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  And Regan’s high-pitched voice informs me, “We can hear you singing One Direction!”

  That’s when I remember . . . the fucking baby monitor. I shake my head and laugh at myself. Then I look down into my son’s dark, pensive gaze.

  “We’re never going to live this one down. Ever.”

  Epilogue

  Seventeen years later

  I’m working from home today—because if I’ve learned anything after raising kids, it’s the moment you let your guard down, the second you make plans that don’t revolve around them, they screw with you.

  I’m at my desk, halfway through the final read-through of a motion for dismissal, when the door opens, and Chelsea pops her head in. She’s every bit as hot in her late forties as the day she opened that front door and literally took my breath away. I’m a lucky bastard.

  “It’s time, Jake.”

  I stand up, grab my jacket from the back of my chair, and follow her out. We stop in the den, where Robert and Vivian are stretched out on the couch, watching TV and feeding each other popcorn. They’ve been a couple since middle school—it’s not really that surprising since they were practically attached at the hip before they were even born.

  I don’t know if they’ll be together for eternity, like they say they will. They’re young, and life is so very unpredictable. But I know they’ll be friends for the rest of their lives.

  “Your mother and I are going to the hospital. Are you coming?”

  My son takes after me in build and personality. He’s stubborn and rebellious, but there’s a playfulness to him that I never had—because his childhood was a hell of a lot different from my own. And I’ll never stop being grateful for that. He has his mother’s eyes and her steely but kind resilience. I’m grateful for that, too.

  He shakes his dark head. “Nah, but call me after the baby’s born—we’ll come then.”

  I take three steps toward the front door, stop, and turn around. “Don’t screw around while we’re out of the house.”

  It might seem like an awkward thing to say to my kid—and it is. But I’m a realist, and believe it or not, so are teenagers.

  Vivian grins mischievously. “Come on, Uncle Jake—would we do that?”

  Vivian is the spitting image of her mother—tiny and pretty, with golden-brown eyes that glow with a soft inner light. But her personality is all her father. And I’ve known Brent Mason for thirty years.

  “Yes. You would totally do that.”

  She giggles and buries her face in my son’s shoulder. I point my finger at him. “But don’t. Seriously. Ronan’s on his way back from school—he can come home at any minute.”

  Robert holds up a placating palm. “Relax, Dad. It’s all good. Tell Rory and Lori I said good luck.”

  From the doorway, Chelsea says, “See you later, kids. There’s juice in the fridge.”

  As we walk down the front steps, my brow furrows at my wife. “Juice? Did you just meet those two? We should be locking down the fucking liquor cabinet.”

  She shrugs. “The real stuff is hidden in our closet; I replaced all the bottles in the cabinet with water months ago. If they’re in the mood for a cocktail, they’re going to be disappointed.”

  God, I love this woman. “Well played.”

  She pokes my ribs. “This is not my first rodeo, Mr. Becker.”

  ****

  At the hospital, Chelsea and I sit in the waiting room of the maternity floor, drinking bad coffee. Lori’s parents head down to the cafeteria, and about fifteen minutes after they go, Rory McQuaid comes barreling through the double doors, his expression tired but completely elated.

  “It’s a boy!”

  Chelsea squeaks, jumps up, and tackles her nephew. And my smile is so broad, my cheeks ache. After Chelsea eventually relinquishes her hold, I give a back-slapping bear hug of my own.

  “I’m proud of you, kid.”

  Rory smirks the same smirk that changed my life.

  “Thanks. I’m pretty proud of me, too.”

  “How’s Lori?” Chelsea asks.

  “She’s great. You guys can come back—they’re ready for visitors.”

  We follow him into the cheery hospital room, where his wife reclines against a mountain of pillows. Lori grins when we walk in, her cheeks joyously round. She’s a high school teacher—and so gorgeous she must have to beat those teenage bastards off with a bat. Rory met her when she was a character witness for one of her students—who was also Rory’s client. It wasn’t love at first sight—but it was damn close.

  Yeah, Rory is a criminal defense attorney at my firm. He’s sharp, committed, tough—and he has a partiality for defending juvenile cases. He’s not a partner; hasn’t gotten McQuaid added to the firm name just yet . . . but I have no doubt in a few years, he will.

  I kiss Lori’s cheek. “Congratulations, sweetheart.”

  “Thanks, Jake.”

  Chelsea lifts the sleeping bundle of baby from the bassinet. She gazes down at him with so much love and sighs, “Oh, honey . . . he’s beautiful. He looks just like you, Rory.”

  Lori teases, “We’re really hoping he takes after me personality-wise.”

  I tap Rory’s shoulder. “Karma’s a bitch.”

  He nods, chuckling.

  I stand next to Chelsea and look at the baby in her arms. Smooth skin, long dark lashes, fucking adorable little face. Now this—this is love at first sight.

  “Hi, baby,” Chelsea coos. “I’m your grandma.”

  Gran-MILF is what I like to call her. Weird . . . but so true.

  “Do you have a name for him yet?” she asks.

  Lori glances at Rory—a special, secret kind of look. “We do. We’ve had it for a while now. Rory picked it and I thought it was perfect.”

  When they don’t say anything else, I ask, “Are you gonna tell us or do we have to guess?”

  Rory looks up into my eyes. And says quietly, “Becker. My son’s name is Becker McQuaid.”

  I stare back at him, until my eyes start to burn. And I just know Chelsea is tearing up next to me. I look down at the baby again, through a blurry gaze.

  Then I walk up to Rory, clearing my throat. “You’re gonna make me cry, you little shit.”

  His mouth quirks. “That was my evil plan all along, old man.”

  I hug him. Hold him tight—because I’m honored.

  “Thank you, Rory.”

  He hugs me back and says against my ear, “Thank you, Jake. For everything.”

  A few minutes later, Lori’s parents come in—then Regan and Ronan show up, bickering about the route Ronan drove to get them here. Not long after that, the whole brood descends, to welcome our newest addition.

  ****

  Are you wondering about the others? Where they are, how they turned out? Today’s your lucky day, because I’m going I’ll tell you.

  Riley lives in LA. She started her own business—party planner to the stars. She’s not married, but she’s been living with the same guy for the last ten years. Considering I moved my ass in with her aunt before we were married, Chelsea and I had a whole lot of nothing to say about that. The guy’s . . . okay. I don’t hate him—wouldn’t say I like him, either. He makes Riley happy, so, at least for now, I won’t have to kill him.

  I’d like to tell you that Raymond’s first crush dream came true—that he and Presley Sunshine Shaw dated, fell in love, and lived happily ever after. But they didn’t.

  Turned out, four years—in teen years—was just too big of a hurdle to climb.

  Presley became an attorney, like her father—and she married a lawyer, also like her dad. They live just over the Virginia state line, on a horse farm that reminds Stanton of his parents’ place in Mississippi.

  Raymond ended up majoring in computer science—no surprise there. His last year of college, he did an internship with a bunch of other brainiacs in Silicon Valley. One of his fellow internshippers was a pretty little thing with dark hair and big brown eyes, who thinks Raymond hung th
e moon. She said he was the first man she ever met who was smarter than she was. I’m still getting used to the idea of someone referring to Raymond as a man—not sure when that happened. They’ve been married about two years now, and the only thing that gets them more charged up than a new iPhone is each other.

  Rosaleen followed in the footsteps of her mother, Rachel. She married her college sweetheart and started having kids not long after. She’s got three little girls and counting. They’re bouncy, blond, and beautiful and remind me so much of her, it hurts. Her husband’s a well-paid campaign consultant and they live only a couple miles away in a house bigger than ours.

  Regan is a speech therapist in Alexandria. She just finished her graduate degree and shares an apartment with her best friend from high school. She’s young and gorgeous and having a good time dating every guy she meets. She swears she’ll never settle down because she’ll never find a guy who can measure up to me.

  Can’t really argue with that logic.

  Little Ronan isn’t so little anymore. He’s twenty-two and just finished the pre-med program at Georgetown. Next up is medical school—and he wants to specialize in obstetrics. Sometimes Chelsea and I wonder how big of an impact Robert’s bathroom home birth had on Ronan. Neither of us asks because we don’t really want to know the answer.

  Whoever said “you can’t go home again” never had a family. Because even though they’re grown, with lives of their own, and are spread out all over the country—our kids come home all the time. At Christmas and Easter the house is fucking bursting.

  I grumble that it’s a pain in the ass. I complain about the craziness and noise and the chaos. Chelsea just laughs at me.

  She says, I love it—that I wouldn’t change a single thing.

  And . . . she’s right.

  BONUS MATERIAL

  Keep reading for a special treat!

  What follows is a chapter that ended up getting deleted from the final version of Appealed, but I’m excited to share it with you now! No spoilers if you haven’t read Appealed yet.

  Enjoy!

  ~Emma

  Brent & Kennedy – 11 years old

  They sat beside each other on the rocks along the water, after sharing the lunch she had stuffed in her backpack—spitting black watermelon seeds into the water.

  “So you don’t remember anything?”

  Woothoo

  Kennedy’s seed flew from her mouth and landed close to shore. As far as spitting distance went—hers was pathetic.

  “Nope. Not the day of the accident or the three days before it. It’s just gone.”

  It had been two years since Brent’s accident. They hadn’t seen each other the first year—after his long hospital stay there’d been too many doctor appointments and physical therapy sessions. This was the first time they’d talked about “the tragedy,” as Kennedy’s parents called it.

  “That must feel strange.”

  Woothoo

  “Yeah. But my doctors said it’s normal—head injury, the shock from bleeding so much.”

  “What happened to the guy who hit you?”

  Brent shrugged. And spit. Woothoo. “My parents wanted him to go to jail. Our lawyers argued with the police because they didn’t give him a ticket. But they said he wasn’t speeding, wasn’t drunk. He didn’t see me coming around the bend and I didn’t see him.”

  “And you’re okay with that?”

  “I am now. I talked about it with my therapist. Sometimes stuff just happens. And it’s no one’s fault.”

  “Your therapist? Like a psychiatrist?”

  “Yeah.”

  Woothoo

  “What’s that like?”

  “Weird.” Brent thought for a moment, then added. “But in a good way. My mother insisted on it, said I had to work through the trauma. But I think she’s more traumatized than I am. She says I’m not allowed to ride a bike again—ever. She had them removed from all the houses and gave them to charity. Even the stationery ones.”

  “Like Sleeping Beauty.”

  “What?” Brent asked.

  “Sleeping Beauty. A curse was cast on her that she would prick her finger on a spinning wheel when she was sixteen and fall into a coma. So her parents banned all the spinning wheels from the kingdom to keep her safe.” She patted his head and teased, “You’re just like Aurora.”

  He frowned. “If you start calling me Aurora, I’m going to start calling you Speck because you’re so short.”

  Kennedy nudged him playfully, and spit another seed—missing the water entirely.

  Brent shook his head. “You spit like a girl.”

  Kennedy turned towards him, and launched a seed at his forehead. This one was a direct hit.

  “Like an awesome girl.” She corrected.

  Brent chuckled and wiped his forehead. “Anyway, I’m not Sleeping Beauty and I really miss my bike.” Then he squinted at the sun. “It’s getting late. I gotta go—my mother breaks out in hives if I’m out of the house too long.”

  Kennedy watched Brent as he stood and gathered his lacrosse stick and his bucket of balls. And then she had an idea.

  “Hey—do you know that field in the woods—the one that used to be an Indian burial ground?”

  All the children who grew up in the area knew about it—and most stayed away. Satanic rituals were rumored to be held there.

  “Yeah, what about it?”

  Kennedy’s top row of braces scraped across her bottom lip as her quick mind outlined a plan. “Meet me there tomorrow.”

  ****

  The Next Day

  “What is that?” Brent asked, eyeing the contraption Kennedy stood beside.

  “It’s a bike.”

  “It’s pink.” Brent pointed out. “Really pink.”

  “It’s a bike.” Kennedy repeated, firmer this time.

  “It has streamers.”

  “It has wheels,” Kennedy replied. “And you’re going to ride it.”

  Brent walked closer to the girly nightmare. The memory of coasting down hills, popping wheelies, and jumping over curbs made his pulse quicken. They were things he never thought he’d be able to do again—things his parents would have a heart attack about if he did.

  “I don’t know if I can do this, Kennedy.”

  Her soft brown eyes looked up at him. “Of course you can.”

  “But what if I can’t? Like, anymore?”

  Kennedy gently touched Brent’s wrist. “If you really want to, you will.”

  She sounded so certain, he believed her.

  Brent swung his right leg over the small bike, awkwardly, hopping a bit on his prosthetic. He gripped the handle bars and tried to raise the kickstand. It took him three tries, but he did it. Then he sat on the bike, braced his prosthetic foot on the pedal and pushed. It slipped off before he moved an inch. He repositioned himself and tried again, but his balance was all wrong and he was just able to catch himself before he toppled over.

  “This is gonna take a while,” he said, then sighed.

  Kennedy sat on the ground and folded her hands around her knees. “We’ve got all summer.”

  ****

  One Week Later

  “Woooooo! Faster Brent!”

  Kennedy’s brown braid had come loose and her hair tickled his face, lifted by the wind that poured over them as they raced down the hill. She sat on the handlebars, her feet braced on the lip of the bolt on either side of the wheel. Brent stood behind her, pumping the pedals.

  “Okay—hold on!”

  And they were off. He flew down the path, through shadows and patches of sun, bouncing over roots and rocks, thin branches slapping at his arms, still wet from yesterday’s rain, but he didn’t feel the sting. Because he was having too much fun. It felt like he was flying.

  And he felt something else he hadn’t for a long time.

  Normal.

  “Yes!” Kennedy screeched. “Go-go gadget leg!”

  Brent laughed, ducking his head beneath a particularly low br
anch. Then he pulled up on the handlebars to hop over a raised bump, making her bounce.

  He was having such a good time, he didn’t notice the large rock right in the bike’s path.

  Not until they’d hit it.

  And then he was literally flying—they both were. His breath burst from his lungs as he landed in the wet grass with a hard grunt. For a second, he didn’t move. Nothing felt broken or injured. Then he sat up. Brent saw the bike on its side a few feet away, the back tire still spinning. He saw Kennedy a few feet beyond that. Her glasses had been knocked off her face, her eyes were closed and she wasn’t moving.

  At all.

  As he looked at her, something inside him felt like it was breaking after all. In the seconds it took to get to her, a dozen thoughts ran through his head—each more horrible than the one before.

  She was hurt—and it was all his fault. He would never forgive himself.

  Never.

  “Kennedy!” He knelt beside her, touching her cheek, looking for blood, his voice raw. “Kennedy wake up! Look at me.”

  Instantly her eyes snapped open, shining like amber stones. And Brent was so relieved, he didn’t realize what was happening.

  Not until Kennedy said, “Gotcha!”

  Then she laughed. Loudly. Freely. Without a worry in the world.