Page 105 of Never Really Over

“Won’t take much,” I murmur. “I love you, too.”

The next day, the very next day, bright and early at seven in the morning, I move my things into Colt and Poppy’s house. I’m pretty sure my smile is permanent now.

Epilogue

Colt - Five Years Later

PrayedFor You

“Tootsie Pop, we gotta go.”

“Just a minute, Daddy,” she grumbles.

Layla raises her eyebrows and stifles a grin when I murmur, “Is she six or sixteen?” I tip my head back and look to the ceiling. “I blame you for this.”

“Natalie was never sassy,” Layla argues, still trying not to laugh.

I cut my eyes to Layla and glare. “Like hell she wasn’t. She wasalwayssassy.”

She shakes her head at my grumpiness and goes to Poppy’s room to check on her.

When she comes back to the kitchen, she has a worried expression on her face that doesn’t bode well for what we’re about to do.

“I don’t think she’s feeling too confident of herself this morning. She’s very nervous.”

I glance toward Poppy’s room and back to Layla. “Last night she was excited.”

“Apparently she had a dream that no one would be her friend. Kindergarten is a big deal.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. She needs you,” she says quietly. “I’ll get the littles ready so we can get her to school on time.”

I hand over our two-year-old son, Chase, just as our almost-five-year-old daughter Natalia comes running into the kitchen.

Her wide blue eyes tell me she was just in Poppy’s room.

“Poppy’s room is amess,” she tattles.

“Yeah, I know. She’s a little worried about starting school today.”

She pushes her shoulders back and stands up straight. “Iwouldn’t be worried. You should let me go instead of her.”

I bark out a laugh. “That’s tempting, but not really an option.”

She harrumphs and scowls. “I don’t see why not.”

Layla’s mouth twitches.

Natalia will be starting preschool in a week, and I almost feel like we should apologize to her teachers now. She’s a force to be reckoned with, and is eager to start school herself. She’s full of piss and vinegar, already spunky enough that we know her teenage years are going to be a real joy. She was born eight months after Layla moved in with Poppy and me. We weren’t planning it, but as it would happen, Natalia was born on the exact day Natalie and Mason died.

When we learned her due date, we knew it was a possibility. We didn’t find out the sex of the baby until she was born, but we were sure it was a girl. Layla was just starting to show in our wedding pictures. I proposed to her a week after she moved in, not being able to wait any longer. Two weeks after that, we found out she was pregnant. And two months after we found out she was having my baby, Stan walked her down the aisle to me waiting for her. And yeah, against our better judgment, Dalton was her man-of-honor. I’m pretty sure I saw him wipe away a tear that slid down his cheek when we asked him, but he swore it was allergies.

We’d said we were going to go slow, make sure we went through the steps. We’d also been fooling ourselves to believe it would work. It didn’t take long for us to realize that the steps weren’t necessary, we were against a race in time to catch up on all the time we’d lost. After Poppy would go to sleep for the night, we’d spend hours holding each other and talking. We shared about our past relationships and even though I had to tamp down my jealousy at hearing about all of them, especially Jasper, we knew it was necessary. Our future wouldn’t work if we didn’t have complete transparency so we did the hard thing. We talked it out and promised that it was something we wouldn’t hold against each other or bring up again.

Layla’s pregnancy with Natalia triggered something in both of us. We’d made it. Come full circle. All that time apart was no longer an issue between us because it didn’t matter. We were living in the present and excited about what the future held for us.

Shortly after Natalia was born, we changed Poppy’s last name from Chase to Samuelson, keeping Chase as a second middle name, and Poppy started calling Layla Mommy. We didn’t push it, but it came natural since we were using Mommy and Daddy a lot around Natalia. It wasn’t an easy decision for us, to change her name, because I didn’t want to tarnish the memory of Natalie and Mason. But I wasn’t just her guardian, I was her dad, and it was time to make it official.

---