Page 103 of The Path To Us

Epilogue

Beau

Five Years Later

“Oooh. Pop is gonna be mad at you, Dad.”

“No, he won’t.”

Zoey looks skeptical and rightfully so. Richard will probably not be very happy with me, but I don’t care. He’ll only stay mad for a minute or two then he’ll get over it. After all, we did this for him. Because we love him. I just hope he sees it that way.

Though, it might go over better if Addy tells him by herself. He definitely has a softer spot for her than he does for me. I’m a close… fifth. Maybe sixth some days.

Shit.

Zoey’s right.

He’s gonna be mad.

“Daddy, up,” our two-year-old daughter Drydon says from her place by my feet. I bend over and pick her up, placing her on my hip with one arm under her butt. She smacks a kiss to my cheek and I smile, turning to return the favor.

I look down at Zoey when she clears her throat. With a hand on her hip, one leg out in front of her, she looks like she’s about to read me the riot act. I try not to smile, knowing that only makes her mad. She has a thing about being taken seriously.

“So what are you gonna do about it?”

“What do you think I should do about it?”

“I asked you. It was your idea in the first place.”

“It was a good idea!”

She shakes her head and throws her arms up in the air, clearly done with me. “Not without consulting me first!”

I bark out a laugh. Consulting. How is she only ten?

“Daddy! This is serious!” She stomps her foot and then adds her other fist to her waist.

It might be, but she’s adorable when she’s in a huff. And when she calls me Daddy or Dad, it doesn’t matter how many times I hear it, I still get a little weak in the knees. It was on the one year anniversary of when I made Addy my wife that she gave me that gift. I didn’t adopt Zoey because while she’s my daughter, she’s also Chris’s daughter. I’ve just been given the gift of being the one to raise her. I’d never take that away from him and neither Addy nor I pushed for Zoey to start calling me anything other than Uncle Beau.

When she said, “Happy Versary, Mommy and Daddy!” we stopped breathing for a few seconds. Even Zoey. And when she followed it up by apologizing before saying “Is that okay?” in a soft voice, there was no way I was going to deny her — or me — of calling me Daddy.

We weren’t sure if it was because her baby brother Cruz was with us and we’d been saying mommy and daddy a lot or if it was already settled there in her heart. Neither of us questioned it. Zoey’s a smart kid and we figured she knew what she was doing.

Cruz’s name comes from a combination of two of the most important people in our lives who we’ve lost. Chris and Suzie.

By the time our first Thanksgiving came around, my ring was on Addy’s finger.

By our first Christmas she and Zoey were living with me.

By our first Valentine’s Day, my baby, Cruz, was growing in her stomach and in May, I gave her my last name.

Things moved fast for us.

Thank goodness.

I hitch Drydon up on my hip. “I’ll talk to him like the rational men we are and he’ll understand.”

Zoey shakes her head, so sure of herself. I pray that I get to prove her wrong. “Nuh uh. He’ll be mad you didn’t ask him first.”

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