Page 107 of My Big Fat Daddy Issues

"The porch was a nice touch," I say. "Not in any of my drafts."

"Improvised." His chest moves up and down.

"Romantic being ass fucked by Grandpa in the rain."

"I do what I can."

The storm is winding down.

The first few months of us, I couldn't breathe under it. My father's face. The silence at a family dinner thinking when we'd have to explain that Pawpaw and Billie are together. That the age gap is thirty-two years and we don't care.

I've stopped carrying that weight. Whenever we decide to tell them, they'll either understand or they won't. The people who love us will come around.

And until then, I have this. The games, the writing, the quiet mornings after when he makes me coffee and reads my pages and tells me which scenes made him hard and which ones need a second draft.

"I'm going to write about tonight," I tell him.

"I know you are."

"The chase scene is going to be incredible."

"It better be. I got mud in places mud has no business being."

I laugh into his chest and he squeezes me tighter.

"Hey," I say, tipping my face up to look at him.

"Hey."

"I love you."

He cups my jaw in his rough hand and kisses me. When he pulls back, his thumb traces my bottom lip.

"Love you, sweetheart. More than I know how to say."

"Good thing I'm the writer, then."

He chuckles and we kiss. The rain softens to a murmur and my body hurts and feels so alive.

Rhett's breathing evens out but his long arms stay tight around me. I listen to his heartbeat and think about the ring he gave me, tucked in my nightstand drawer where no one will find it until we decide to show them.

I press closer and the storm fades and the house goes quiet around us.

I fall asleep already writing the first line of our happily ever after.

Chapter 8

Epilogue

Three Years Later

Three hundred women in a Bellagio ballroom are losing their minds over my wife. I'm against the back wall with a bourbon, watching.

Billie at a signing table is a different animal than Billie at home. The line wraps around the room and she's making every person in it feel like the only one. Same thing she does to me.

A woman in the line elbows her friend and points at me. They whisper. I tip my hat and they both turn the color of the Strawberry Margaritas they're holding.

Billie's readers know I'm the inspiration.