Epilogue
Butch
Seven Months Later
There was nothing like the open road. It was even better on a motorcycle. As I made my way along the curvy road with my saddlebags stuffed full of as many apples as they could hold, I relished the feeling. The powerful engine beneath me was rumbling.
Sabrina was waiting for me to come back to her with the freshly picked fruit from the Apple Works Orchard in the country just outside of La Playa. She claimed that they were for a new recipe she wanted to try out, but I recognized that ‘hungry pregnant woman’ look in her eyes. We’d been living together for six months, ever since I got moved into a new apartment in the Outlaw Souls complex. We’d needed something bigger than the one-bedroom I was previously living in.
Next, I’d married her.
When I proposed, the ring wasn’t nearly as impressive as the one she used to wear, but I could tell how much she loved it. She never took the thing off. I expected that we would wait until after the baby came to tie the knot, but Sabrina had surprised me by insisting that we have a small ceremony two weeks later. After all the stress surrounding the wedding she was supposed to have with Hunter, she’d decided that a big, showy wedding wasn’t at all what she wanted.
Of course, her mother had tried to talk her out of a rushed wedding every day leading up the ceremony, but Sabrina proved that she could be just as stubborn as the older woman in the end.
So last month we were married on the beach at sunset. I’d offered to wear a tuxedo, even though I was sure to look out of place in the monkey suit, but Sabrina had insisted that I be comfortable in my own clothes. So I’d worn my boots, black pants and a black button-up shirt under my leather jacket. To my shock, Sabrina had appeared and walked toward me wearing a leather jacket of her own over her knee-length lacy white dress. She wore black ankle boots and her baby bump preceded her down the makeshift aisle between the folding chairs where our family and closest friends sat.
She looked like a goddess.
I knew that her parents weren’t thrilled with her choice to marry the likes of me, but they kept their mouths shut about it. Which was good, because I didn’t exactly like them, either. They had almost ruined things between us by pressuring Sabrina to marry Hunter, but to be fair, they’d never openly criticized me to my face, which I had to imagine was difficult for both of them.
They didn’t want to push Sabrina and their grandchild further away. I didn’t want to put my new wife in a heart-breaking position that would require choosing between her parents and her husband.
So the three of us had an unspoken agreement to get along for the sake of the woman and child we all loved.
Returning to the apartment complex, I grabbed the apples out of the saddlebags and carried them up the stairs, passing Snake along the way. He just looked at the heavy load I was hauling and smirked.
“You just wait until you have to cater to a pregnant woman,” I said.
“Never gonna happen,” he replied, continuing down the steps.
That was a shame for him, because I honestly loved it.
When I walked into the apartment, I saw Sabrina in the recliner with a bowl of Goldfish crackers balanced on her bulging belly.
I smiled. She was adorable.
“Hey, baby,” I said as I kicked the door shut behind me and set the apples on the kitchen table.
Looking up at me from the parenting book in her hand, she didn’t return my smile. Instead, her eyebrows were drawn together in concern.
“What are we going to do if I have trouble breastfeeding?”
I glanced down at her chest, which had grown so much in the last few weeks that she’d gone up a cup size.
“I don’t think that’s going to be a problem.” I smirked.
She narrowed her eyes, unamused.
“It’s not about the size of my boobs. Some babies have trouble latching.” She popped a Goldfish into her mouth with one hand, while rubbing her stomach with the other. “What if our little peanut can’t get enough to eat?”
This was a common thing lately. It seemed that every time Sabrina picked up a parenting or childbirth book, she found something new to worry about. I assumed this was a normal part of the end of a pregnancy. Her due date was still two weeks away, so there was still plenty of time to overthink everything.
Coming to the side of the recliner, I crouched and placed my own hand on her stomach. I could feel the baby moving around inside restlessly.
“If we have to use formula, that’ll be fine.”
“But I don’t want to fail the baby.”
