Page 191 of Clinically Bewitched
I laughed out loud at that, and Julien looked over at me, his eyes crinkling at the corners in that way that still made my stomach flip.
He’d changed so much in four years since we met. Not in the fundamental ways. He was still organized, still made lists, still color-coded things that absolutely didn’t need to be color-coded. But the rigidity was gone. The desperate need for control. The fear of letting go.
He still made spreadsheets, but now, they were only for the things that truly mattered.
Birthdays. Anniversaries. The day we met—which he’d marked in his calendar as “The Day Everything Changed” and refused to let me see the detailed timeline he’d created of our entire relationship. He made schedules for family vacations and plans for holiday celebrations and detailed lists for the kids’ activities, but he didn’t make spreadsheets for every single day anymore.
He didn’t need to.
Because he’d learned what I’d always known: the universe had a plan, and sometimes the best thing you could do was trust it. Even when it was terrifying. Especially when it was terrifying.
“Mama!” Stella called from her tree branch. “Come play with us!”
“In a minute, sweetheart!”
“The universe says you should come now!”
I laughed and set down my tea. “The universe is very demanding today.”
“The universe is always demanding,” Julien grumbled, walking over to the porch. He sat down beside me, and I immediately leaned into him, fitting perfectly against his side like I always had. Like I always would.
“Tired?” I asked.
“Exhausted. How do they have so much energy?”
“They’re three. Energy is their default state.”
“I performed a six-hour surgery last week, and I wasn’t this tired.”
“That’s because surgery patients don’t ask you to play dinosaurs seventeen times in a row.”
“Eighteen times. Atlas asked again while you were making lunch.”
I smiled and kissed his cheek. “You’re a good daddy.”
“I’m a tired daddy.”
“Those things aren’t mutually exclusive.”
He wrapped his arm around me, and we sat there for a moment, watching our children play. Luna was now examining Stella’s “injuries” from climbing the tree (there were no actual injuries, but Luna was very thorough). Atlas had released the beetle and was now drawing in the dirt with a stick, creating what appeared to be a complex diagram.
“Do you ever think about that night in Vegas?” Julien asked quietly.
“Every day.”
“Really?”
“Every single day.” I turned to look at him. “Do you?”
“Constantly.” He paused. “I think about how terrified I was. How certain I was that I’d made the biggest mistake of my life.”
“And now?”
“Now I know it was the best decision I ever made.” He kissed my temple. “Even if I didn’t actually make it consciously.”
“The universe made it for you.”
“The universe got me drunk and took advantage of my compromised decision-making abilities.”
