“We’ll figure it out,” she said confidently, then continued her basking.
Every night I made love to Emery. The sex we were having had changed into something softer. The hour glass running out of sand seemed to bring that out of us.
Then on Wednesday, he came home from work, upset and exhausted, grabbed my hand and pulled me out of the house. We ended up in that equipment shed again, and there was nothing gentle in the way he needed me, so I gave him what he wanted.
He was aggravated, almost fighting me, while simultaneously pushing back to every thrust. Once we’d both come, I pulled out roughly to give him just a little bit more of what he needed, and then I hugged him tighter than I had in days.
He didn’t explain what was going on, because he didn’t need to. It was a combination of time running out and whatever had happened at work.
“Thank you,” he murmured against my neck.
I didn’t say anything, because I wanted to say “any time” but that wasn’t true, because I’d be gone soon.
Thursday evening was a Harrington Family Game Night. Apparently this was a thing, and everyone was invited. I didn’t even want to do a head count, because the house was packed full.
There was a game of Monopoly going on at one end of the dining table. The other one had Scrabble. The coffee table in the living room was hosting UNO, and there was also a kids’ game Payton was patiently teaching Aria, who was just old enough to understand it.
Crew and Mal were sitting on the floor with the kids, playing with them while pretending they didn’t know how to play it. It was adorable as all hell.
Since I was late to the party—I’d made some travel arrangements for Sunday afternoon, a timeline I’d been ignoring as best as I could—everyone was already settled.
Nick was observing the Scrabble while he made sure snack bowls and drinks were full. I went to get myself a pop from the middle of the table, then leaned to the counter out of Nick’s way as I watched the different games. Mike came into the kitchen from somewhere in the back, then kissed the top of Jenn’s head and whispered something in her ear. She immediately started to reorganize her Scrabble tiles.
“Hey, that’s cheating!” Gemma exclaimed from her seat across the table.
Judson nodded. “What Gemma said!”
Wren tried to hold back laughter, but didn’t succeed. I glanced at the score pad Judson was in charge of, and Wren was in the lead, but nobody was surprised about that. He was too good with words.
Bodhi’s gaze snapped up at the sound of Wren’s raspy laugh from where he sat by the Monopoly board.
“Straight to jail for you!” Hawk crowed, pointing at Fern.
For some reason, she smirked evilly, then started to—bark like a dog?
Mike noticed my expression and sidled up to me. “House rule. If the one who uses the Scottie piece gets jailed, they can immediately get out by doing… that.” He nodded toward his daughter. “It’s why we had to do a random draw for pieces when they were kids, because everyone wanted the dog.”
“That still happened tonight,” Nick stated dryly.
“Are there any other house rules I should know of?” I asked, hugely amused by this Monopoly one.
“There’s something for every game,” Mike said with a shrug, though his voice was fond. “When you’re trying to keep this many people interested, and they all have a competitive streak they inherited from their mother–”
“Rude,” Jenn interjected, adding her tiles to the board. Gemma immediately cupped her hands around her eyes likebinoculars, and Jenn smirked. “Go ahead and look it up little girl. Syzygy is a real word.”
“No way you had two y’s and a z,” Gemma grumbled even as she grabbed her phone. A second later, she let out a whine. “Fine. You win.”
I stared as Gemma stood up and curtsied to her mother, who accepted the acknowledgement with a hand on her daughter’s head.
“Noooo…,” Keegan whined in the living room. I looked over to see him trying to organize what seemed like an impossible amount of UNO cards in his hands.
Since Emery was playing it with Kee, Demi, Jerrica, and Isley, I went to sit on the couch next to Russ, who was also just watching the proceedings.
“UNO gets competitive as all hell,” Russ said quietly. “It’s a bit rowdy with these ones, though.”
I watched as the siblings bantered and played, I realized that I’d never had this. Not only was I an only child, but I hadn’t had many friends growing up. I hadn’t been able to bring anyone home because of my dad, and the closest I’d gotten to this type of pastime was in the summers at the cottages with my cousins.
We’d played some board games and even some regular old card games, but we’d been more into being outdoors and swimming and fishing.
