Chapter 72

Chapter 72
Aspen

By the time we get home from the birthday party, the whole car smells like frosting, baby lotion, and the kind of tired that feels earned.
Nora falls asleep ten minutes from the house with pink icing dried at the corner of her mouth and one paper crown still crooked on her head. Lydia starts fussing the second the truck stops, and Ollie makes these offended little grunts from the back seat, like he wants to file a formal complaint against all transitions. Honestly, same.
“Want me to take Nora?” Boston asks as he kills the engine.
“You take her,” I say. “I’ve got Ollie.”
“You sure?”
I give him a look. “Boston, I carried Lydia, Miles, and Ollie at the same time and then hosted a birthday party with your family. I can manage the car seats.”
“That remains the hottest argument you’ve ever made.”
I snort. “Move before I change my mind.”
He laughs and gets out, then comes around to free Nora from her seat with the kind of care that still gets me every time. She goes limp against his shoulder without waking, paper crown and all.
I get Lydia, Miles, and Ollie inside: two in their carriers, and one strapped against my chest. By the time I make it through the front door, the house already feels different.
Quieter, smaller, and more ours. That’s the thing about big family days. I love them, need them even, but after I need my own walls back so bad it feels physical.
Boston’s already upstairs settling Nora when I get Ollie transferred into the bassinet in our room. Lydia wants one more bottle because apparently parties burn calories if you are six months old and committed to drama. Ollie spits up down my shirt out of solidarity or malice. Hard to say which.
By the time I get downstairs again, Boston’s in the kitchen rinsing bottles while Lydia protests from the portable bassinet by the table. He looks over, takes one look at my shirt, and smiles.
“Long day?”
“He assaulted me.”
“Cowardly,” Boston says. “Couldn’t even wait till you changed.”
I set Lydia in the bouncer and strip the ruined shirt over my head on the way to the laundry room because modesty doesn’t survive this many children. “If anybody says one more thing to me tonight that isn’t useful, I’m legally allowed to bite.”
“Good to know.”
He follows me in, catches me around the waist before I can grab a clean tee, and pulls me back against him.
For one second I let myself just be held.
No bottles. No cake plates. No family diplomacy. No trying to read everybody else’s mood before they even open their mouths.
Just Boston behind me, warm and solid, his chin brushing my shoulder while the dryer hums low in the corner.
“You okay?” he asks.
I rest my head back against him. “I’m tired, my bra smells like milk, one of our sons spit in my cleavage, and your brother stole the last three deviled eggs before I got to them.”
He kisses the side of my neck. “That was not the question.” I know.
I reach for the clean shirt hanging over the basket, but he doesn’t let me go right away. His hands stay low on my belly, thumbs smoothing over skin that still doesn’t feel quite like mine again even this many months after delivery. He never touches me like he’s tolerating what motherhood changed. He touches me like everything about my body means something sacred to him.
That still undoes me. “I’m okay,” I say finally. “Just thinking.”
“About her.”
I huff out a breath. “Partly.”
Because of course I am. Not in the obsessive way. Not in the old terrified-girl way where I thought one woman with a wedding ring and a smile could blow up my life just by standing in the wrong doorway. That girl’s gone. Has been for a long time.
But today had weight on it. Not because Heather showed up. Because she showed up on a day that belongs to people who earned it, and for a second I saw the old hurt move across Boston’s face before he got it under control.
That part stayed with me. I turn in his arms and look up at him. “You were so good today.”
His mouth twitches. “Good feels like an odd word for telling a woman to leave with her party balloons.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do.”
He glances toward the doorway, listening for baby noise, then back down at me. “I’m not carrying it the same way I used to.”
“I know.”
That’s the part I need him to hear, not just nod at.
So I step into him and put my hand flat over the center of his chest. “You don’t have to act like it did nothing just because it didn’t break you.”
Something in his face shifts, a small private opening he only gives me.
“I hate that she still gets near the edges of good things,” he says quietly.
“I know.”
“I hate that Nora had to be in the yard for any of that.”
“I know.”
“And I hate that for one second, when that gate clicked, I was sixteen again.”
That one hurts. I slide my hand up around the back of his neck. “But you weren’t.”
“No.”
“You were here. With me. With our kids. With all of them.”
His eyes stay on mine. “Yeah.”
“And she still didn’t get in.”
That does it. Not because it fixes anything. Nothing fixes a mother who leaves and then comes back wanting the clean version of family after everybody else bled for it. But because it’s true, and truth has been carrying us better than fantasy ever did.
Boston lowers his forehead to mine and just breathes for a second.
Then Lydia starts up from the kitchen. We both laugh because of course she does. The rest of the night is the kind of domestic chaos that would probably look insane to anyone who doesn’t live it. Feed one baby. Burp two others. Clean the bottle stack. Check on Nora. Find the missing pacifier that somehow landed in the hallway. Turn on one monitor. Turn down another. Switch the laundry. Reheat the coffee neither of us ever got to finish. At some point, Ollie wakes long enough to make one outraged sound and then falls asleep again like he won an argument.
By eleven, the whole house finally settles. Nora is starfished across her bed in birthday pajamas with glitter still in her hair. Lydia, Miles, and Ollie are down. The monitors are humming. The kitchen looks like a battle happened in it, but at least it’s our battle.
I’m standing at the sink rinsing the last bottle when Boston comes up behind me and takes it from my hand.
“You are done.” he says.
“I can finish one bottle.”
“You can,” he says, setting it on the rack anyway. “But you’re not going to.”
“Bossy.”
“Always.”
I turn to look at him. He’s barefoot, tired, still in the black Henley he wore to the party, and somehow he looks even better when he’s worn down around the edges a little. Less polished and more mine.
“You still in your head?” he asks.
“A little.”
He nods once like that makes sense and reaches for me.
The kiss starts soft, and that’s the dangerous part. If he came at me hot, laughing, hands already all over me, I could probably make some joke and get another bottle washed before I gave in. But soft Boston is the one I can never resist. The one who kisses me like he’s got all the time in the world and wants me to feel every second of it. The one who cups my face and drags his thumb over my cheek like I’m something he found and still can’t believe he gets to keep.
I kiss him back before I can even think about pretending otherwise, and the second I do, the whole room changes.
His hand slides to my waist. Mine fists in his shirt.
When he backs me against the counter, I let him, because I know this man, I know the difference between urgency and care, and right now he’s giving me both.
“You sure?” he murmurs against my mouth.
“I’ve wanted you since you carried three car seats and still had time to look smug.”
That gets a low laugh out of him. “Romantic.”
“It’s my gift.”
He kisses me again, deeper this time, and my whole body wakes up fast, the tired dropping away under heat. There’s something about the end of a family day that does this to us every damn time. Maybe because chaos strips away everything that’s unnecessary. Maybe because after all that noise and love and history, we need one quiet place where it’s just us.
Boston’s hands move under my sleep shirt, warm over my skin, and I shiver. He notices, of course he does, and his mouth drags down my throat slow enough to make my knees go weak.
“Bedroom,” he says.
“Counter’s closer.”
His eyes flash. “Aspen.”
“What,” I say, all innocence I absolutely do not feel. “The kids are asleep.”
He palms my ass hard enough to make me gasp. “That’s not helping your case.”
“Wasn’t trying to.”
He lifts me like it’s nothing, and I wrap my legs around his waist on instinct, laughing into his mouth when he mutters something filthy under his breath that proves he is nowhere near as calm as he looks.
By the time we make it upstairs, the laughter’s gone, and the wanting’s too big for it anyway.
He gets the bedroom door shut with one hand, then sets me on the edge of the bed and stands there looking down at me like he’s trying to decide whether to devour me or pray.
I know that look. I love that look. “What?” I whisper.
His fingers hook under the hem of my shirt. “You. Every damn time.”
He pulls it off me, tosses it aside, and then his mouth is on me before I can answer, warm and greedy at my throat, my collarbone, the top of my breast. I grab for his shoulders because I need something solid under my hands and because touching him makes it worse, better, all of it.
There’s no hurry now that we’re here, which somehow makes it hotter.
He kisses me till I’m breathing hard. Strips off his shirt. Pushes my shorts and panties down my legs in one smooth pull. Looks at me like I’m still the first beautiful thing he ever saw.
That part gets me every time too. “Boston,” I say, and it comes out needier than I meant it to.
He drops to his knees between my thighs. “Oh,” I breathe.
That smug bastard smiles once against my skin, then goes to work like he’s got something to prove, which he absolutely does not and yet somehow keeps proving anyway.
I’ve had children with this man. Built a home with him. Shared every version of messy life there is.
None of that makes this familiar in the bad way. It makes it better. Sharper. Safer.
By the time I’m shaking, one hand in his hair, the other gripping the blankets, I’m biting back his name because all three monitors are on and I do not need one of my children deciding this is the exact second they need water.
He comes up smiling, mouth wrecked in the best possible way, and I drag him back to me before he can say anything smug enough to get himself murdered.
“Don’t,” I warn.
“Wasn’t going to say a word.”
“Liar.”
“Maybe.”
He kisses me again while he shoves his jeans down just enough, and then there’s that perfect suspended second where anticipation goes so tight it almost hurts.
Then he’s inside me and every thought I had just leaves.
We move together slow at first because slow lets it build and because there’s something about this, about being married and tired and still wanting each other like a problem, that makes me want to feel all of it. His forehead drops to mine. My legs lock around his waist. The headboard taps softly against the wall in a rhythm that would absolutely embarrass me if I had enough air left for embarrassment.
“Look at me,” he says, and I do.
That’s my mistake. Because the second I do, I’m done for.
He’s not trying to hide from the day anymore. Not the birthday, not the ugly interruption, not the old wound. He’s right here with me, heat and devotion and hunger all mixed together, and I love him so much it almost feels violent.
When I come, I bite into his shoulder to keep quiet, and he groans my name like it hurts in the best way. He follows a few strokes later, buried deep and shaking with it, and then collapses over me, laughing under his breath because one of the monitors crackles the second we stop moving.
“Of course,” I whisper.
He lifts his head enough to grin at me. “Parenthood keeps us humble.”
“Parenthood can kiss my ass.”
“Later,” he says, and kisses me once more before he rolls enough to check the screen.
False alarm. Nobody’s actually awake. Just a baby shifting in their sleep.
He sets the monitor back down and pulls me into him, both of us still catching our breath.
For a while neither of us says anything. We don’t have to. His hand strokes up and down my back slow enough to make me melt. My leg’s still tangled with his. The house is quiet in that full way, not empty. Every room holding somebody we made or somebody we chose.
After a minute, I glance up at him. “You okay now?”
He thinks about it before he answers, which is one of the things I trust most about him.
“Yeah,” he says. “More than I was.”
I nod against his chest. “Good.”
He tips my chin up. “You?”
“I was okay before.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
I smile because he learned that from me and then acts as if he invented it. “Yeah,” I say. “I’m good.”
Outside, the world can keep being messy. It usually does.
Jackson and Brooklyn’s wedding is a few weeks out. Babies are still waking at dumb hours. Heather’s probably still telling herself a version of today where she was the injured party.
None of that gets this room. This room gets the truth. That family history has weight. That the life in front of us has more. That warm and hungry and wrecked and loved can all fit in the same bed just fine.
I tuck myself closer and let my eyes close.
When the next season hits, and it will, we’ll meet it like we meet everything else. Together. And after tonight, everything tilts harder toward Jackson and Brooklyn’s wedding.