Finally Us (16 page)

Epilogue

El

It’s said that we don’t remember days, we remember moments.

Well, thank God I’ve got a strong memory because I’ve had some pretty good moments in my life so far, and I can only hope to have many, many more with the one man I’ve loved my entire life.

The man who’
ll be waiting for me at the end of the aisle on what’s my wedding day.

“Mascara check!”
Bec yells and she, Ally Norman and Julie Trent, my bridesmaids, all run to the mirror to check their makeup. “Okay, looks good,” Bec decides after they do a little fussing.

“If you’d stop being so emotional, we wouldn’t have the need to do this,” I complain, checking my
own makeup then my dress in the full-length mirror in my old bedroom.

“Can’
t help if you chose to get married on my peak PMS day.” She scowls at me.

“Sorry. I should’ve asked before deciding on a date,” I say with a snort
, which makes her smile.

“God, this is it, El,” she says and starts to tear up again.

“Stop!” I tell her feeling myself tear up too. Jeez. “Why don’t we talk about something happy? Like butterflies or puppies or root beer floats?”

“
Okay, how about this. Did you hear that Alessandra Alvarez’s underwear company she models for is threatening to take away her contract because she’s gotten too fat?” Julie informs us.

I choke on my water when I hear this.

“What? Do tell,” Bec says with a wicked smile.

“Isn’t she the one who’s in those
commercials?” Ally asks. I cringe knowing she’s going to bring up Jag. She realizes her mistake and says quickly, “You know, the ones with that hockey player? You know the ones where she’s practically wearing nothing and he’s trying to hit the puck while she distracts him? I don’t even know what they’re selling in them.” She laughs.

“Some energy drink that’s supposed to keep you focused,” I say. I’ve seen the commercials and she is practically naked in them. I swear the chick’s as bad as that guy in those
Twilight
movies who can’t keep his shirt on.

“Anyway,” Julie continues, “I heard that she’s gotten really fat,
as in
really, really
fat and they’ve given her something like six months to lose it or she’s gone.”

Wow.
Well, I’m not going to take comfort in her misery, but I honestly believe that Karma’s a huge bitch and she will get you when you least expect it.

There’s a knock at my bedroom door and Ally answers it.
“Oh, hey, Mr. Love.”

“
Hey, Ally,” my dad replies with a smile. He looks over at me and suddenly tears up. Dang it!

“Not you too, Dad,” I grumble as I try to keep myself from crying, waving my hands in front of my face to stop the emotions that are threatening to pour out of me.

“Not every day your baby girl gets married, El,” he says with a snuffle. “You’re beautiful.”

Ugh! I look up at the ceiling but the tears come anyway. Julie hands me a tissue and I dab at my eyes.
“Thank you, Dad.”

“Seems like yesterday you and Rebecca were plotting to take over the world,” Dad says with a chuckle. “Or at least let the air out of someone’s tires.”

“Dad,” I say and go to him, giving him a hug. “You remember all the good stuff.” I snort.

“
Ready, hon?” he asks.

I take a deep breath and nod
, checking myself in the mirror one last time, then Dad walks me out and down the stairs with the girls following.

It’s early October (I know, but did you really think the Cubs would make the playoffs? Yeah, neither did I, so it was a risk worth taking), and the wedding’s in my parents’ backyard.

I’ve changed some things from my original plans for a wedding when I was twelve, but it’s still beautiful. Bec and the girls are in short, navy, chiffon, strapless dresses with flirty skirts. A pale yellow ribbon wraps around the waist and ties in the back and they carry bouquets of navy and pale yellow baby roses.

I’m wearing a big frou-frou
ball gown like I always wanted and I love it. I want to wear it, like, once a week to work or out shopping because it’s so beautiful. It’s candlelight colored with a fitted bodice that has a sweetheart neckline with Swarovski crystals on it. The embroidered embellishments on it are also around the bottom of the full skirt and the whole dress is perfect. My bouquet is pale yellow irises with navy baby roses mixed in. It’s lovely and I was so excited when I found a florist willing to use irises.

Dad’s wearing a navy tux with a pale yellow tie as are all the groomsmen and he looks very handsome. Jag’s tux is the same except he also wears a pale yellow vest.

We get to the French patio doors and Dad opens them for the girls to go out. I can see Jag at the end of the aisle and he’s so handsome I can’t take my eyes off him. He hasn’t see me yet, and as Dad gets ready to escort me to him, I take another deep breath then take the first step toward my lifelong journey with the man I adore.

“Seriously,
El? You’re telling them all that mushy stuff about our wedding?” Jag says with a chuckle when he walks through the living room.

I look indignantly
up at him. “Of course, I am. They need to know about their mommy and daddy. Besides, they’ll be doing the same thing some day with the person of their dreams.” I smile up at him from where I sit on the loveseat looking at our three-month-old fraternal twin boys, Cash Daltrey and Zander Hendrix, in their bassinets who I’ve been telling the story of our wedding. And, yep, I got my way with the names, which is way cool. I mean, I carried them for nine months having to be on bed rest for the last six weeks, so I think I earned the right. But Jag likes the names, so it really wasn’t that big of a deal.

“They’re boys, El. They don’t wanna hear that shit,” Jag says with a
mock frown, bending down to kiss my forehead then he gives both boys a kiss.

“Daddy!” Four-year-old Knox comes running into the living room from where he’s been playing in the dirt outside while Jag’s been out there working on measurements for a
n in-ground swimming pool.

Jag scoops up our son. “Yeah, buddy?”

I look at my husband and son for the millionth time and smile because Knox is the spitting image of Jag. He’s got great big glacier blue eyes and dark hair with a hunk in the front that no matter what I do with it, it ends up hanging in his face, and I always have to chuckle at how long I’ve been battling that same problem with Jag. He definitely is his father’s son.

“
That man out there told me to tell you Bud Light!” Knox tells him.

“I’ll kill him,” I mumble.

“Logan’s just being Logan,” Jag says with a chuckle.

“That’s what scares me,” I mumble.

“Babe.” He looks down at me, his own glacier blue eyes turning navy, and over the past five years, I’ve come to know another reason why they do that. It’s because he’s happy.

I
smile up at him. “I love you.”

He smiles back. “Forever and a day, babe.” He puts Knox down then leans over and brushes his lips against mine and whispers, “I love you, El.” When he stands back up, he says to Knox, “Let’s go get Uncle Logan
and Uncle Baxter their drinks and we’ll go back outside and put their ass, uh, rear ends to work. Whaddya think?”

“Yeah!” Knox says with a fist pump and takes off running to the kitchen.

Jag rolls his eyes at having to curtail his cussing and I snort. He grins and winks at me then follows Knox into the kitchen and I hear them in the fridge, beer bottles clinking, I guess getting Uncle Logan and Uncle Baxter lots of drinks. Jeez.

Knox runs back through making airplane noises then goes out the doo
rs to the backyard again. Jag comes through shortly after carrying a cooler, which I know has their beer in it.

“I see you’re serious about this pool thing,” I tease.
He grins and winks at me again before he goes out and I lean back against the couch.

I sigh as I look down at my babies, touching their little fingers and know that I’m so very blessed to have all that I do, the kids, Jag, our house.
Our house sits on the same block as the one where we both grew up and I’ve decorated it with tons of pictures of us from over the years and, of course, our kids and families. I now look around the living room at all of our pictures, and know that they’re reminders to be grateful for all that we have.

It’s home and I love it. But anywhere with Jag would be home.

As I settle back against the loveseat, I close my eyes and think about how very different things would be for me if I didn’t have Jag. We’d had some rough patches over the years before we married, but I truly believe had we not gone through them, we wouldn’t be as strong as we are now. Love’s a living thing that has to be fed for it to grow, it has to be pushed around a little to make it stronger, and in the end, because of these things, it will triumph.

A
nd as it’s been said, true love always prevails.

~~~

Jag

I still don’t have any fancy fucking
quotes, but I will say that it seems to me that everything happens for a reason.

God knows I’ve had my fair share of fuck-ups with El, yet here we are today, married with kids and happier than we’ve ever been. And if it hadn’t been for those screw-ups, I don’t think we would’ve made it. Yeah, that sounds weird, I know, but I truly believe it.

I mean, if I hadn’t been the arrogant prick I was when I first started in the majors, El would’ve probably gotten tired of me at some point and left my ass for good and then where would I be? Not happy as hell like I am now, I know that much.

Right now, I’m on the pitching mou
nd in Cincinnati getting ready to strike out my twentieth player of the game then it’ll be over and I can make my way back home to my family.

God, that sounds good—my family.

From the day El and I got married to now, everything has gone so smoothly, I think because of all the bullshit we had to go through before finally saying our “I do’s.” But there was a point in time when I thought I was going to lose it all. The day Jagger Knox Jensen, Jr. was born.

I’ll never forget it as long as I live.

We were playing the Mariners in Seattle when I got the call that El had gone into labor. She wasn’t due for another five weeks, so I’d been really surprised. I wasn’t pitching that game, so I left immediately and flew the four hours back. When the plane landed, Dad was there to pick me up and rushed me to the hospital. On the way, he’d told me that El had had some complications.

Needless to say, I freaked the fuck out. He didn’t have details, so
I had to wait until we got there.

“What’s going on?” I asked Mom when we arrived. Dad had called and told her we were there, and she and El’s parents
and Rebecca and Ross met me just outside the waiting room.

“The baby’s having a hard time breathing since he’s so early,” she said.

“He?” I asked. God, with everything happening, I hadn’t even asked what we’d had. El had wanted it to be a surprise for us, but she’d told me the entire time that she knew it was a boy.

“You have a son, Jag,” Mom said and tiptoed up to kiss my cheek.

“What about El? How is she? What’s going on?” I asked.

“They’re doing all they can. The baby was too big. She was pushing and got his head out, but she couldn’t push the shoulders out,” Mom told me. “Th
ey tried everything but ended up having to do a C-section. While they were working to get him out, she suffered a uterine tear. She’s bled a lot. They’re trying to stop it now.”

All I could do was stand there and stare at my mom.

“Can I go in and see her?” I asked after a few seconds.

“No, son, she’s in surgery,” El’s dad said.

I looked around at El’s and my parents, at our best friends, at the frightened looks on their faces and all the air was knocked out of me as if I’d suddenly been punched in the gut.

I couldn’t lose El. Not after all we’d gone through to be here, finally making a family together.

Mom had sensed that I was about to lose it, so she’d taken me to the elevator and we went to the NICU so I could see my son, but he’d been in an incubator so I couldn’t hold him. All I could do was look at him in wonder thinking about how El and I had made another human being together. Definitely a mind-blowing moment.

It was
an hour and a half before the doctor came out telling us they’d finally stopped her bleeding.

“Can I see her?” I’d asked.

He’d nodded and led me to her room. Just outside her door, he’d told me, “We don’t know why she hemorrhaged so heavily, and I want you to know it was pretty touch and go for a bit trying to get the bleeding to stop, so I’m letting you know there could be other complications, so you’ll be prepared if anything else happens.”

I thanked him then went inside El’s room and what I saw scared the hell out of me. She was so white as she lay there with her eyes closed. I walked to her bed and took her hand in mine, bending my head down to kiss it.