Page 91 of Carry Me Home
“Jack!”
She tried to whack me with her free hand but I captured that one, too, and hauled her, laughing, onto my lap.
I gripped her chin and brought her in for a kiss. “I love you, Janie, and I can’t wait to move in with you.”
Her dark eyes sparkled back at me. Forehead to mine, she whispered, “Welcome home, Jack.”
And I smiled. The words finally felt right.
EPILOGUE
JANIE
Three years later
My hand cramped and I dropped the pencil to massage the ache. In an instant, Jack took over, his strong fingers working the knotted muscle at the base of my thumb more effectively than I ever could.
“Take a break, Ace. You’ve been at this for hours.”
“I want to get through these commissions before the baby comes.” The baby—a boy—wasn’t due for another month, but I had a mountain of work and planned to take a solid four months of maternity leave after his arrival. I bit my lip, squirming as he dug his thumb into a sore spot. “Fuck, that hurts so good. Don’t stop.”
Jack ignored my writhing and hunched forward to get a better look at the sketch I was working on. A couple’s first date at a cozy little coffee shop. The man and woman sat across from each other, smiling. They didn’t know it yet, but it was the last first date for both of them.
Reference photographs were scattered across the table. The coffee shop from various angles, particularly the table wherethey sat and the view out the window. Lots of the couple, alone and together, also from every angle imaginable.
The man had commissioned the drawing of their first date as a gift for his wife on their fifth wedding anniversary. At the time, they hadn’t known it would be anything other than another disappointment, so of course they hadn’t taken photos. That was where I came in. Recreating real events with real people at real places was my specialty. With enough photographs, I could learn their personalities and facial expressions well enough to make a drawing feel like I had pulled the memory straight from their brains.
People were incredibly sentimental, it turned out. I had a six-month waitlist and so much work that I’d cut my hours at the Painted Cat to two days a week. I would have quit altogether, but Brax begged me on his knees not to make him do paperwork, and anyway, I actually liked working the bar.
“You captured them perfectly,” Jack said, his gaze moving from the photographs to my drawing and back again. “It’s incredible how you do that.”
“I’m pretty proud of this one.” I grinned.
Maya wandered into the kitchen in search of a snack, book in hand. She grabbed a yogurt from the fridge, pulled the aluminum top off, and licked it clean while staring at us.
“I’ve come to a decision,” she announced.
I rolled my lips together.I’ve come to a decisionwas Maya’s new phrase. It had a tendency to make even the most mundane sentences sound deeply profound. I had the feeling she knew that. Maya was growing into a flair for the dramatic.
“Let’s hear it,” Jack said, not letting up on my hand. Bless him.
“I’ve decided to call you Dad.”
I stopped breathing. My free hand went to my round belly. She hadn’t been interested in calling him Dad when we gotmarried two years ago, and Jack hadn’t pushed her on it. But a week ago, it suddenly occurred to Maya that her new baby brother would call him Dad and maybe she should, too. But when Jack had told her he’d love that, she’d shrugged and, in typical Maya fashion, said she’d think it over.
Apparently, she was done thinking.
“Oh?” Jack sounded perfectly casual, but I knew he wasn’t because he was no longer massaging my hand. He was squeezing it for dear life. “Great.”
We stared at Maya. Maya stared back.
“Do you…” Jack cleared his throat. “Do you want to try it now? See how it feels?”
“Okay, Dad.” She tilted her head.
Jack’s hand spasmed around mine and I squeaked. Immediately the pressure eased.
“So, what do you think?” Jack asked.
