She turns in my arms and runs a finger down my chest. Even though I just finished making love to her, my body stirs, ready to go another round. It’s like that with Rachel. We’ve both been insatiable. “Getting me naked in an RV every night?”

“Well, that, yes, but beyond that. I figured if the two of us could live for two weeks together in an RV, I could make a convincing case that we’d be happy together in a 900-square-foot apartment.” I shrug. “Oh. And some of the time we’d have an infant who still doesn’t always sleep through the night? I promise not to make you change diapers.”

“Brody. Are you asking me to move in with you?”

Her eyes glitter in the low light.

“Are you crying?” I ask, with wonder.

“Can I tell you something?” she says, sniffling. “When I was a little kid, and I played all those games? Library, wedding, house? Do you know who the groom was? The daddy? The man in the plan?”

I shake my head.

“You, Brody. It was you. It was always you.”

Epilogue

A Year Later—Rachel

Brody’s big boat is bursting at the seams.

We’re celebrating his official adoption of Justin, and the boat is full of Perezes and Wilders, a few friends from Rush Creek, Zoë and Zoë’s mom, Rena, because family is family even when it’s complicated.

I’m pretty sure it was the happiest moment of Brody’s life when he put that pen to paper and signed his name, making it official, although when I suggested that, he frowned. He said it was tied with when I stepped back from the door of my apartment in Boston and showed him the suitcases sitting there. “That was when I knew you were mine. And now I know Justin’s mine, too,” he said.

On the day Brody signed the papers, we got to take Justin home with us, where we fed him cake and ice cream and danced him around the apartment and let him fall asleep in the bed between us before we lowered him gently into the real, actual crib that we’d set up in the brand new nursery.

Now Justin’s running around the boat, talking up a storm to whomever will listen (everyone) about the boat and the birds and the elk and the pika and the cake—he’s all about the cake—and his cousins, who are already his biggest heroes.

After a while he runs out of steam and wants Zoë, and she takes him and sits with him while we bring him gifts.