With Damian at the helm of their forever mystifying double-stroller, Alexandra led the way into their Tennessee dream house.
At long last they were home.
Really, truly home.
And thanks to their beyond wonderful friends — their real family now — they had a home all unpacked and waiting for them.
Walking through their front door for the first time, which Damian had so smartly designed to allow for all their double-wide cargo, they, along with their two baby blue bundles, Wyatt and Tate, were greeted by everyone they loved and adored.
Roxy was first in line, making sure the twins had her Raeve BabyWear original t-shirts proudly displayed.
Alexandra laughed every time she looked at the twins in their baby tees — one shirt saying “Copy” and the second “Paste”.
Leave it to Roxy to make a one-of-a-kind statement.
And close behind her was Jules’ sweet, sweet face.
“They’re just beautiful, Alex,” she said, bending down to place soft kisses on the tops of each of their wacky hats, another Roxy Rae special. “You and Damian must be so proud.”
Alexandra looked at Damian, thinking she’d never seen him just completely beaming like he was today.
Knowing - even now, with their reality TV crew, quietly doing their thing, capturing all this on their cameras - that she and Damian weren’t reality stars and tabloid and evening news magazine fodder, they were real people, real first-time parents, a real couple so much in love with each other and their new life.
They’d do their jobs every day, whether that meant in front of the cameras or in her ad world or in Damian’s carpenter shop and office. They’d make time for their friends and each other. They’d get through their disagreements and annoyances.
They’d worry about the twins. God, they’d worry. Doing everything they knew how to do, then - let’s face it — all the things their baby nurse told them to do too, to make sure Wyatt and Tate were safe, happy, healthy and bolstered by love.
Maybe she never would totally escape her past and the name she carried, Alexandra thought. But, she’d sure made huge strides in forever re-branding what that name meant when someone heard it.
All she’d ever wanted was to be normal. A normal where people knew her and respected her for the woman she really was. And now, they were getting glimpses, albeit carefully orchestrated ones, at who exactly carried the name Alexandra McCall.
Normal to Alexandra and her new family would never be the normal of ninety percent of the population. She got that. She’d gradually come to accept that. And now, for the first time, she’d also learned to thrive on the opportunities her name presented.
She no longer hid from the inconveniences, and at times, dangerous parts of her personal truth.
She was safe. Successful by her own standards. And at peace with those same standards and the lifestyle they afforded her and her family.
And she was comfortable in her home - whether that home was in a Ward and June Cleaver neighborhood or a house, like their new one, sitting at the end of a long, wooded lane, fronted by a gate with private security.
Being able to raise her kids in an acceptable degree of privacy — in other words, getting them in and out of those way-complicated-to-her car seats and making it at least out the gate before the paparazzo ensued. That was almost a luxury.
Those were the states of being belonging to Alexandra’s new normal.
Before getting pregnant with her beautiful boys, she’d been sooo damn afraid to tell her truth. To face the cameras, convince those lenses and screens that she was innocent, then have the guts to live her life in the public way her past demanded.
Blame it on hormones or blame it on the love that led to their gigantic overtaking of her body, with Damian at her side - along with her house full of family of the heart - she no longer had to hide from anything.
And damn did this feel so right.
She could be herself. And stretch the boundaries of who that was. Hopefully at the same time her stretch marks were beginning to disappear.
Looking around the room, seeing Roxy and Jules, Zayne and Cody, Roman and Zoey, and The Mom Squad, Alexandra caught a little unexpected tug at a place deeper than her heart, a spot smack dab in the center of her soul.
She’d expected to find the courage to begin to live her truth, but she’d never expected that truth to be filled with so much happiness and love.
Beating her fears, or at least learning to live with them, not against them, had brought her a joy in life she’d never experienced. Perhaps, she never even knew that kind of life existed, well, not for a person with her family name and legacy.
She wiped tears from the corners of her eyes, which got Jules to fighting back her own and Roxy to start her foul mouth tirade about them being some kind of messed up babies.
“Watch your mouth there, Ace,” Jules told Roxy, giving her the look that usually resulted in additional four-letter words.
“Well, ain’t this gonna be a real treat,” Roxy said, yanking a tissue out of a box Jules was holding and handing it to Alexandra. “Do any of them books say how long before Wyatt and Tate should be able to actually understand what I’m saying?”
“Don’t even think about it,” Damian said, giving her his own, rather hot, don’t-mess-with-Dad warning.
“Shit. I mean crap,” Roxy said, to Damian still shaking his head.
“Poop? Doo-Doo?” She asked with a you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me look.
“Oh, now this just…,” she began than thank goodness her voice was gobbled up in the drywall between the kitchen and foyer.
Just like Roxy’s mouth, Alexandra hoped her perfect little fish bowl wasn’t just waiting to be shattered. But with Damian by her side, she could take life — her life — and all the crazy circumstances that brought one day at a time.
She now knew who she was and who she wanted to be. She knew and had accepted what people wanted from her. And had paved the way to give it to them. But give it on her own terms.
She’d come a long way from the Audrey Holtz who’d moved to Music City. She was now the real Alexandra McCall, and that had never felt so good.
Her father and his associates were on their way out, ready to pay the price for their way too cozy of a cash-making scheme, but Alexandra was forging a new McCall legacy. And along with all three of her fabulous Baker boys and their crazy casserole mix of a family, they were ready to take on life’s mysteries.
They may not be cash-rich by Wall Street standards, but they were rich where it mattered most…in their hearts and in their home.
THE END