Free Happily Ever After: A Day in the Life of the HEA (Rook and Ronin #3.5) by J.A. Huss Page A

to say thank you, and I was telling him that story about what I was doing on Christmas Eve the year before. And I told him I was wishing on a star to make my life change. Just anything, you know. I just needed to leave that bad situation and start fresh.”
    “Yeah,” I say, thinking back to that first year we were together. It was tough. We all had a past that was catching up with us.
    “Well, every Christmas Eve since then I go out into the night after everyone is asleep and I wish on my star again. Only instead of begging for a change, I beg for more of the same.”
    God, I love her.
    “I don’t ask for perfection, Ronin. I don’t ask for more money or a bigger house. I don’t ask for pretty things or gifts. I don’t ask for anything but more of the same. Because every moment with you is perfect, even when it’s not.”
    I open my mouth to talk, but she shushes me again. “I don’t want you to apologize for providing for us, Ronin. I don’t want you to feel like you’ve missed things. I don’t want you to be anything or anyone but who and what you are. Because you’re perfectly imperfect and I don’t need perfection. I just need more of the same.” And then she raises her glass and says, “Cheers to us, Ronin. We made it. We started this life with everything against us, but we made it.”
    “Cheers to us,” I say back, gazing into those blue eyes that electrified me so long ago. “I wouldn’t change a minute, Gidget. So cheers to us.”
    “And I love,” she says, just before she’s about to take a drink, “that you let me call you Larue, even though everyone knows you wanted to be Gidget.”
    Yes, I think as I laugh. I might not be perfection, but she certainly is.
    She’s certainly perfect for me.
    “I have a present for you, Larue.” She hands me her glass of champagne and walks over to the hot tub and flips the lid over, then eases it all the way off. The steam rises up in waves and swirls as it mingles with the cold mountain air.
    “Get in,” she says, walking back over to me and taking both glasses from me. I take off my coat, drape it over a chair, and then get in, hissing as the hot water comes in contact with my skin. She hands me back both glasses and then walks over to the little black case and produces a portable projection machine. She inserts a flash drive and smiles at me over her shoulder.
    “What are you up to?” I laugh.
    “You’ll see,” she says, finishing up and walking back to me. She slips her coat off, piles it on top of mine, and then eases down into the water next to me, taking her glass back. She’s got a small remote control in her hand that she clicks, and then the side of the house comes to life with a movie.
    “What did you do?”
    “I made us a movie.” She laughs. “I don’t make many these days, but I got an idea last Christmas. I knew then that the kids were growing up too fast, so I spent all year putting this together. And maybe we don’t have all our special moments in here, but we’ve got enough, Ronin.”
    The film starts and it’s the movie I made the day Sparrow was born. Ford and Spencer are there. Ashleigh and Veronica. Five is still small in Ashleigh’s arms, and Kate is clinging to Ford. Spencer is holding a Cinderella version of Rory, and Veronica is leaning over Rook, cooing down at Sparrow.
    “That’s when it became real, you know?” Rook is looking at me with wide blue eyes. “Our wedding was the start, but Sparrow was when it became real.”
    I totally get it. “Yeah,” I say back softly. “She made us real.”
    “And every day after that just got better and better, Ronin. So I put it all together into a movie for us. So no matter how fast they grow, we’ll always have this to remind us of what it was like in the beginning.”
     

Chapter Fifteen
     

    “Ford,” Spencer calls across the great room. We put all the kids except Cindy to bed an hour ago, but Spencer had exactly seventeen toys that need assembly. Somehow