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I've been there six times, mija, I know.
But the idea of being a mother to twins, yeah, that was actually pretty terrifying.
"They will outnumber me," I told him, looking down at the sonogram that really just looked like nothing to me even though I had maybe lied and said I saw them out of pure guilt.
"There are two of us, Livvy," he reminded me, lips twitching, trying to hold back the smile he knew I wouldn't appreciate right then. "And I have five sisters. And a mother who is dying for grand babies. And you have the whole girls club and Astrid too for help."
"Right. If I let Astrid take them, they will come back with fifteen pets each. And piercings."
To that, he snorted, shaking his head. "She's gonna make a great aunt. Even if we will have to build a chicken coop."
Yeah, so Astrid had a thing for chickens now. Meaning she kept a coop of thirty of them up at Hailstorm, something she had managed to talk Lo into because it meant endless fresh eggs and natural pest control so that she didn't have to worry about all the guard dogs getting ticks all the time.
"We are not getting chickens," I insisted.
But, apparently, I didn't know what I was talking about at the time.
My baby shower present was a box full of chicks.
Fluffy chicks.
And my body flooding with hormones, I hadn't been able to say no to the tiny, needy little things.Roderick - 6 years"Stop stealing your brother's truck," Liv demanded of Rune, the elder of our twin boys, with Croft being younger by four minutes, something his brother never let him forget.
They looked like us.
The same skin, the same dark eyes, the same dimples. Rune had two like me, Croft one like his mother.
Their little sister, Aviela, though, she was one-hundred-percent Livvy, right down to her hatred of banana chips.
The one in Livvy's arms was too little to know who it may look like. He'd been named Vas. In honor of a man who sent her on the path she eventually took. If not for him, I may never have met her, we may never have created what we had.
It was interesting when you really sat down and thought about things, how one small change, one step in a different direction would have made it so Livvy and I might never have even crossed paths. If either of us had been given decent fathers, if we hadn't crossed the border into the States, if she hadn't worked at a diner and met a Russian importer, if Cam hadn't been there that day in Camden to pull out that bullet and save her, if I hadn't heard about the party at The Henchmen MC compound, if the dog hadn't mauled me, distracted me, if Reign would have handled the situation himself.
So many little - and giant - things had needed to happen to bring us together. That realization was enough to really make you take stock of your life, understand that literally everything that had happened - both good and bad - had happened for a reason.
To bring us together.
Maybe that was sappy and romantic of me.
But standing there in our living room with her, looking at our children, there was no possible other conclusion to come to.
We'd bought the house on a lark when the people next to Maze and Repo moved out. It had been fine to live at the loft once we all did a switch - Astrid heading up to Hailstorm, Camden to the clubhouse, us to the loft - when the babies were little. But as soon as they became mobile, we knew we needed a yard, a fence, a place to keep the chickens that wasn't the roof or balcony.
It was interesting to watch Liv nest, this woman who had lived in her old loft for years without ever so much as putting an accent carpet down on the cold cement floors of her bedroom.
Once we had a place of our own though, she had the guys from the club slaving day and night like they were all prospecting again, ripping up old carpets, laying hardwood floor with accent rugs over it, painting the walls, putting up shutters, changing out light fixtures. Within a month of moving in, you couldn't even tell it was the same house.
There were things that never changed. The couch - and bed - were always covered in too many pillows, too many blankets. Camden came by every Sunday with a box of donuts. Astrid showed up at least once a week to whisper in the kids' ears about other animals we could potentially own now that we had a half acre of property.
But other things had.
There was art on the walls - both from Ana and the kids who, well, had no such talent, bless their unskilled little fingers. And Christmas - which was at our place at Liv's insistence because of a deal she'd made with Astrid so many years ago - was a much bigger affair with my mother and all my sisters - and their eventual men - around.
