Chapter 73

Chapter 73
Jackson

The wedding is four weeks out, and for some damn reason, I thought this part would feel romantic.
The build-up and anticipation, and some of it does, but a lot of it feels like unnecessary stress. Between the spreadsheets, infant schedules, suit fittings, venue calls, and me trying very hard not to turn security planning for my own damn wedding into a tactical operation, going to the courthouse and signing a piece of paper sounds like a much better option.
Brooklyn says I’m being dramatic and my brothers say I’m being me, and maybe both are true.
I’m at the venue on a Thursday afternoon with a legal pad in one hand and one of the boys asleep against my chest when the event coordinator asks if I want the sweetheart table angled toward the dance floor or the gardens.
“Sight lines,” I say automatically.
She blinks. “I’m sorry.”
“Nothing. Angle it toward the floor. Easier for older relatives, kids, and people moving around.”
That part isn’t wrong. It’s also not the whole reason.
Brooklyn walks up beside me with Lily on one hip and the stroller in front of her, and that look in her eyes tells me she heard exactly enough to know where my brain’s going.
“Jackson.”
“What?”
She smiles at the coordinator before turning it on me. “You’re doing it again.”
“I’m literally standing here.”
“You’re assessing exits.”
I don’t answer because she’s right and we both know it, even if I won’t admit it.
The coordinator, smart woman that she is, pretends she suddenly needs to confirm linens and leaves us alone near the terrace doors.
Brooklyn shifts Lily higher and lowers her voice. “Baby.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
I look out over the reception space. It’s gorgeous, I’ll give it that. Big windows, spring light, enough room for all of us without the place feeling swallowed, and gardens outside where the older kids can run without anybody panicking. Which means yes, I see beauty. I just also see vulnerability because apparently romance and law enforcement don’t cancel each other out.
“She tried a birthday,” I say. “You think she won’t try a wedding.”
Brooklyn doesn’t soften. That’s one of the things I love most about her. She isn’t interested in taming down the truth just because people prefer neat emotions.
“No,” she says. “I think she might.”
“There you go.”
“But I also think you don’t have to carry every angle of that alone.”
I exhale through my nose. “I’m not carrying it alone.”
She raises a brow. Damn it. We leave the venue an hour later, the menu locked, the floor plan approved, and my head full anyway. Lily falls asleep in the truck. One of the boys wakes just long enough to complain about the car stopping at a red light, then passes back out. Brooklyn keeps one hand on my thigh while I drive, and that should calm me more than it does.
Maybe it does. Maybe this is calmer than I would have been five years ago.
At home, I change a diaper, warm a couple bottles, and answer a call from the tux shop before finally accepting what she said earlier.
I don’t have to carry every angle alone.
That doesn’t mean I like it. But it’s true.
So after dinner I send the text.

Me: Family meeting at my place tonight after kids down. Need help with wedding logistics, not the stupid kind. Boston answers first.
Boston: Impressive that you admitted you need help without a hostage situation.
Me: Come over or I’m arresting you for being an asshole.
Lincoln: Tragic misuse of police resources. We’ll be there.
Dallas: I’m bringing beer.

That last one almost makes me smile. By eight thirty, the house is full of brothers, wives, and the kind of noise that comes from everybody trying to keep voices down while also absolutely failing at it. Dad’s got Lily in the living room because she decided Papa is apparently superior company. Ashlynn’s bouncing one of the boys. Cheyenne’s curled into the corner of the couch with a ginger ale, looking more rested than she did a month ago and still sharp enough to cut through nonsense at a glance.
I stand by the island and look at all of them.
This is what help looks like. Still weird. “Don’t make it dramatic,” Boston says. “Just tell us what you need.”
“I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.”
Fair. I run through it piece by piece. Venue. Guest list. Parking. Kids during the ceremony. The not-small matter of making sure that Heather doesn’t get within ten feet of the property even if she hires somebody else to try her luck. By the time I’m done, the room’s gone from teasing to focused.
Dad’s the first one to speak. “I’ll take point at the front if you want me to.”
“No,” I say immediately. “You’re family. I’m not putting you on door duty.”
He gives me a look that says nice try. “Son, I’m already family. That’s exactly why I can do it.”
Boston leans back in his chair. “I can have one of the residents’ husbands there. Off-duty cop. Good guy. Quiet.”
Dallas nods. “Coop’s cousin works private event security. He owes me three favors and a cover-up piece.”
Lincoln points between me and the paper in my hand. “See this. This is you trying to solve something six people can solve faster.”
Brooklyn comes up behind me and slides both arms around my waist. She rests her chin between my shoulder blades and says, “Told you.”
“Everybody’s being really smug for a room full of people getting free food.”
Cheyenne snorts. “That’s because we’re right.”
What follows is exactly the kind of meeting I wouldn’t have known how to survive in my early twenties. Not because it’s tense. Because it isn’t. People offer. People adjust. Nobody makes me beg to be backed up. Nobody turns needing help into weakness.
We build a plan in forty minutes. Dad and Ashlynn manage the kids’ handoff points with the grandparents and sitter lineup. Boston handles the outside security contact. Dallas works the vendor check and keeps an eye on any strange third-party drop-offs because apparently calm paranoia is his specialty now. Lincoln covers movement between ceremony and reception and makes sure nobody uses the chaos of family transitions to slip in unnoticed.
I handle the inside, because, of course, I do. But not alone.
By the time everybody heads out, the kitchen looks like a war zone of beer bottles and baby wipes. Brooklyn starts gathering cups, and I catch her wrist before she can make the pile worse.
“Leave it.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
I tug her into me and bury my face in her hair for a second. She smells like lotion and milk and the little bit of vanilla from the cake tasting earlier. Home. She smells like home.
“You okay?” she asks softly.
“Yeah.” I pull back enough to look at her. “I just didn’t realize how wound up I was till they all got here.”
“That’s usually how that works.”
I brush my thumb over her cheek. “You’re annoying when you’re wise.”
“Good thing you’re marrying me anyway.”
“Very reluctantly.”
She laughs, and that sound does something to me every time, still. “Liar.” Maybe.
Later, after the boys are down and Lily’s finally asleep in the room across the hall, I stand in the doorway between the bedrooms and just look. Three kids.
One daughter who somehow manages to be both wild and tender in the same hour.
Two sons who still smell brand new. A woman in my kitchen rinsing bottles in one of my shirts.
A whole family already braced and ready before I even asked.
Heather can hover all she wants outside the edges of this life.
She isn’t in it. That matters more than the fact that she keeps forgetting.
When I head into the kitchen, Brooklyn glances up. “You got that face again.”
“What face?”
“The one where you get soft for half a second and then try to hide it.”
I take the last bottle from her hands and set it on the rack. “Maybe I’m getting old.”
“No,” she says, stepping into me. “You’re getting settled.”
That’s a dangerous sentence. Not because it’s wrong. Because it’s right.
I kiss her slow and feel the truth of it all the way through.
Not soft. Not lazy. Not less sharp. Settled. There’s a difference.
And for the first time in a long time, I don’t mind it one damn bit.
Outside, one of the boys lets out a cranky little yell from the kitchen, and somebody, probably Bos, starts laughing like all of this is normal now. Maybe it is. Maybe that’s the point. The wedding, the babies, the noise, the family filling every damn corner of my life, none of it makes me want to run anymore. It makes me want to stay.