginning, damn near 35 years ago now.

Because that was when it all started. That was when I knew I was bound to her, for life.

She’s standing at the drinks table talking to some of our neighbors. Just before the twins were born, we moved up to Montana, to a big house with a view of the Beartooths. We started a new life here and we’ve been fucking happy. As happy as two people could ever hope to be.

Everybody here, they think we’re a couple, a normal couple. We share the same last name, and why shouldn’t we? Nobody knows our secret, except Edward and Luke, who will take it to their graves.

We have like eight fucking dogs, ten horses and donkeys, damn chickens that are a pain in my ass and last year, Kat added some recused alpacas to our collection. They fucking hate me and I can’t tell her, the feeling is mutual.

But, I smile and scrub the green scum out of their water buckets, fix the damn fence they knock down once a week and tell my wife I loveallthe animals. Happy wife, happy life. It’s my mantra.

Kat started a pro-bono sort of tax service for small businesses after our first was born. It was just a simple thing for her to do that made her feel like she was contributing even though that was wildly unnecessary. But, it evolved into this small business training school. All free, customized to every state where it walks you though how to set up your business, do the forms, provide the forms all the way to finding funding for expansions and she even has a plug from the Shark Tank show.

It's run by about a thousand people now and she’s really just the face and the compass for it all but I’m proud as fuck of my baby girl. Always have been.

We still make time for just us. I still love brushing her hair. I’vepainted her fingers and toes so many times I could probably get a license to own my own mani-pedi shop but touching another woman in any intimate way has never occurred to me and never will.

I have so many sketchbooks full of my drawings of her and the kids they fill an entire bookshelf in our library. Caroline’s picked up the artist gene and went to this fancy fucking art school in New York and her paintings are selling out as soon as she can finish them.

Kat and I have no secrets anymore except for one. Back when I emptied the storage unit of everything from the old house, I found the paperwork from the investment advisor that bankrupted my parents.

Didn’t take long with my contacts to find the motherfucker living in a sweet set up downtown thinking he was king shit.

After a little Q & A session in an abandoned building with him tied to a metal chair and maybe, just maybe an auto battery hooked up to some very sensitive body parts, he drooled and babbled out all the people he’d fucked over the years. Hundreds. Hundreds.

He didn’t fuck anyone over again. Ever. It was my last kill but I’d kill again if anyone ever threatened what’s mine.

I squeeze her hand and she gives me a glance. An open, willing, submissive little glance that makes my balls ache. Such a good fucking girl.

But she’s in the middle of something—being the hostess with the mostest. Making sure our Justin gets a good send-off before basic. She blinks a few times at me. “Trent.”

I lift one eyebrow and lean in. “Pantry. Now. Don’t you pretend you aren’t soaked for Daddy already...”

She knows she can’t sass me. Never would anyway. Because she’s the best good girl in the world.

I grab her hand and haul her away, kissing her ear as I do.

Leading her into the big pantry, I shut the door behind us.And lock it. Because this isn’t the first time I’ve taken her with a house full of people. And it won’t be the last.

I push her up against the shelf with all the flour and sugar and lift up her skirt. She’s curvier now than she used to be. Every year a little more. Every year even fucking better.

“There are so many people here,” she says halfway through a laugh. “Animal.”

I kiss her neck, greedy and hungry. “I don’t give a fuck. If you don’t want me going fucking crazy, then you shouldn’t wear this dress.”

She laughs that sultry sweet laugh, that girlish giggle, and paws for my belt. The same belt I had her bite down on all those years ago. And have a hundred times since.

But this time, this fucking time, I don’t let her. Because this is for her alone.