Peace.
I’d never felt it in my life. Not growing up in a tense household where everyone was either yelling or walking on eggshells to avoid the yelling.
Not when I was trying to make a toxic relationship work for the sake of a baby that wasn’t mine.
Not when people were fuckin’ with my bar.
And sure as shit not when I was staying detached to avoid repeating other people’s mistakes.
I didn’t feel it till I met Lo. Till she got under my skin, burrowing that peace into the marrow of my bones.
And as I looked out at our friends and family gathered together at Rye to celebrate our daughter’s fourth birthday, I couldn’t imagine my life without the feeling. I’d forgotten what it felt like to walk around empty. To wake up lonely. To know I was breathing. I was moving. But I wasn’t living.
“Whatcha thinking about, barman?” my wife asked as she came up next to me and set her piña colada—a non-alcoholic one—on the bar. Putting her elbows to the wood, she arched her back and stuck her ass out.
“Was thinking about how lucky I am, and that I’d live and die to show you how grateful I am for the beautiful life you’ve built with me.” I looked down and caught the tears that filled her big brown eyes.
She was a badass beyond anyone I’d ever met, but pregnancy hormones always made her weepy.
Not that I would tell her that. She’d rip my dick off.
“Now, with your ass out like that, I’m thinking that I’d put my baby inside you if you weren’t already pregnant.”
She laughed softly.
I wasn’t joking.
My wife pointed to where our daughter, Tate, stood in her fluffy birthday dress, tiara, and plastic cop badge. Jake and Piper’s son—adopted, but one hundred percent their son—had brought his handheld video game so Lo could help him beat a level. Rather than playing with the multitude of games and activities we’d set up for the little kids, Tate took after her mother. She was moreinto Rhett’s video game. And I could hear her telling him what to do.
That bossiness was definitely from her mother, too.
Lo moved her point to where our one-year-old son, Huck, sat on her dad’s lap while Anthony snuck him pieces of cookie. I was pretty sure more of the crumbs were spit out of Huck’s dimpled grin than were swallowed, but he was happy anyway.
Finally, she pointed down to her stomach which showed no signs of the baby she was just barely pregnant with. “I think we’ve got our hands full.”
“Yeah.” I paused before tacking on, “For about a year and a half or so.”
“Do you want a whole baseball team?”
“Nah, just the four will be good.”
“You’re insane.”
“I’m old,” I countered. “Got old man knees. Don’t have time to wait.”
“Nice try.”
She could act like she wasn’t into it, but I knew different. She loved seeing me with our kids just as much as I loved seeing her with them. And seeing her pregnant. And making her pregnant.
And practicing making her pregnant.
Hooking a finger in her belt loop, I tugged her to me till her front was plastered to my side. “Everyone seems to be having fun.”
“Of course they are. It’s impossible not to when our motley crew is all together.”
She had that right.
Her law enforcement family should’ve clashed with my Mayhem family, Nox and his expanding crew, and maybe even the Hyde group a little.
