“It was a good speech.”
“Thanks. I wrote it myself.”
Tenley laughed while she took a picture of the cake and sent a thank you to our parents before she swiped her finger through the buttercream icing and offered it to me. Once I licked her finger clean, she tasted some for herself.
Our phones buzzed at the same time with our parents wanting to FaceTime. It wasn’t the best of time with us both half-naked, but we knew if we ignored them, they would keep calling back.
Keeping the camera on our face only, we answered to the chaos of them babbling on and on about when, and where, and how I proposed. Tenley was happy to retell the story. I myself wanted to end the call asap seeing how watching my fiancée lick frosting from her fingers made me hard as a rock. I slid my hand between Tenley’s thighs as I pressed her ringed hand to my boxers. She might have yelped, but our families thought it was because she was so excited.
“We better not keep you,” she rapidly said.
“We were just about to make some hard decisions about bedroom furniture,” I said as Tenley gave me a taste of my own medicine by pulling me free from my boxers and giving me a squeeze.
Jesus.
“We love you,” they simultaneously said.
“Love you, too.” We quickly returned the words, then hung up.
“That was so wrong, Griffin,” she joked.
“But doing wrong never felt so right.”
We didn’t discuss anything else that night, but we did eat the cake. Off each other’s bodies. And after a shower and bed, we woke the next day ready to start moving in together.
I let Tenley make the decisions of what to keep and what we would sell online. The only piece of furniture I wanted to keep was my entertainment center with my comic book collection that would one day move to my office in our house.
I only needed one thing, and that was her. Everything else was just stuff.
Epilogue
Preston
I put a ring on it.
TEN YEARS HAD GONE BY IN A FLASH. Not all of it was pretty and perfect, but that was life. Tenley and I had our struggles, but we were determined to make it through each one. And we had the right way, by communicating.
Nine years ago, she became my wife. Two years later, she made me a father. At the age of seven, Piper was beautiful and the spitting image of Tenley. So many days, I would find myself thinking back to the first day I met my wife whenever our daughter walked into the room. She was Daddy’s princess, and just like Mommy, she knew I couldn’t say no to her. So when she asked me for a surf themed birthday party, where someone would come teach her friends her favorite sport, I said yes.
We were surrounded by our friends and family, the party continued even after all the kids left. It was an exhausting day.
“Remind me when this guy turns seven to have a party where someone else does the cooking and cleaning. After three days of preparing, I’m wiped,” Tenley said, holding our sleeping two-year-old, Ethan, in her arms. As much as Piper looked like her mom, Ethan favored me—blond hair and blue eyes.
In the middle was our four-year-old, Abel. He was a blend of the two of us in both looks and personality. His brown hair and sweet demeanor came from Tenley while his blue eyes and can never sit still legs came from me. Grandma Ray took him inside to get cleaned up, where I’m sure he soon passed out after all the surfing he did. He kept up with the “big kids” in the water like a champ. After all, the boy knew how to swim before he crawled.
“Let me take him,” my mom said. With a sleeping Ethan in her arms, she joined Tenley’s mom in the house.
I opened the cooler we had under the canopy. We set it up knowing the day would be long and hot. Grabbing a beer, I tossed it to Keaton, then grabbed one for me and an apple cider beer for my wife. I sat in the beach chair next to her and placed my hand on her thigh. Ten years later, I couldn’t stop touching her.
“You happy?” I asked her.
“Very,” she sleepily said.
Kaitlin and Tenley started chatting about improvements they wanted to make to the yoga studio. It was due for a major facelift. Business was thriving, and the budget finally allowed for the changes. Once our oldests were born, mommy and me classes started, and now that they both had daughters, they added some barre class to the mix. It was a hit.
Piper and River, Keaton’s son, were still in the ocean. We kept a watchful eye on them while they lazily sat across their boards waiting for the perfect wave. Before they were out of diapers, Keaton and I had them swimming and standing on surfboards. The two of them got along like oil and water but surfing had always seemed to be their common ground.
“How’s the practice going?” I asked Keaton. He gave up his G-string years ago and changed from emergency medicine to pediatrics while doing a rotation in the NICU. Moms across Naples, Florida, flooded his doors when Dr. Valentine opened his practice. He didn’t bat an eye at any of them when he fell in love with his wife.
“I’m adding a second physician. I can’t keep up with the workload anymore. Too many women are popping out babies lately,” he said as he rubbed his wife’s very swollen belly.
She placed her hand over his. “Then stop knocking me up.”
It was their fourth and final child, according to her, but knowing Keaton, they’d be announcing their fifth before the year was up. After three pregnancies, the last one being difficult on Tenley, I manned up and went under the knife. It was the least I could do after hours and hours of labor.
“Whatever you say, dear,” he placated his wife, then turned to me. “How’s the new program coming along?”
I still worked for Josh, still made my own hours and made a salary that bought us our house on the beach, had our kid's college funds almost paid for, and enough of a nest egg that we wouldn’t have to retire in our seventies. I was working on a new program for Keaton’s office. A system that would cut his patient charting time by half.
“I’m working out the last of the kinks, but it should be done before you open the new office.”
With determined faces, Piper and River ran up the beach, dragging their surfboards behind them. The waves were nonexistent, and after a long day, I’m sure they’d had enough. The way they looked, though, they had something on their mind, and that always meant trouble.
The same kind of trouble that landed them a week’s grounding when they thought it was a good idea to dye their hair orange and green for spirit week at school last year on River’s white bedroom carpet.
Piper talked first. “River and I decided today.”
I waited for them to say they were going to get matching ear piercings or tattoos.
“We made a pact and everything,” River interrupted.
Tenley asked first, “What’s that, sweetie?”
“We decided to be best friends just like you and Daddy were,” Piper stated.
On the outside, I kept it together, but inside, my head raced through the teenage year version of us playing seven minutes in heaven, and the twenty-five-year-olds who accidentally saw each other naked, to the parts that shouldn’t be thought of in front of two seven-year-olds.
“That’s great,” Tenley said.
And no, it wasn’t great. It was a terrible idea. She was my little girl, and she was growing up too fast.
“Dad, can we go inside?” River asked his father, who was trying not to laugh while I was trying to hold it together.
“Sure. But keep it down. Your brothers and sisters are sleeping in the guest room.”
“We will,” they said simultaneously.
As they ran to the back door, Piper yelled, “River wants to show me the doctor kit he got for his birthday in my room. It has a real stethoscope and otoscope. He wants to test it out on me. Isn’t that cool?”
“That’s my boy,” Keaton said with a proud grin.
Tenley and I both panicked, and yelled, “Not until you’re twenty-five.”
The Right Ending
Thank you for readi
ng All the Right Moves.
Also by Becca Taylor
Breaking Free Series
Finding Home
Finding Peace
Finding Reason
Finding Memories
Cowritten Standalones
Must Fit the List by Becca Taylor and Allie Able
Future Books
The Butterfly Sisters
The Men of Sunset Strips
And many more….
All my books tie together in a world created by me. People and timelines collide. If you want to learn more about the men from Butter My Bread, read Breaking Free Series. The Butterfly Sisters will tie into some characters from Breaking Free Series and All the Right Moves. And if you want to learn who Keaton married, stay tuned for The Men of Sunset Strips.
About the Author
Becca Taylor dived headfirst into the world of writing in 2015. As a child, she explored writing songs. As a teen, she wrote poetry until she found a love of all things romance.
One night, a dream turned into an idea. An idea turned into a chapter. A chapter turned into a novel and a new adventure began.
If you’d like to learn more about Rebecca, you can connect with her at:
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