Page 50 of Twin Babies for the Silver Fox (Happy Ever Alpha Daddies #3)

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Josie

The second we step through the front door, I drop the diaper bag and freeze.

“Did we leave the stove on?” I ask, sniffing the air.

Knox, who’s got Sage in one arm and Beau’s car seat hooked through the other, sniffs too. “No. That’s just stale coffee. Maybe socks.”

“Definitely socks,” I say, kicking off my shoes and narrowly missing a dust bunny the size of a grapefruit. “I forgot we used to live here.”

“Right?” he murmurs, gaze sweeping the living room like it’s a foreign country. “Wasn’t this place clean once?”

“Before we had people literally removed from my uterus? Yeah.”

Beau starts squawking.

I dart over and unclip him, panic already rising in my throat. “Okay, okay, okay. We’re home now, little guy. Everything’s fine.”

Sage opens her mouth, sees her brother crying, and apparently decides that’s the vibe, because she joins in. Now we’ve got stereo baby meltdown.

Knox raises his voice over the siren song. “Where do we put them? Do we have... like... a baby zone?”

“The nursery?”

“Yeah, let me just?—”

“Ah, Knox, give me a burp cloth!”

He fumbles one off his shoulder, which falls directly onto Sage’s head, which makes her wail harder.

“I’m gonna die,” I say calmly, rocking Beau against my chest while trying to toe open the pack-n-play with one foot. “I’m going to die and the headline will read New Mom Found Buried Beneath Disposable Diapers and Regret .”

“Breathe, sunshine,” Knox says, voice tense but sweet, “we’ve got this.”

We do not "got this."

We get the babies onto the floor on a blanket after realizing the pack-n-play is still folded and zip-tied shut, because we’re geniuses.

Sage flails sideways, smacking Beau with a surprisingly accurate fist, then somehow ends up with his sock clenched in her tiny hand and mashed against her cheek. Beau lets out a war cry.

“Is this normal?” I ask, half laughing, half crying. “Are they supposed to fight this early?”

“They’re bonding,” Knox says with false confidence as he wrangles them apart. “Or maybe she’s already sick of him hogging the spotlight.”

I stumble into the kitchen in search of a bottle and nearly cry again when I see we forgot to wash the parts.

The breast pump is still sitting on the counter like a tiny robot of doom.

There are half-eaten takeout boxes on the table.

A single mitten in the sink. Someone’s swaddle blanket wrapped around the Tuck’s leg.

I hold up the bottle parts like I’ve discovered ancient ruins. “Do you remember how to sanitize these?”

“Is licking them clean not an option?” Knox shouts from the living room.

Beau screams in reply.

I turn on the water, muttering, “I should’ve just stayed at the hospital. They had pudding cups and a nurse named Cheryl who swaddled like a Jedi.”

Knox appears at my side with a burp cloth slung over his shoulder, his shirt inside out, and what I think is baby spit up in his beard. “Hey. Look at me.”

I do.

His eyes are bloodshot. His smile is crooked. And he’s never looked more like home.

“We’re doing this,” he says quietly. “Messy, loud, upside down. But we’re doing it. You, me, Beau, and Sage. We’re a team.”

A scream erupts from the living room.

“A dysfunctional team!” I yell, tossing the clean bottle back into the pot and sprinting toward the blanket.

Beau is red-faced and furious, flailing like a tiny, disgruntled octopus. His diaper has exploded sideways… How? Why? Physics maybe. And there’s a damp patch blooming on the blanket.

“Containment breach!” Knox shouts, already reaching for wipes. “We’ve got a blowout!”

Knox rushes in with a towel, slips on a sock, and nearly faceplants into the floor.

I can’t help it. I burst out laughing.

Ugly, wheezy, can’t-stop-laughter. It’s either that or cry, and honestly, the crying quota is filled for the day.

He’s on his back now, towel over his face, shaking with laughter, too.

Sage coos. Beau hiccups.

And for just one second, the chaos softens.

Later, after baths and bottles and burps, we collapse on the couch, babies curled up like sleepy caterpillars between us.

The house is quiet. The air smells like lavender lotion and leftover curry. My eyelids are drooping.

Knox reaches over and brushes his fingers along my jaw. “Hey.”

“Hmm?”

“I love you.”

I blink at him, slow and drowsy. “Still?”

He grins. “Even more.”

I reach across our snoring children and lace my fingers with his. “Me too.”

We lie there like that, tangled and tired and covered in spit up, and I think…

This is it.

This is the dream.

Even if it smells like formula and feet.