Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 88041 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 440(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88041 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 440(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
The dancing goes on till the wee hours of the night. Now here we are in the car, making our way to the house in the woods. She sleeps most of the way there, curled on the seat as my hand reaches across the console.
Once we finally get there and unload ther car, we sit on the dock, watching the water stream down.
“It’s so peaceful,” she says from her Adirondack chair. She looks over at me. “It’s perfect.” She gets up, coming to my chair, and sitting on top of my lap.
I wrap my arms around her, kissing the top of her head, and she buries her head in my neck and we watch the sun set.
Epilogue Two
Allison
Five Years later
“I don’t wanna go to Gramma and Granpa, I wanna stay and fish,” my three-year-old blue-eyed monster Michael tells me.
I smile at him and lean in, kissing him. “But they are excited to see you,” I tell him, as he crosses his little arms across his chest and pouts. Yup, just like his father.
Michael sits in his car seat as I wait for his father to come to the car.
“Max,” I yell, “let’s go, please.”
I look up at the house and see my husband coming down the steps with my baby girl Alexandria in his arms, her tiny pigtails slanted on one side, her gummy smile looking up at her father. She has him wrapped around her tiny little finger and she’s only ten months.
“Dada, Dada, Dada,” it’s also the only thing she says. Even though I carried and breast fed, he’s the star of her show.
“Let’s go, my little princess,” he says as he opens the door and puts her in her seat, bending down to blow bubbles into her neck as she giggles. He closes the car door, wrapping his arms around my waist, bringing his lips down to mine, and then slowly trails kisses to my cheek and then down to my neck. He groans as I push him away from me.
“No,” I say, smiling. “That’s what you get when you bring your daughter in the bed with us, blue balls.” I open my door, getting in, and watch him walk around, opening his door and getting in.
“She was crying,” he says as he turns the car on and starts driving while he looks into his rearview mirror, smiling at his son, who looks exactly like him. He sees Alex from the mirror he has placed in front of her as she tries to eat her toes.
“She was playing you. That wasn’t a cry, it was a whimper,” I tell him as he looks over.
“She’s teething, you said so yourself,” he says as I look out at the window, leaving our summer home behind as we gear up for the next year. After we got married, Doug presented him with another five-year contract. It’s Max’s last year, or so he says. Somehow I don’t believe him, but I will support him for however long he wants to do it.
The same time he gave Max his contracted he offered me the same one. It was a no-brainer for me until I got pregnant and had Michael. Max and I both decided that it would be too hectic for the baby with all the traveling and I didn’t want to leave him anyways. So I was now a stay at home mom, and I love every single second of it.
Training my replacement however was more fun than I care to admit, Olivier came highly recommended and let me tell you he was over the top.
We make it home a little after seven, having to stop more times than we would like with the kids. I get out, stretching my legs. I look at our home that we bought in Long Island. Gone is the loft. Well, not gone. Denise lives there now, but with the kids, we wanted—or Max wanted—a huge yard, so they can run and play, so we settled on a six-bedroom house. I shake my head as I open the door to get my baby girl out, who smiles at me as she reaches out her arms to me.
“Hi, princess,” I say as I put her on my hip.
She is content till she sees her father walk around the car and lunges for him. He catches her and throws her hands in the air.
“There’s my girls.” He tosses her in the air, catching her as she laughs.
We don’t make it far before Mom and Dad get here and honk the horn. “Gammy, Gampy,” Michael says as he runs to them, Cooper squatting down as he grabs him and tosses him up.
“You got so big,” my mother says as she gets to Cooper’s side and he puts Michael sideways so my mother can plant him with kisses.
“No more,” Michael begs as they walk to us and my mother sees Alex.