“Alicia.” I cup her face, make her look at me. “If I have to choose between you and some hypothetical kid, I choose you. Every time.”
“But you shouldn’t have to choose?—”
“I’m not choosing. I’m telling you what I want.” I brush my thumb across her cheekbone. “Would I love to have a baby with you? Yeah. Absolutely. Am I okay with you, me, and Stella being our family? Absolutely.” Her eyes search mine, looking for doubt that isn’t there. “If you want to try,” I continue, “we’ll try. You don’t want to, we won’t. But either way, I’m here. This is what I want.”
“It’s really that simple for you?”
“It’s really that simple. You think I’d risk losing you over something that might not even happen?” I shake my head. “I’m not that stupid, Alicia.”
“You’re unreal, you know that?”
“No. I’m in love. And I know what matters.”
She kisses me again—and the warmth of it feels like a promise wrapped inside a beginning.
When we return to the house, Stella’s asleep, curled against my father’s side. Linda’s reading beside them, and my dad’s hand rests protectively on Stella’s shoulder.
My family. Alicia’s family. Our family.
Alicia’s fingers thread through mine, and I let them settle there without thinking. Her hand fits. Like it belongs.
Six months ago, I was good at my job. Competent. Driven. Building toward something I hadn’t yet named.
Now I know what I was building toward.
Not the picture-perfect family I thought I was supposed to want. Not the traditional timeline everyone expects. Just this—Alicia beside me, Stella’s laughter, family and friends, a home that feels right instead of on schedule.
Jessica Vale compared herself to Alicia until the comparison destroyed her. I spent years measuring myself against a timeline that was never mine.
The thing about comparing yourself constantly to others is it makes you chase what other people have instead of recognizing what you need.
I don’t need picture-perfect.
I just need this.
Bonus Epilogue
Alicia
Ten Years Later
* * *
The coffee maker has been running for seventeen minutes.
I know this because I’ve been watching the clock on the microwave from my spot at the kitchen island, willing myself not to go upstairs and knock on Stella’s door. She’s twenty-two. She doesn’t need to be woken up on a Sunday morning. She came home because she wanted to, not because anyone summoned her—and if I blow this by hovering, she’ll remember that when she’s deciding whether to visit next time.
I turn the coffee mug in my hands instead. Three slow rotations. An old habit.
The kitchen catches the morning light differently than any room I’ve ever lived in. The Georgetown house had high ceilings and heritage brick and the kind of architectural bones that made design magazines salivate, but the light was always fighting its way in around the corner, always half-blocked by the iron fence and the two scrawny trees I’d had absolutely no interest in pruning. This house sits on two acres in McLean, set back from the road by a long gravel drive, with windows that face east across the yard. By eight in the morning, the kitchen is full of sunlight.
Noah picked it out. I let him think I needed convincing.
He’d made his case the way he always did—methodically and without drama. Set back from the road. Single point of entry at the front. Alarm system that he upgraded himself, which I still find slightly unnerving even a decade later. He’d gone through twelve properties before he brought me to this one, and when I walked into the kitchen and saw the morning light laying itself across the wide-plank floors, I said we should probably schedule a second showing. He’d looked at me for a long moment, something quiet moving behind his eyes, and said, “Whatever you need.”
We were back the next day. I made an offer before we reached the car.
I hear him before I see him—the soft fall of bare feet on the stairs, the creak of the third step that he keeps saying he’ll fix and never does. Then Eli appears in the doorway, his hair still pressed flat on one side from sleep, wearing the oversized Virginia Tech T-shirt that has been his weekend uniform since Stella brought it home from a campus visit three years ago.