Brothers of Paradise Series

They wave across the restaurant. Parker raises his free hand and nods, never removing his arm from around me. And I find myself waving to them too.

The sound of someone tapping their fork against a glass silences the conversation around the table. Parker turns to me with a raised eyebrow.This content © Nôv/elDr(a)m/a.Org.

Here it comes.

Rhys clears his throat. And, surprising us all, he starts to talk about Lily’s wedding.

“I want to remind everyone just how great a time we had, celebrating Lily and Hayden. What a beautiful ceremony and delicious food. We partied late that night.” He raises his glass to Lily, who lifts hers back, eyebrows raised.

“What the heck?” Parker mutters by my side.

“I’d also like to bring everyone’s attention to Henry and Faye’s wedding. Stunning New York location, a string quartet, excellent mingling opportunities. Hats off to the two of you, too.”

Henry lifts an eyebrow in response. He has one arm around Hazel, who’s falling asleep against his chest. “I had to show the rest of you how it’s done.”

“Right, right,” Rhys says. “Exactly. I’d also like to humbly remind Mom and Dad how expensive weddings are.”

Michael chuckles. “Where is this heading, huh?”

Rhys wraps his arm around Ivy, sitting by his side. She has a wide smile on her face. “Ivy and I have gotten married,” he says.

“What?” Lily says. “Rhys!”

Eloise has her hands on her face. “You didn’t!”

Parker’s the one who grins, extending a hand across the table to his brother. “Congrats, man. And congratulations, Ivy. Couldn’t ask for a better sister-in-law.”

Faye pretends to gasp. “Excuse me?”

Parker laughs. “You’re tied for best place! Both of you!”

It takes the family a solid ten minutes before they’ll let Rhys and Ivy explain. I watch the two of them, their obvious happiness, and lean against Parker’s side again. There really is no rulebook. Rhys has never followed one, at any rate.

Parker and I can do whatever we’d like.

Rhys and Ivy explain how they’d tied the knot, just the two of them and an officiant, on one of their trips. “We have pictures,” Ivy says, almost shyly. “Would you like to see?”

Later, Lily makes a Hail Mary pass for a chance to celebrate them. “How about we throw a party for you two? Please, Rhys? Ivy? I can handle everything!”

Hayden clears his throat and puts a hand on her shoulder. “Can you?”

“Yes, of course I can.”

“This is as good a time as any,” he says.

“Right now?”

“It’s what we’d planned,” he says.

She nods, and smiles, and taps her fork against her own glass a bit sheepishly. That’s how we learn that not only have Rhys and Ivy eloped, but Hayden and Lily are expecting another child.

Emma, oblivious to the cheers around us, tugs on Parker’s sleeve. “Captain,” she says.

He looks down to see her with an unopened lobster tail in hand. “Ah. Remember how I’ve showed you?”

“Yes, but it doesn’t work.”

“It does. Look here…” He cracks it open for her between strong fingers, and she giggles in response. I watch them with a warm weight in my chest. And when it’s time to raise a glass to Lily and Hayden, and to Rhys and Ivy, I do so with my eyes on Parker.

“And to us,” I mouth.

His smile widens. “Always.”

EPILOGUE

PARKER

Two years later

“Dad?” Emma calls. “Where are you?”

“In the garage!”

“We have to go!”

“I’m coming!” I rummage around the box, searching for the gloves I’d bought for her first lessons. It hasn’t gotten old yet, her calling me dad. She’d first started saying it a year ago. Casually, randomly, like it didn’t upend my entire world every time she did it.

The first time it had happened, Jamie had met my gaze over Emma’s head, oblivious in her play, and I’d seen she was just as shocked as I was.

From that moment on, Emma hadn’t stopped using it. I’d told her earlier that she could call me whatever she wanted, and she’d been the one to settle on Dad.

“Here they are,” I say, fishing out the pair. “Do you have your backpack?”

“Yes!”

I lock the garage and join her by my car. She’s shifting from foot to foot, hair neatly braided. Jamie had done it this morning before she went to work. “Water bottle? Life vest?”

“Yes,” she says, our wannabe teenager, and opens the door to the car.

I grin at her eagerness.

We drive down to the marina, and she talks the whole way, all nerves and excitement. We’ve sailed a lot over the past year together, but this is her first proper lesson with other kids from her school and the area.

“What if I fall in?” she asks when we’re down on the docks, watching the group by the training dinghies.

“You probably will, kiddo,” I say. “But you’ll be in a life vest.”

“It’ll be cold.”