Page 107 of Oathbreaker

I just lean back against the opposite counter and soak in seeing the man I love creating a memory with our daughter.

He’s missed so much.

Yet, he’s here right now, creating this moment in time.

And Frankie, because of all the love and time her uncles have given her over the last four (and three-quarters) years, time and love I’m so damned thankful for because it made her the girl she is today—confident in that love, comfortable in her place in the world, knowing that she’s safe and protected and valued for who she is—soaks it all in.

And flourishes even more.

Because even though Colt missed so much, he’s here now.

He’s engaged.

He listens and puts the time in.

It also doesn’t hurt that he’s tall enough to reach the oven and strong enough to slide the cookie sheet with those overfull pies in.

I’ll have a mess to clean up later, that’s for sure.

But it’s a mess I’ll clean up with a smile?—

And with my daughter and my man scrubbing dishes beside me.

First, though, we’re going to have pie.

“Can we get this one, Mom?” Frankie asks, jumping up and down and pointing to a truly ginormous Christmas tree. “Can we?!”

“I’m not sure it will fit on top of the car, sweetie,” I say, eyeing the size of the trunk and mentally calculating how long it will take to hack through it with the dull bow saw the kid at the front handed us when we entered the tree lot.

Spoiler alert, it will take approximately one million years.

Hyperbole? Maybe.

A giant tree filled with a shit-ton of needles I want to sweep up over the next weeks (and months)? God, no.

“It’ll fit,” Colt says, immediately crouching down and eying the trunk.

“Well, I don’t think that you’ll want to saw through it,” I try. “That’ll take forever, right?” I ask, lifting my brows pointedly.

A point he misses because he turns to Frankie. “This the one you want, sweetheart?”

She nods.

He looks at me. “You approve, baby?”

“It’s a beautiful tree, honey,” I say, and it’s not a lie. My daughter picked out a truly gorgeous Douglas fir, even and straight, no holes. If it wasn’t gigantic, I’d be all over it. “But?—”

He lays down, shoving the branches out of the way.

“Colt.”

His eyes come to mine. “We don’t need?—”

“You like the tree. Frankie likes the tree.” He positions the saw. “My girls are getting what they want.”

Then he starts sawing.

And I find that I suddenly have to unzip my hoodie.