Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 66289 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 331(@200wpm)___ 265(@250wpm)___ 221(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66289 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 331(@200wpm)___ 265(@250wpm)___ 221(@300wpm)
The overhead lights turn dark and the screen down front flicks to life. I turn to Irie, studying her face in the dark, the glimmer in her eyes, the sweet smile that claims her soft lips. All this time I thought nailing her would be the ultimate win, but now I know I was wrong.
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m sure.”
I’m going to marry this woman someday.
Epilogue
Irie
10 years later …
I stand on the balcony of our home on a balmy June afternoon, a drooling, teething baby Bette on my hip as I watch Talon toss a football to our seven-year-old son, Theo, in the backyard. The sun sets over Talon’s Edge, painting the sky in warm shades of hibiscus and tangerine. It’s nights like these, the simple and ordinary ones, that make me stop and think about how far we’ve come—and how all of this almost didn’t happen.
Thank God for Talon’s persistence.
You can give the man any goal in the world, and I swear, he’ll make it happen.
It’s a gift.
Sometimes I think he might be better at manifesting than football—though he’s still pretty damn good at football. One of the best in the league statistically, morally, or otherwise. Richmond just signed him to a new contract, this one worth an amount that makes me sick to my stomach when I think about it for too long. I guess when you lead your team to three Super Bowl victories in a row, they’ll do whatever it takes to hang onto you. And don’t even get me started on the sponsorships.
I don’t know how he does it.
He’s busier than ever and at the top of his game quite literally, but he still makes time for his family, and he’s never once asked me to shutter my design business. And he wouldn’t. He knows it’s my passion. I’ve scaled back since we had our daughter, opting to be a bit choosier with my clients and the projects I’m willing to take on. Some days I’m spread paper-thin, other days I’m jubilant with exhaustion.
Talon has never once complained, never once asked me to scale back. He understands what it’s like to be given a gift, to have a passion, and to be able to use it on your own terms.
“You want to swing, baby girl?” I say to Bette, bouncing her a little as I walk to the wooden playset several yards back, nestled in a thicket of blooming red peony bushes.
Bette smiles and instantly I think of her namesake, feeling a bittersweet sting in my center. I wish Bette would’ve been able to meet and hold my daughter. I can only imagine the kind of advice she would’ve been shelling out given her extensive experience raising girls (even if those girls were predominately strippers and one lame college student).
Talon gives me a wave before catching Theo’s toss, and I blow them each a kiss.
A moment later, I secure baby Bette in her swing and give her a gentle push.
“Mom, watch!” Theo yells, grinning as he sprints across the grass and catches his dad’s throw.
I cheer for him and his sister squeals.
Theo was a bit of a surprise originally. We weren’t trying to get pregnant. In fact, I was on the pill, but some things tend to find their way when they’re meant to be.
A couple of years after moving here, Talon and I eloped, tying the knot on a private beach along the Pacific, not far from Bette’s house, surrounded by a few close friends. We didn’t invite my aunt and uncle. Bette served as my maid of honor—and much to everyone’s surprise, I took her up on her offer to throw me an epic bachelorette party.
Which she did.
Strippers and all.
Things with Talon’s mom are better these days, especially since she left Mark. Their divorce was long and nasty and expensive, and she’s still working through some of her own issues, but she agrees it was all worth it because now her relationship with her son is better than it’s ever been.
She visits at least once a month, staying in the mother-in-law suite we had installed above the garage. She also travels with us during the off-season, when we’re making our national rounds doing work on behalf of our Hero Ballers foundation. So far we’ve recruited a number of big names in the league and we’re putting so much good into the world, making such a difference in ways we never expected.
We always dreamed big.
Turns out we needed to dream bigger.
So we did.
Earlier this year, Talon hired some private people finder group to locate my mom. It turns out she’d left her first commune sometime while I was in high school and took up with another, this one based out of Oregon and almost completely off the grid. A couple months after Bette was born, we took a trip out west to see her. I was apprehensive about going at first, not to mention a bit resentful at the fact that she made zero effort to be an ounce of the mother she should have been, but Talon said I needed to do this for me—for closure.