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“Oh my fuck,” Eight groaned and patted his bare belly. “I’ve never eaten so much in my life.”
Laughing, Marcella rolled to snuggle up against his naked, rock-hard body. “You’re the one who insisted we do two Thanksgivings.”
It had been a whirlwind day. Her family ate Thanksgiving dinner as lunch, and the Bulls did it as dinner, so they’d managed to make both families happy, but Marcella, too, felt like her whole digestive system was about to explode. They might be naked together in her bed, but she doubted they’d actually fuck tonight. Whoo.
She’d never had Thanksgiving anywhere but with her family, so today had been sort of an anthropological observation as well. With the exception of turkey and mashed potatoes, they hadn’t had the same meal twice.
Eight had eaten collard greens for the first time today, and she’d had cranberry sauce that didn’t come from a can.
She preferred the canned stuff. Eight was no fan of collards. But they’d had two excellent meals, with excellent company. And Ajax had been beside himself.
He was the only child in the Lewis family. The chaos of the enormous Bulls family had been like a theme park to her son—who, she was learning by degrees, had been a little bit lonely in their tiny family.
“Thanksgiving is Mo’s favorite holiday,” Eight said, pulling Marcella out of her thoughts and back to the conversation. “I couldn’t bail on her.”
She rubbed his belly, which didn’t seem especially swollen. “You really love her.”
“Yeah. She’s always been there for me, knowing what I need even if I don’t. I guess she’s the closest thing to a mom I’ve had.” Hooking his arm around her and grabbing hold of one cheek of her ass—his favorite cuddling position—he added, “Your mom’s pretty great, too.”
“Yeah, she is.”
“And damn, you Lewis women cancook.”
“The Bulls women do okay, too. Ajax had a great day, today, Eight. I think it was his best Thanksgiving ever.”
His arm tightened into a hug. “Mine, too.” After a quiet minute, he said, “I’m a little jealous of you, you know?”
Lifting her head, she looked down at him, concerned. “What? Why?”
“Your family. Mom and dad, sister. Everybody loves each other. Even your parents. Until the Bulls, I never had anything close to that.”
Settling back on his shoulder, she hooked her arm around his belly and hugged him.
“I don’t get why they split up,” he said.
“They do love each other, yeah. But more like friends, I think. They kept a lot of their trouble out of reach of me and Von, but they fought at the end. A lot. I think Mom felt stifled as a housewife, and … I think … I think it was hard for her, in that culture of Dad’s work. All his coworkers were white, almost all of them were men, and all those men had white stay-at-home wives. I don’t think she felt like there was a place for her.”
“That sucks,” he said.
Marcella had a lot of thoughts about that reaction, a lot of questions she considered asking. But she decided she already had the answers. Even that two-word response was an answer.
So she continued with her story. “She was a lot happier after the divorce, even though there was a lot less money and she had to work her way up from an office cleaning job. I think she felt … in control of her life, I guess.”
He chuckled. “I’ve never felt like I had control of my life.”
“No?”
“Uh-uh. I don’t guess I felt out of control, either. I guess I never felt like there was much life to control. I’ve just been waking up and doing whatever I had to do to get to the next day.”
He rolled to his side, bringing her with him so her back rested against his chest. His arm came over her chest, and he hooked his hand around her shoulder. Marcella closed her eyes and felt the warm comfort of his big body.
“I don’t want to talk about that anymore,” he whispered against her ear.
“Okay. I’m sorry to bring up bad stuff.”
“It’s okay. It’s not that bad. I just don’t like to think about … myself, I guess.” He kissed her head. With his lips in her hair, he said, “I’m glad Ajax is so happy. You did so good, Marce. I’m sorry I left you to do it alone so long. But probably he’s better off because I wasn’t around.”
“No, Eight. I used to think so, too, but no. He wasn’t better off without you. You’re a good dad already. You’d have been a good dad from the start.”
