Page 356 of The Winslow Brothers

“Nice to meet you, Rachel. Ignore my husband, he’s weird.”

Herhusband. So, this is Ty’s sister-in-law.

“Hey,” he snaps playfully, but all she has to do is give him a hard stare, and he’s shrugging. “Yeah. She’s right. Just ignore me.”

Ty laughs at that, cracking the hard edge of his worry for the first time since I walked into his office and saw him on the phone.

At the sound of his laugh, several other people’s heads come up and look over, and upon a narrowed-eyed survey of me, they also start to make their way toward us. Ty drops my hand briefly.

It’s kind of a nightmare in the package of a dream, and I don’t know what to do with my newly found freedom. I shove my hands into the pockets of my coat and clench at the inner fabric.

Ty frowns as he looks down and sees it, and he reaches into my pocket to once again retrieve the hand he’d been holding. Jude and Sophie share a look I can’t put my finger on, just as a tall, dark-haired, nearly godlike man with piercing blue eyes approaches the group. He looks like he belongs, but the easygoing attitude of both Jude and Ty is pointedly missing.

“Oh hey, Remy,” Jude says with a huge smile, glancing back at me. “This isRachel.”

Remy’s reaction is normal, even in the face of Jude’s exaggeration, and for the sake of my sanity, I decide to focus on that.

“Nice to meet you, Rachel,” he remarks, thankfully forgoing the offering of a hand.

“You too,” I say easily enough, glancing among the group of strangers and willing myself not to shrink. “I really hope there’s news soon.”

It’s a genuine statement. But the depths of where it comes from are a touch more complicated. I’m looking for relief for Ty and his family—obviously—but I’m also hoping for some relief for the heavy feeling inside my pounding chest. I’m growing so uncomfortable, I might as well be the one in labor with twins.

“Me too,” Remy says, his eyes both warm and watchful. A silence palls over the group after that, and I’m instantly sorry for saying it. They were just starting to get distracted, and I ruined it.

Sophie is the first to chime in, and much to my dismay, it’s to direct a question right at me. “So…how do you and Ty know each other?”

“I…well, we…we’re—”

I’m just about to get to the part where I start putting real words together when another tall, dark-haired, much more intense man bursts through the doors and throws his hands into the air. “She’s good. The babies are here, and they’re healthy. Everyone’s doing really well.”

A cheer takes over the room, and emotion overcomes who I know now must be Ty’s fourth and final brother. “Thank fuck,” he mutters and sinks to his knees.

A couple of women rush him immediately. One is young, possibly around Ty’s age or a few years younger, and the other has a startling resemblance to all of them that makes it impossible to classify her as anything other than their mother.

My stomach flips over on itself at being witness to such a tender, intimate family moment, but Ty pulls me into his arms and into a hug before I can think about it too much.

All I can feel is the warmth of his long arms around me and the relief in his laugh at my neck.Why does this have to feel so good?

It’s only when he pulls away that panic sets in again. Because he’s pulling me out of the room and down the hall, right along with the rest of his family, headed to meet his freshly sliced sister-in-law and her adorable babies.

I don’t know that we’re ready for that. I don’t know that it’s appropriate.

Two months ago, I was at the beginning of a new start. I was proud, I was poised, I was ready.

Now, I’m so tangled up in a man, I don’t know where the knot begins and ends.

How in the world have half a semester of fighting and a week of fucking landed me here?

Ty

The feeling of tightness in my chest has finally left and been replaced by the best news in the world. Daisy and the babies are happy and healthy, and I can go on knowing my brother Flynn will live to see another day without darkness.

It’s strange to say—and even stranger to recognize—but Flynn’s world starts and stops with Daisy Winslow née Diaz. Their relationship certainly moved at what felt a rapid-fire pace to me, but I’ll be damned if my brother wasn’t born the day he met her.

He’s happier, healthier, chattier. I mean, don’t get me wrong, he’s still one of the most mysterious fucks on the planet, but I get more than a nod and a grunt these days. And that’s a big change.

I watch and wait as Winnie, my mom, Remy, Jude, and Sophie file into the maternity room in front of us, a couple other people I don’t know particularly well in front of them, and then pull Rachel’s hand to follow. But I’m met with a resistance I’m not expecting.

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