Page 210 of Going Viral for Christmas
“Fair!” I agree. “So fair!”
A high, perfect, wailing cry shatters the air and stitches it back together with wonder.
A nurse lifts the tiniest little bundle I’ve ever seen. Wraps her in pink. Our tiny banshee’s screams are the sweetest sound I’ve ever heard.
Ava collapses back against the pillows. Glowing. Radiant. Tears sliding down her cheeks. She smiles. “She’s here.”
I kiss Ava’s forehead. “She’s perfect. You’re perfect.”
Ava gazes at me for a beat, sweat trailing down her temples. “I know.”
Laughing at our little Star Wars reference, I crush my lips to hers. “I love you.”
“I love you too.”
“I love you more.”
“I love you most.”
All the pain. The panic. The profanity.
Gone.
Just a mother. A father. A little girl who already owns our hearts. And a bear outside the door, playing lullabies.
Epilogue
AVA
If someone had told me a year ago that I’d be spending the following Halloween dressed as Morticia Addams whilebreastfeedinga one-month-old at my parents’ annual “Monster Bash and Margarita Crawl,” I would’ve laughed.
Or cried.
Actually, probably both.
“Okay, but hear me out.” Fisher holds up his phone, angling it for the millionth picture. “What if the baby hadfangs? Tiny ones. For aesthetics.”
Fisher is Lestat by way of a Paris runway. The man is wearing a bespoke velvet cape lined in crimson silk, tailored so sharply it could cut glass. His lace cravat is pinned with a brooch shaped like dripping blood, and his black boots sparkle with tiny Swarovski bats. Those fake bite marks on his neck? Diamond-studded.
I chuckle. “She’s only a few weeks old, Fisher.”
“She’s committed to the bit,” he argues, gently adjusting the bat-winged baby bonnet over my daughter’s ridiculously round head.
My daughter.Ourdaughter.
“Besides,” Fisher continues, “the vampire bat onesie was my gift. You’re welcome for her entire future TikTok following.”
“Her name is Aisling,” I remind him, “not Count Chompula.”
“Aisling Elara Pembry,” Soren adds from across the room, his voice smooth, intoxicating. “The dream and the spark.”
Devastating in a perfectly tailored pinstripe suit with a red carnation tucked into his lapel, Soren’s dressed as Gomez Addams, with his hair slicked back. The way he’s seductively holding a glass of blood-red wine is illegal. Just fucking illegal.
Stormy eyes find mine. Soren’s smirk deepens—private, knowing. It saysI love you, Bells,without saying a single word. Even dressed like a fictional gothic cartoon husband, he somehow makes my entire world feel real.
Because it very much is.
“She’s an angel,” my mom croons, snapping at least fifty blurry iPad photos from two inches away. “Look at her little mouth! Like a rosebud! A milk-slicked, dribbly rosebud!”
