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EPILOGUE

EVIE

Ten Years Later

The wooden boards creaked high above me, dust and debris sprinkling onto the surrounding concrete like an ashy veil. I dragged my knees to my chest, muscles trembling, breath caught in my throat as I counted along with the heartbeat that pounded loud…

“Mummy!”

I paused, my hands hovering over the keyboard as Elijah shouted from down the hall.

“Mummy!”

I rolled back from the desk as his light footsteps padded up the hallway. “Mummy…can I come in?” he asked through the barely open crack in the door, his small voice instantly softening something in my chest.

“Of course sweetheart,” I said before the door creaked wider, and he slipped inside, Ollie following close behind with his tail curled over his back. My son crossed the room immediately and climbed into my lap. “What’s wrong, baby?” I asked gently, brushing his brown curls back from his face. He’d become so determined to grow his hair long lately, insisting on a mullet like the one he’d seen in his father’s photos from when he was a teen.

“Joey won’t let me play with her,” he complained, bottom lip already wobbling as he struggled with his older sister Josie’s name. I bit back a smile, smoothing my hand over his hair. These moments of normalcy still caught me off-guard sometimes, because there was a time I couldn’t imagine anything like this existing for me at all. In fact, if I was asked ten years ago what my future looked like, I wouldn’t have had a good answer. Only a cruel certainty that my life would end violently, or that I would stay in captivity until Wayne decided I had no more use left in me. I lived each day hoping it was my last, but obeying him for survival nonetheless.

There were things I saw that I can’t ever forget, and things I learned to endure because there was no other option. It was the kind of darkness that rewired you into silence, into obedience, into simply trying to stay breathing. It was seven years of hell. Seven years of pain. Seven years that I’d never get back. But would I suffer through that all over again if it meant this was the outcome?

I honestly think so.

But it wasn't easy getting to this point. Because freedom didn’t feel like freedom right away. It felt like emptiness with no instructions, and Jackson…Jackson didn’t escape it either. He couldn’t sit with his back to a room for a long time, and some nights he would lie awake, just listening to me breathe, like he needed proof that I hadn’t disappeared the moment he closed his eyes.

Then there were moments when neither of us knew how to be close without fear getting in the way. When I’d flinch at a sound and he’d go still immediately, like he was prepared to fight whatever made it.

Then there were days I couldn’t stand to be touched, even when I wanted to be. Days when my mind would slip back without warning, and I’d have to sit on the floor and remind myself where I was. And there were days when he’d go too still, too quiet, like something had dragged him back somewhere I couldn’t follow. On those days, I learned to sit beside him without asking questions until he came back to me on his own.

Healing wasn’t a straight line for either of us.

It was repetition—relearning safety in the smallest things. Staying in a room even when your body told you to leave it, or letting love exist without waiting for it to turn into something else. And although some demons still reared their heads from time to time, they didn’t get to stay anymore. Because we created a life so full of love, of laughter, of ordinary days, that the past no longer got to define the shape of our present.

It didn’t get to touch us here.

Not when we were like this.

Not when we were together.

“Josie’s doing her homework, honey. What about Daddy?” I said gently.

“Daddy’s busy!” he complained, throwing his head back as he tangled his fingers in the ends of my hair. I chuckled and tickled his belly, his protest dissolving into bright, helpless giggles as he squirmed in my lap.

“I’m sure if I ask him, he’ll stop painting the nursery and come watch with us,” I promised, easing my hands away as he tried to fend me off.

“Daddy will do anything Mummy asks him to,” a familiar voice answered from the doorway, warm with amusement. “She should know that by now.” Butterflies swarmed in my stomach as I spun around in the desk chair, smiling at my husband who stood in the doorway with his arms crossed, his tattoos bulging at the action, and a smirk grew across his face as I blatantly trailed my eyes over his figure.

“Daddy!” Elijah squealed and jumped down from my lap before he threw himself into his father’s arms, and Jackson barely had time to straighten before the impact hit him.

“Oof!” he grunted dramatically, stumbling back a step as he caught him. “Mate, are you trying to take me out?”

Elijah wrapped himself around his neck instantly, laughing. “Mummy, help me!” he squealed as Jackson pretended to eat him, roaring loudly as our son giggled. Ollie wound himself around my calf, purring loudly, entirely unbothered by the chaos, and my hand drifted automatically to my stomach.

Just two months until I had another life I never once believed I could have.

Wayne was infertile—thank God. So pregnancy was never something I had to worry about, or something I ever thought I would get to experience. And Jackson and I waited for obvious reasons—a child wasn't something we planned to bring into the world while we were still healing and learning to breathe again. But seven years ago, when Jackson left the coaching position he was offered after he retired from the game, we sold the home back in Perth and moved to Ireland after purchasing a large farmstead with Peter and his growing family in tow, and a year later, we fell pregnant with Josie.

Now nine of us resided on the property. Well, soon to be ten.