“We all missed that the first time,” Jace says quietly. “If we do it again, we do it together. All of us. Every step. Every doctor’s appointment. Every midnight craving. Every moment.”
“Agreed,” I say, and I mean it. “We do it right. We do it together. Or we don’t do it at all.”
Parker’s smiling through her tears, and it’s one of those smiles that lights up her entire face. “So we’re really considering this? More kids?”
“Not right now,” Silas says quickly, and I can see the practical side of his brain kicking back in. “I need to heal. We need to get settled as a family. The boys need stability and routine. But—someday. If we all want it. If it feels right. Yeah. Let’s consider it.”
“Someday,” Parker repeats, and the word sounds like a promise. “I like the sound of that.”
We head up the hill toward Charles and Sienna’s house, moving slower to accommodate Silas’s pace. The afternoon sun is warm on our faces, the crushed shell path crunching under our feet in that familiar rhythm. I can hear the kids playing in the backyard before we even round the corner, their voices carrying on the breeze like music.
“You know they’re going to ask questions eventually,” I say, because someone needs to be practical about this. “About biology. About who their biological fathers are. Kids are smart. They’ll figure out that Noah looks like me and Liam looks like Jace.”
“We’ll tell them the truth,” Parker says without hesitation. “That they have four parents who love them. That biology is just onesmall piece of what makes a family. That they’re ours in every way that matters—blood, choice, love, all of it.”
“And if they want to know more?” Jace asks. “If they want details? If they want to understand the mechanics of how this family came to be?”
“Then we tell them more,” Silas says. “Age-appropriate honesty. We don’t hide it. We don’t make it shameful. We don’t make them feel like our family is something to apologize for. We just—we tell them the truth and let them process it however they need to.”
“They’re five,” I point out, and I can’t help but smile at the absurdity of it. “I don’t think they’re going to care much about genetics when they’ve got four adults who’d burn the world down for them and let them eat ice cream for breakfast on Saturdays. Plus all the presents in the world for Christmas and birthdays.”
“Fair point,” Parker concedes, laughing.
We round the corner to the backyard, and there they are. Our boys. Noah’s hair catching the sunlight, making it look almost gold, so much like mine when I was his age. Liam’s serious face breaking into a rare smile as Jimmy says something that makes them all laugh, those steel-blue eyes exactly like Jace’s.
They see us and come running, and my heart does something complicated in my chest.
Liam’s attached himself to Jace’s leg, and I watch Jace’s expression do something complicated when Liam looks up at him with those eyes they share. “Uncle Silas, are you feeling better? Do you need to rest? Mommy said we have to be careful with you.”
“I’m good, kid,” Silas says, and his voice is softer than I’ve ever heard it. He reaches down, ruffles Liam’s dark hair with careful fingers. “But I wouldn’t say no to one of those cookies Aunt Sienna made.”
“I’ll get you three!” Liam announces with the kind of serious determination that only he can pull off. “Because you’re healing and you need extra energy!”
“Three sounds perfect,” Silas agrees, smiling.
And then they’re off, both boys racing back toward the house, Noah shouting something about who’s going to get there first, Liam calling back that it’s not a race, Noah insisting it definitely is.
Parker’s watching them with that expression she gets sometimes, the one that’s equal parts love and terror and wonder. Like she can’t quite believe this is real. Like she’s waiting for someone to wake her up.
“Our boys,” she says softly, and the possessive pronoun wraps around all of us. Not her boys. Our boys.
“Our boys,” we agree in unison, and the harmony of it feels right. Feels like something we’ve been building toward for six years without knowing it.
And standing there in Charles’s backyard with the afternoon sun warm on our faces and our children’s laughter filling the air, I think about everything it took to get here. The pain. The loss. The six years apart. The violence. The fear. Parker running to California. Me hacking into private medical records and keeping secrets. Jace carrying guilt that was never his to carry. Silas believing he was too broken to be loved.
All of it led to this moment.
To this family.
And I wouldn’t change a single thing.
Well, maybe I’d change the part where Silas almost died. That was objectively terrible. Watching Parker sob over his body while Jace and I tried to keep him alive in that hallway. Feeling helpless while we raced against time to get him to medical care. Not knowing if he’d make it. That part can fuck right off.
But everything else? Every hard choice, every sacrifice, every moment of doubt that led us here?
Worth it.
All of it.
