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The grunt that left his mouth had my lips curving up into a small smile.
“One day,” he said, “this’ll probably settle down to the point where I don’t come in two seconds like a teenager. But for now… I’m gonna live it the fuck up.”
He collapsed to the side, bringing me with him.
“Gotta get up and pee,” I said softly.
He let me go, and I went to clean up.
When I came back, he was under the covers.
When I got close, he lifted them up, and I crawled in beside him.
When I was comfortable on the pillow beside him, he laughed, then tugged me closer to him.
“Here. In my arms. That’s where you sleep from now on,” he ordered like the alpha male that he was.
I snorted. “You’re too hot.”
“I’m just right,” he countered.
Then I went and proved him right by falling asleep moments later.
CHAPTER 24
Is fucktastrophy a legitimate word yet? Because I feel like that would be a legitimate one to bring up to Webster for his dictionary.
-Wake to Bain
WAKE
Three days later, I had a houseful of kids and the promise of ‘I’ll be back soon’ from Danyetta.
Honestly, I highly doubted that.
She thought she was being sneaky, but I knew the score.
She was seeing Aodhan again and didn’t want me, nor Bowie, to know.
Well, that was completely fine with me.
What wasn’t fine with me was her getting hurt.
Therefore, I would be talking to Aodhan again.
He wouldn’t share that I knew, but he would understand where I stood. Which was all that mattered.
The additional kids meant more food needed, so, the grocery store it was. I could practically hear the kids chattering up a storm from a few aisles over, so I headed in that direction.
I turned the corner onto the detergent aisle to see a girl with a bottle of Tide up to her mouth, chugging it back like she was thirsty and that bottle of Tide was the only thing going to quench her thirst.
I stopped and stared, open-mouthed, as she finally looked over and realized that she had company.
Upon seeing the look on my face, she said, “I was going to pay for it! I swear!”
I blinked a few times before saying, “I can assure you, that was the last thing in the world that I was worried about.”
Movement over her shoulder caught my eye, and I saw the psychiatrist staring at the woman with a look of horror herself.
My little psychiatrist.
My wife.
“Dutch,” I said quietly.
Dutch’s head whipped around, and she was so horrified by what she’d just seen that it was apparent from the look on her face.
I couldn’t help but laugh.
But my girl? Well, she had a soft heart, and she was a fixer.
“Are you okay?” Dutch asked the woman.
The woman broke down and cried. Cried like she was losing the best thing in the world.
“I’m pregnant, and I just want it to go away!”
That’s when I focused on the girl’s age. She had to be all of fourteen or fifteen.
“Oh, honey,” Dutch said softly, then handed her a card out of her pocket. “Stop what you’re doing, because that’ll just harm you in the long run. Which you don’t want to do. Call my office manager and set up an appointment, we can discuss plans. In the meantime, we should call an ambulance to get your stomach checked out.”
The girl took the card, looked up into Dutch’s eyes, and then threw herself at her.
After a hard and fast hug that still had the ability to make my heart race because I knew that Dutch was still hurting, the girl ran.
“Well, that was awkward,” I admitted.
“I don’t even know what to say,” she agreed. “I… that’s… I don’t know.”
I snorted out a laugh and then said, “You pretty much summed up everything that was processed in mine as well.”
“Dad!” Lolo cried from the next aisle over. “How about some sundaes!”
We moseyed back to the correct aisle hand in hand, me feeling like a fool for not finding this happy months ago.
When we got there, I found a buggy that only slightly pulled to the left, and followed behind.
I looked at the box of waffle cone bowls already in her hand, as well as the chocolate syrup and whipped cream in Dayden’s.
Then I shrugged. “You know you could just make your own chocolate syrup at home with maple syrup and cocoa, right?”
“No way!” Bowie cried. “That’s not how you make that!”
“That’s exactly how you make that,” I countered.
Bowie threw his spoils into the cart, then pulled out his phone to fact-check me.
The non-believing little shit.
“Holy shit, you’re right!” he cried.
I was.
We’d grown up rich, but my family had definitely hated having bad shit in the house. Sometimes, you had to get creative if you were craving something your parents refused to buy you.
“Ruh-roh,” I heard Bowie grumble.
“What?” Lolo asked. “What is…” She trailed off, her eyes getting this terrified look of stark terror on her face. I looked around for the reason for that terror and found it at the end of the aisle.
