Part 1
1: The Birthday
Dash
July 3, 2019
Sea Springs, Texas
Something as simple as a roll from one side of the bed to the other had become a complicated deal for me these days. I’d been in this predicament every time I tried to sleep for almost three years. The primary culprit: pajama-fucking-pants.
What numbnut invented something so pointless? Clearly, they had no feeling in their nuts. Every time I moved I cut off essential blood flow to the region, which woke me up repeatedly. How could something made with good old-fashion American ingenuity have such a glaring oversight?
Then, as if that weren’t the most awful thing in the world, my pride added a fatal blow, preventing me from swapping these ridiculous pants for comfortable form-fitting athletic shorts like Beau wore. In the beginning, when clothes in bed became a thing, I chose pajama pants when Beau thought I should wear shorts. Now, he slept like a comfortable baby while I generally stared at the back of his head, not even his face, though I doubted that would help pacify my frustration after all this time.
For the sake of my current pity party, I usually avoided the truth: I was too damned hard-headed. I put these pants on every night, no one forced them on me. My husband of almost four years, Beau Richmond-Brooks, had taught me a good lesson about being too focused on things that weren’t near as important as him. Nowadays, I reserved my argumentative nature for the courtroom or for situations like this, where my defiance to admit I was wrong, only led to my own discomfort, no one else.
As I lay there, staring at my husband’s broad shoulders, I counted his long, measured breaths while my thoughts slipped to other things. Despite our challenges, Beau and I still squabbled over our minor differences. The same ones we’d had from the beginning, nineteen years ago. They typically revolved around something I wanted that veered off the course Beau set for himself. In our current life, Beau never bent. But he had a unique ability to capture my attention and steer me back onto his track.
Silently, yet with a touch of drama, I rolled over. My pants stayed in their previous position, cutting off more circulation than before. I stared at the dark ceiling, manifesting new thoughts about how much I loved my life.
As I rested my palm on my shirtless chest—noting that was how my whole body should be—I rubbed at the sweet ache of insurmountable joy there.
Fortunately, I didn’t need much sleep. I lifted my head, catching the first rays of morning sunlight peeking around the sides of the curtains. In peaceful moments, I reflected on all the victories I had accomplished over the past four years. This perfectly sized, cozy bedroom was one of them.
We had managed to build a replica of Beau’s ancestral family home, making only a few minor adjustments. While I didn’t override Beau’s vision, I made tiny enhancements. I couldn’t resist incorporating a few elements from my Dallas home. For example, this bedroom suite was much larger than the previous one. That oversized, open concept followed throughout the entire home. I installed a few smart options in all the first floor rooms. Mood lighting and a sound system helped nourish my soul. Beyond the curtains in our room were the same floor-to-ceiling retractable windows that we’d had before. They led to a private section of the nice-sized swimming pool in our backyard.
Many nights, Beau and I would sneak out for a private swim, sharing conversation and simply enjoying being in each other’s company. Those memories stayed vividly trapped inside my heart, truly special moments for me.
When sneaking outside wasn’t an option, we’d take refuge in the en suite bathroom built for a king, or two guys who really liked to spend time alone. Bubble baths were a new addition to our private time. The oversized, luxury bathtub was everything to me. I cherished holding my guy in a cozy embrace, surrounded by warm, temperature-controlled water with tight bubbles floating on top. My cock firmed underneath my pajama pants, the material not stretching to accommodate the additional space. I ran my hand down my chest to travel under the waistband and grip my cock.
I tugged in measured movements, continuing my mapping of the first floor of our home. The bedroom opened into the furthest side of the living room. A dining room and spacious kitchen were all there in an open concept, making the downstairs feel enormous. But while christening our home, I demanded each of those spaces be considered separate. I fucked my guy over the kitchen island, the dining table, and every piece of furniture in the living room. My fist gave a hungry stroke down then up again, until the whispers penetrated the room.
The sound came from the baby monitor on my nightstand. “Livie, wake up,” Ava said quietly to her sister, unaware that we could hear every little sound coming from their second-floor bedroom.
“The sun’s not up,” Livie whispered, bringing a smile to my lips.
“Mia?” Ava said.
“Paw said we have to stay in bed.” Mia had a way of drawing me into her sweet charm.
Our identical triplets. Who would have ever guessed that was a possibility with in vitro? It was a shocking discovery during an early ultrasound.
Where Mia believed in being happy, she teetered between right and wrong. Livie followed all the rules. If there were no rules in place, she created them to remove any potential chaos to her day. Ava, well, we had trouble there. She enjoyed breaking all of Livie’s rules. As a parent, Livie was a dream child. As someone watching from a distance, Mia and Ava had all the fun.
I tuned out the whispers, confident that Amelia would handle them. She loved and cared for those little girls as much as Beau and I did. She’d become their belovedabuela.
The damned hospital gave us a false sense of assurance and confidence, making their care look effortless. They handled our daughters like they were footballs—flipping them front to back, side to side while changing their diapers and swaddling them in their blankets. Even during their neonatal stay when they were barely the size of my hand, those nurses were fearless with their care. Yeah right. There was no way Beau and I could have managed the trio alone. Three crying babies in a home of two men who had never been around children... Hell, we’d been outnumbered from the minute we were told there were three.
In the end, they survived the baby stage, and so did we.
Beau counted it a win for the parents side, which included his influence. So the win was his.
We had no difficulty getting pregnant. It wasn’t a consideration not to have all three once we got over the shock of the idea. A week shy of their third birthdays, our little girls continue to bring unbelievable depth to our love and lives. They could be quite bossy, and entirely too smart to accept simple answers to their constant questions of “why,” and they were good big sisters to our infant son, Weston. His baby monitor came with a video screen and sat next to the girls’ walkie-talkie-type listening device.
“You have to be quiet,” Ava said.
“Stay in bed until the sun comes into the window,” Livie said, repeating Beau’s directive.
