“A lot longer than I realized it’d be,” he muttered. “I find that I miss the hell out of Nathan while I’m there.”

I smiled.

That tended to happen when you had children.

I’d witnessed it with all of the SWAT team, as of late.

They all wanted to get home to their kids and wives.

The parties had gone from all nighters to ‘we need to leave by eight p.m. to get the kids in bed’ kind of parties.

Although, it was nice to see all these reformed bad-boys turned family men.

That’s the way it was supposed to be.

“How do you like the new mayor of Uncertain?” I asked. “Michael said they got a Sheriff and Mayor in the same day. He said it’s been kind of crazy.”

Wolf nodded. “It’s been a clusterfuck. It’s going to take some doing to get things settled.”

I wasn’t surprised.

Texas was a true Republican state, and to have two Democrat officials in high positions in the city was really getting on a lot of the city’s nerves. I was still surprised that it’d happened in the first place.

“Cup?” Nathan asked, tapping my face.

I looked to him and smiled. “I don’t have your cup, big guy.”

Nathan frowned, and my eyes were drawn to the barely noticeable scar on his forehead.

He’d had plastic surgery done on his head about eight weeks into his hospital stay. Then four more reconstructions after that.

And they’d done a wonderful job. Such a wonderful job, in fact, that you could only see that something had happened when he frowned or cried.

Wolf got up, drawing my attention to him.

He really was a big man.

Today he was in his leather jacket that I never saw him without.

He had some extensive damage to the back of his head and neck, which made him grow his hair longer than I’d ever seen on any police officer before.

He wore the leather jacket to cover up the scarring on his back and neck.

Another thing I’d heard from Michael.

I’d never seen it myself, but it broke my heart that he wore it.

“I gotta go,” he rumbled. “I just wanted to come see y’all and make sure you were okay.”

So he’d heard.

“Don’t do anything, Wolf,” I reprimanded him.

His eyes looked up to mine, and I could see the determination here.

“We’ll see.” He placed Carolina into my arms and reached for Nathan. “I can’t promise anything, though.”

I looked into the sweet face of my little girl once he left the room, and came to a decision.

I’d do everything in my power to help make that man happy. Even if I had to throw one of my sisters at him.

They were tenacious.

“You and me will get him there, little girl,” I said, running my finger down the bridge of her nose.

She stirred, and my heart filled with just a little bit more joy.

I was so happy I could scream.

I had the man I loved with all my heart.

A baby with that man.

And a life that I loved.

And in a few months, when Carolina’s surgery was behind her, I would be complete.

I couldn’t ask for a thing more.

Epilogue

I missed you. Let’s have sex. A lot.

-Michael’s secret thoughts.

Michael

“You left the toilet seat up again,” Nikki grumbled from her bent over position.

She was loading the dishwasher and I winced. I was supposed to do that last night. She’d asked a million times, and I just plain forgot.

Fuck.

“And you forgot to take out the trash again,” she continued.

I sighed.

The woman was a freakin’ mess.

I didn’t complain about her inability to put things away.

Like the pitcher of tea. I hated drinking hot tea. And I didn’t like the way ice watered it down.

Yet did she make more of an effort to put it away?

No.

So I drank my tea with ice now because it was inevitable that she’d forget to put it away.

And don’t even get me started on her makeup, hair products, curling irons, and God knows what else.

The first thing on our remodeling agenda, if it ever came to it, was a duel sink for him and her, because I couldn’t tell you how many times I’d wished I didn’t have to put away shit on the counter to shave my face or brush my teeth.

I didn’t tell her any of that, though.

We’d learned, over the last four years, how to pick our battles.

“I can’t fix the plumbing because you bought a male end, and I need a female end.” I said.

“What do you mean? What’s the difference?” Nikki asked, turning to study me.

I was a fucking mess.

I’d been under the house, fixing the plumbing that’d decided to fucking combust last night.

And she’d been bothering the fuck out of me for the entire morning to fix it so she could have running water for the party we were throwing for Madden.

Madden hadn’t had an easy life.

He’d had a lot of struggles, but in those struggles, he’d come out on top.

After Madden’s children had been released from the hospital, the three of them had gone to a foster home with Dean and Joslin, of all people.

After the whole asking for sperm from his brother debacle, Joslin finally gave up on ever having a baby with Dean. She actually gave up a lot of things, in fact.

Mainly other men’s dicks.

And with that new attitude on life, Joslin turned into a half decent person.

Joslin and Dean had helped raise not only Madden’s two children, Sophia and Tawny, but also Madden himself.

They’d given Madden the opportunity to just be a kid while helping him raise his children.

And as of this afternoon, he was officially a high school graduate.

“Michael, are you even listening to me?” Nikki yelled.

My brow rose. “Yes, I’m listening to you. But you’re not saying anything that I haven’t already explained to you. Five times, in fact.”

She narrowed her eyes at me.

“Well then, maybe you should enlighten me…one more time.”

I grinned at her.

“You need an anatomy lesson?” I clarified.

She narrowed her eyes at me.

“No. I need you to explain to me how plumbing parts have male and female ends.”

I charged forward and pinned her to the counter, my sweaty body plastering up against hers.

Nikki had put on a little bit of weight over the last four years, but not one bit of that weight did I not love.

In fact, I was fucking ecstatic to have a little more of her to hold onto while I fucked her.

Something I was about to prove during the anatomy lesson I was about to give to her.

“A female end,” I said, pressing my hands against her. “Is wider. It allows the male end to fit inside of it.”

I punctuated this comment by pressing my erection into her hip.

She gasped and her eyes widened.

“You…you didn’t say that when I left,” she stuttered.

I leaned past her and turned the water on, picking up the bottle of soap and washing my hands behind her back.

She licked her lips, and I knew she knew what I was about to do.

“The kids are about to wake up,” she hesitated when I slapped the faucet down to stop the flow of water once I’d was finished.

I grinned.

Then my hands went to her sides, and I ran my hands up and under her shirt, pushing it up and over her head in one fluid movement.

Her hair fell from the haphazard bun she’d placed on top of her head, with a pencil of all things, and tumbled down her back and over her shoulders.

Just the way I liked it.

I didn’t bother removing the bra.

That’d take too long.

I knew the kids were about to wake up.

They only gave us a solid two hours at most, and it was already going on an hour and forty five minutes.

The next thing to go were her pants, panties going with it for expediency.

“Michael,” she said breathlessly when I turned her around and pressed her over the sink.

She grabbed onto the faucet for dear life, looking back over her shoulder as I unzipped my pants.