Page 147 of Her Ex-Husband's Brother

It isn’t a desperate kiss.

There’s no danger chasing us and no one pounding on a door. There’s no fear that this might be our final chance.

It’s soft.

Certain.

The kind of kiss that assumes there will be another one later.

And another after that.

When we pull apart, Lennon looks down at the two kittens tangling themselves around our feet.

“So,” she says. “Mayhem and Goblin?”

I glance at the sleepy cream boy, who has somehow managed to roll off her lap and land upside down.

“Which is which?”

“We’ll know soon enough.”

For the first time in far too long, Lennon laughs without anything wounded hiding underneath it.

And there she is.

My girl with the light in her eyes.

THIRTY-EIGHT

LENNON

It’s been a long,hard road. And we’re not even halfway through. The lawyers are still just in “discovery,” and it could be another whole year before the trial even starts.

I’m learning to make peace with it. Trying, anyway.

As my therapist says,why give that bastard a second more of my life than he already stole?

Yes, I still have to process the trauma. That’s the work we do in her office once a week.

But also, I’ve already lost a decade of my damn life.

It’s time to get busyliving.

After so many years so damn lonely, my life is ridiculouslyfullnow. There’s August, and the coolest little boy in the world I’m getting to know, Owen, and our two kitties rounding out the madness.

The kitties certainly do their best to live up to their names, Mayhem and Goblin. Mayhem is a romper who loves climbing curtains, and Goblin will stare me in the face from across theroom with mischief in his eye and then knock things off the shelf with his paw.

It doesn’t help that Owen giggles with delight every time he does it, reinforcing the devilish habit. Between Owen, Mayhem and Goblin chasing each other around the house, everything August and I neatly tidy up each night we’re on Owen-duty is absolutely wrecked by ten a.m. the next morning.

And I absolutely love it.

I’ve never loved my life more, in fact.

Or August.

How did I get so lucky as to be loved by this man?

His spirit is so goddamned beautiful, and he battles every day to manage his mood disorder like a Buddhist monk, practicing acceptance with his ups and downs. We notice and have named them rabbit-mode and turtle-mode. Neither mode has to have any power of judgment in it, and we work our lives to accommodate both.