by Hazel Parker
“Burke,” I said, not a question so much as a command.
I didn’t want to jerk him awake. I knew how guys like him could react to violent jarring awakening them. It didn’t end pretty for the aggressor.
“Burke!” I said in a loud whisper.
“Huh, what?” he said, rolling over.
It didn’t take him long to go from half-awake to fully awake. When he came to, he sat up in bed. Under the moonlight, I could just barely make out the outline of his chiseled abs and body. I almost regretted becoming pregnant through technology.
Good thing we’d made up for lost time plenty of occasions since.
“My water broke.”
His eyes went wide. And for the first time since he’d moved in, I saw something on his face that made me laugh despite the moment.
Panic.
The poor dude could go to different countries and execute daring raids, and he could literally kill a man with his bare hands, but tell him that his girlfriend was about to give birth, and it was like he was a five-year-old tasked with landing an airplane.
“OK, so, hospital?”
I nodded. Despite it being my water broken, I was handling it with aplomb, and—
A contraction kicked in.
“Yeah, let’s go, its time.”
Burke nodded. He hurriedly got out of bed, looked like he was looking for nice clothes before he settled on joggers and a hoodie, and scrambled to get everything else ready. I got out of bed and got myself as ready as I could.
“OK, I think we’re ready,” Burke said.
God bless him, he sounded so flustered.
“Hey.”
I went up and kissed him gently on the lips.
“You don’t have anything to worry about,” I said. “The doctors are going to take care of me and the kids just fine. We just need to get there.”
“Right,” Burke said, but there was still a hint of panic on his face. “Let’s go then.”
A couple of hours later, I was lying on the hospital bed, in labor. The moment of truth wasn’t quite there yet, but I could feel it coming at any moment. And despite the intense physical pain, I felt pretty fine. Or, rather, I felt as fine as possible for the circumstances.
Burke, though, had only gotten more nervous. He was bouncing his leg frequently, looking around the room constantly, and generally seemed to have great difficulty focusing and concentrating.
“Hey.”
Burke looked at me, but the eye contact only lasted for a few moments before he turned his attention elsewhere.
“Burke, look at me.”
He did. I saw…fear? Fear in his eyes?
“Talk to me. What’s going on?”
“I’m just waiting for the arrival of the kids, I—”
“Burke.”
He bit his lip.
“That’s not what…”
I paused. A hard contraction hit. But it passed.
“That’s not what I meant. There’s something going on with you right now. What is it?”
Burke opened his mouth as if to give another dismissive answer but thought better of it and cleared his throat.
“I have never allowed myself to feel any sort of connection to anyone since I joined DOM right out of high school,” he said. “And it’s like…if something happened with Scott or anyone else, I can move on, because I’ve known what it’s like to not feel connected to them. But with these kids?”
He scoffed, but I knew that was him trying not to feel certain emotions.
“Once they come out, I know I’ll want to be there for them. One hundred percent. And that means there’s no disconnecting from them. If the situation ever—”
“Have you had any missions in the last eight months? Since you killed Snake?”
I knew the answer. It was more about hushing him for a moment than it was learning something.
“I understand your fear; I really do,” I said. “I’m terrified about what would happen if these two ever had to grow up in a world without you or me. But that doesn’t mean we avoid the connection. It means we just relish it even more, knowing how precious it all is.”
It was never easy an easy tell if Burke got the message I was trying to convey. Even in our hard conversations, he was stoic, only revealing that the message had gotten through after the fact.
But right now, when I looked at those eyes of his…they were still tough and resolved. But there was a softness starting to creep in. A hint that it was OK for him to take a step back, to let fear and vulnerability enter, and to live with it.
“I guess I’ve just never been in this spot before and I’m not sure how to handle it.”
“Neither have I!” I said with a laugh. “You’d know by now if I’d had a kid before.”
“True.”
“We’ll learn as we go, Burke. That’s my promise to you. OK? And in return, I want you to promise me that you’ll never disconnect from these kids. There will be fights. There will be tempers and emotions. But don’t ever disconnect from them. Only let death distance you from them. Can you promise me that?”
Burke took my hand in his. He kissed it, and then leaned forward and kissed me on the lips.
“I promise.”
I smiled. It was all I needed to hear.
And as if it was all my body needed to hear, the strongest contraction yet kicked in. And this time, I knew we were close.
“Ah!”
“OK, breathe steady,” Burke said.
Not much later, the doctors and nurses had entered and were telling me to breathe and push. But even though I heard their orders and their words, the only person that my eyes stayed on was Burke. Somehow, in the course of maybe ten seconds or so, he’d become the stoic one. Maybe I’d given him strength, or maybe he’d just found it.
Either way, he was the one I leaned on now as intense pain radiated through me.
“You’re almost there, baby,” he said.
“Ahhh!”
I threw my head back as the pain seemed overwhelming. This went on for what felt like an eternity, far too long for damn sure. All the while, somehow, Burke held on to my hand, allowing me to squeeze so hard I felt sure that I would break it.
But then, eventually, I heard the most beautiful sound I possibly could imagine.
Crying.
I had a brief moment of respite.
“Baby A is out and… it’s a girl!” said the doctor.
But the reward was temporary, for there was one other one coming. If not for the fact that these were my children and I loved them already, I probably would have gone back in time and called myself crazy for trying to have two kids at once.
Mercifully, this time went by much, much faster.
“And we have a boy!”
And just like that, I started to bawl my eyes out.
I finally had my family. My kids. My…my everything.
“You did amazing mom,” the doctor said.
For a good several seconds, I just huddled with Burke with my two kids as the nurses poked and prodded. We’d already picked out names, but for right now, they were beyond names. They were souls I’d welcomed into this world. It was a beautiful thing that no language or words could encapsulate.
Finally, I looked up to the doctor, but it really felt like I was speaking to the world.
“Claire and Brett,” I said.
“Claire and Brett, beautiful names,” the doctor said.
I’m sure he said that to everyone who gave birth in his ward. I was also sure it didn’t matter, for there could be nothing more perfect than this moment. For the first time in my life, I had a family. My own family.
And here we were, all together as one.
Burke. Me. Claire. Brett.
Words could not even begin to describe how loved I felt and how much I loved them.
We stayed at the hospital an extra two nights as a precaution, but when it was all said and done, I was most certainly eager to get on the road and back to my apartment. I figured soon
er or later, I’d need to get us a house, but that was something to think about when I wasn’t still raising newborn kids. Maybe after they could stand on their own two feet.
When we got home, the first thing we did was lay Claire and Brett in their respective cribs. At least for the foreseeable future, they’d be sharing a bedroom. Maybe when we expanded, they’d get their own rooms, but not for now.
“They look so precious,” I said.
Burke had his arm around my shoulders and squeezed me in tight. There was something about him—a certain nervous energy, I guess you could say—that had me curious, but I was so captivated by the kids right now that I didn’t ask him about it.
“And we’ll have many more nights like this,” he said. “Just one of many.”
I nodded quietly. And then I didn’t do anything at all.
I just looked at them resting, their little bodies bundled and wrapped up. How peaceful they looked. How joyful they looked. They could do anything and become anything. They had their entire lives ahead of them.
“I’ll be right back,” Burke said.
He kissed me on the top of the head and left me in peace. My stomach growled, and I was desperate for some food, but I nevertheless lingered for a couple seconds.
“I will make sure you never go without food, without shelter, or without love,” I said to the two of them. “You two are my everything. I will die for you. I will live for you. I will do everything I can for you.”
I picked each one up and gave them a gentle kiss on the forehead. And with that, I finally left the room, shutting it and exhaling.
For the first time since coming home, I was apart from them. And it would be all right.
I walked to the kitchen when I saw Burke standing there, his hands behind his back, a serious look on his face.
“Burke?”
“Emily,” he said, drawing a deep breath. “I have to admit, when you first reached out to me, I thought this would be the definition of temporary. Even when you proposed the job, I thought that I would merely provide you the sperm and move on, never to see you again. But as the days and weeks and months have gone by, I realize that that is not only not true, the complete opposite is the truth. I don’t want this to be temporary. I don’t want to never see you again. I want to see you every day. I want this to be…forever.”
He moved his hands from his back to the front. I saw there he had a small box. It started to come together, everything moving in slow motion.
He dropped to one knee. He lifted the box and opened it. Inside was one of the most beautiful rings I’d ever seen in my life, held by the most handsome man I had ever known.
“Emily Lorne, will you marry me?”
I sniffled.
“Of course!”
With that, Burke stood up, swept me up in a kiss, and squeezed me tight. We’d done it. We’d done the improbable. Not only was Burke going to be the father to my kids, he was going to be my husband.
“I love you, Emily.”
I looked up into the eyes of that handsome man. That future husband.
“And I love you, Burke.”
Epilogue
One Year Later
“Do you, Burke Reynolds, take Emily Lorne to be your wife?”
I stood in front of a pretty small crowd. Scott and Liam, along with their wives and kids, held our two children by their side. And that was it.
We only needed two witnesses, and we had plenty of them. We didn’t need an extravagant wedding. Emily’s mother was watching on video conference.
But none of that mattered to me. I didn’t need a grand wedding, and while Emily might at one point have envisioned that that would be the ideal, she had come around. Better for this moment to be about us and our love for each other than an enormous crowd.
“I do,” I said.
I looked into Emily’s eyes. They were watering, but there was a beauty to them that I hadn’t seen anywhere else or ever before. It was hard to describe, especially for a guy like me, but the best that I could say was that it was fucking touching as hell, beautiful and sweet.
I wasn’t going to cry. I couldn’t remember the last time I had cried. But I for damn sure felt the emotions stirring inside of me that might have made other people cry.
“And do you, Emily Lorne, take Burke Reynolds to be your husband?”
“I do,” she said, interrupting the officiant of the wedding.
Although I wasn’t going to cry, I found myself uncontrollably grinning.
Life was unexpectedly good. Right now in this moment.
There was nothing to be concerned with right now. We had hired security for the event. Snake was dead. DOM hadn’t gotten a call in a full year. Frankly, we were as good as retired at this point. We hadn’t dissolved the group yet—I guess that was something far easier said than done—but functionally, we were done.
And that meant that I could, for once, lose myself in the moment. I could lose myself in Emily’s eyes. I could lose myself in connecting with her.
“By the power of the state of Florida, I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may now kiss the bride.”
The officiant hadn’t even gotten his words out when I took Emily in my arms, pulled her in close, and swept her off her feet for the most passionate kiss that I’d ever given. Hey, if I was going to be a dom, that extended to how I kissed my wife.
When we finally pulled back, Emily had the largest grin I had ever seen her wear. She looked so happy, so thrilled, so…so overjoyed. We kissed again. With the way we felt, we probably could have kissed from dusk until dawn if we wanted to.
But eventually, we looked back at the applauding men and the whistling women. Even the kids were clapping and laughing.
“Time to go celebrate,” I said.
The “celebration” wasn’t so much a reception as it was heading back to Emily’s high-rise apartment and sharing drinks and food on the rooftop of the building. We had a house we’d move into soon enough, but for right now, we were in more than enough of a great spot. The two kids weren’t taking up too much space yet, and by the time they did, we’d be settled into our own spot.
Even though DOM said to have no connections, no family, no friends, the one thing they may have forgotten to account for was the fact that I did, actually, have a family of sorts. DOM itself. Scott and Liam had become like brothers to me, in no small part because of near-death experiences we’d all shared. Whatever happened to the business, I knew that this wouldn’t be the end of it, not by any stretch of the imagination.
Outside of them, though, I didn’t really have any friends and family. Perhaps that would change in time. I had a feeling Emily would force me to become more social and more outgoing. I would probably even have to do something I fucking hated—attend company parties.
Liam and Kelly were the first to leave with their kids, roughly around nine p.m. It was a sign of parenting, I suppose that they had struggled just to make it this far. There was a certain humor in Scott and Kaylie, despite being the first ones to tie the knot, being the ones who hadn’t had kids yet. I guess Kaylie being in her twenties still gave her an advantage.
Thankfully, the childless couple understood Emily and I would need some quiet time and gave us leave about half an hour later. We tucked our kids to bed, and finally, for the first time since who knew when, Emily and I were by ourselves. We went to the balcony of our apartment, and I put my arm around her and pulled her in.
“Isn’t it funny how this all started?” Emily said.
I kissed her forehead.
“I don’t worry about how we got here, just that we’re here.”
“Sure, but just think of the story this will make!” she said with a laugh.
“Not just,” I said.
I let the words hang in the air for a second.
“It took you pressing me, accepting me, and forgiving me. There were plenty of times that you could have walked away, but you never did.”
“Aww, Burke.”
She leaned up to kiss me.
“I’m never walking away. I’ll always be by your side.”
Now it was my turn to kiss her.
“Indeed. And I’ll always be here for you. Mrs. Reynolds.”
She laughed.
“It’s going to take some time to get used to that,” she said. “But fortunately, it won’t take any time to get used to being married to you.”
I smiled.
I liked it.
I think, with Emily now my wife, I was going to do it a hell of a lot more.
Series Epilogue
Six Months Later
“This is your final mission.”
I sat in the back of a private plane for DOM, one that Scott had chartered for me. It was probably going to be the last time I’d ever be on a private jet, but honestly, I doubted I would miss it that much. Every time I had gotten on a plane like this before, it was to go into the line of fire or to escape it.
“Meet at the cabin in Maine. I will provide further instructions there.”
That was the entirety of the note I’d gotten in my P.O. Box for missions. Even though it had been a good year and a half or so since we’d killed Snake, DOM still existed. We’d agreed to dissolve it, but that had just never happened.
Until now, apparently.
The plane landed in the middle of the night in Maine. It was dark and quiet outside, even given that we’d landed at an airport. I grabbed my bag and had a car waiting for me outside already. I got inside the Tesla, turned it on, and began the long drive to the private cabin.
I’d only come once before, but Liam and I practically had photographic memories. It was how we’d been able to do our jobs so well. It was why we were the only agents that ever became full-time members of DOM.
When I got to the cabin, I did so at roughly the same time that Liam did. He pulled up just as I got out of my Tesla; I wasn’t sure if Scott had planned this on purpose or not, but it worked out all the same.
“Gentlemen,” Scott said, “follow me.”
We did as commanded, moving into his house. It was dimly lit, and a quick glance at my phone showed we had no reception. It really was as if we were going on one more mission. Perhaps I’d missed something.
