Sam mumbled a ‘night’ from around a tortilla.
I rolled my eyes, winked at Cheyenne, and started marching out while Fancy said her goodbyes.
By the time we got to the Suburban, I had all of our kids strapped in.
“You know what this means, don’t you?”
“No,” Phoebe said, shaking her head. “I refuse.”
“It’s out of your control.”
***
Hours later, once the kids were all in bed, and the house was locked up tight, I walked to my bedroom and quietly closed the door behind me.
We’d moved into our new place a little over three years ago and now had fifteen acres outside of town next to Hoax, who’d purchased acreage from the same man.
The house was exactly as my Fancy had wanted it, and each paint color, crown molding, light fixture, and bookshelf was something that we’d always dreamed of.
“It’s not out of my control, Bayou,” Phoebe said the moment I entered the room.
I stripped off my shirt and tossed it to the ground, and her eyes widened.
“What are you doing?” she asked warily.
I started stripping out of my jeans, letting them fall to the floor at my bare feet.
“I’m getting undressed,” I lied.
She looked at me like she didn’t believe me, as well she shouldn’t.
The moment that I was free of my jeans, I launched myself at her.
She squeaked and tried to roll away, but I caught her around the waist before she could so much as move an inch.
“Why does me being pregnant cause you to be so horny?” she fake-whined.
I grinned down at her as I pressed my mouth to the hollow of her throat.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Dixie thinks it’s because us Normus’ like to procreate a little too much.”
She snorted. “That’s obviously not true at all.”
The sarcasm in her words was enough to cause even the most literal of people to understand.
Hoax had four kids, two sets of twins, and obviously two more on the way. Whereas I had five and one more on the way.
That was twelve great-grandchildren in between only two grandsons.
That wasn’t even including everybody else that was part of the Normus family.
“I don’t like where your mind is going,” she whispered roughly.
I licked from her collarbone to the inside of her elbow. “Why do you taste like honey?”
“Vivian likes to eat those sopapillas, and my mom lets her use the honey.” She paused. “I’m pretty sure that it’s everywhere that wasn’t clothed.”
“And you didn’t take a shower?” I teased.
She shook her head. “No. Why would I when I know you’re about to get me dirty?”
Why would she indeed?
An hour later, when both of us were thoroughly sated, cleaned, and once again lying in bed, she hammered her edict home.
“I refuse to get a minivan. They don’t seat any more than the Suburban does…we just have to find one that has two bench seats.”
And find one with two bench seats we did.
Three weeks after our final baby was born, I had a vasectomy and Phoebe had her tubes tied, as well as burned.
She really was serious. There would be no minivans in her future…or passenger vans.
What’s Next?
It Happens
Book 6 in The Bear Bottom Guardians MC
Ezekiel and Jubilee
2-12-19
Everything will be okay in the end. If not, there’s always beer.
-Zee’s secret thoughts
Zee
Today was my thirty-fourth birthday, and there were probably about a million people in this world that I could see. Yet I had to see him.
Baron Joy, the firefighter that had stolen my girlfriend of almost three years. The man that Zuri had chosen over me.
See, here’s the thing.
In the beginning, I would’ve let it go.
Did it suck? Yes.
Did it piss me off that she’d cheated instead of just telling me she was upset with how much I worked? Yes.
But, I was an adult. I was able to make grown-up decisions despite being hurt.
Yet, neither one of them had informed me of any involvement until I’d brought Zuri to a Christmas party with me at the fire station. During the gift exchange, I’d planned on asking Zuri to move in with me. Except Baron Joy, also known as BJ by the fire department, had happened.
I hadn’t given much thought to Zuri disappearing the moment we’d arrived. She was a popular woman, and the firefighter wives had loved her to death. She’d gotten along well with all of the women, and even more, she’d fit in despite being new to a town that was so tight-knit that sometimes it was hard to tell your neighbor from your family member.
It was only after an hour or so of not seeing her that I decided to go look for her. And I’d found her all right. In the part of the station that the local ambulance service used as their living quarters while they were on shift.
There I’d walked in on them not only kissing, hugging, and fucking, but I’d also walked in on a discussion between the two of them that consisted of Baron telling Zuri he loved her, and Zuri saying it back.
From there it’d just been a clusterfuck, which led to now, five months later, and me unable to be in the same room as Baron Joy without me wanting to filet the skin of his face off with my bowie knife.
So, of course, it was no damn surprise that he walked in to the same damn bar that I went to every fucking year and drank on my birthday.
Because not only was it my birthday, but it was my dead twin’s birthday.
Needless to say, I’d already been in a shit mood when I’d arrived at my favorite bar in town.
It’d worsened when I saw her there, doing the same goddamn thing I’d been set on doing.
Sometimes I thought that she did it on purpose, let me see her. Just so she could torture me.
Though, when I thought about it, Jubilee wasn’t that type of person.
If I was an honest man, I’d realize that Jubilee was likely here for the same reason I was—to get drunk and forget about my brother and my past.
Yet, when it came to Jubilee Cope, nothing ever came easy, and I never was able to have a straight head.
I’d been doing my best to ignore Jubilee as she’d done me the same courtesy, when they walked in.
If there was one person that knew where I went on this day, it was Zuri.
Zuri, who’d been a kind, decent woman while I was seeing her, had turned into a vindictive cow the moment that I’d kicked her out of my life. It hadn’t been my fault that my father and Silas, the owner of Angel Flight in Bear Bottom, had kicked her to the curb, too.
What did she think, that she would keep the job that I got for her?
No.
I had patience, and I could work with people I didn’t like, but I couldn’t work with someone like Zuri. There were limits to everything, and Zuri had surpassed them.
Honestly, it’d been sort of a relief for me to go to Silas and tell him that I was quitting because of Zuri. What I hadn’t expected was for Silas to fire Zuri just so he could keep me on part-time.
I’d reluctantly accepted, and Zuri had been fired.
Yet now she went out of her way to make my life a living hell…such as coming into my bar, on my day, and making me see her and BJ.
Consequently, I ignored them, and I ignored Jubilee who was now watching on with amusement. I continued to get hammered.
Or tried to, anyway.
The bartender, a young woman all of twenty-five at most, kept handing me waters with a smile, and I kept drinking them.
The water came courtesy of the woman I was trying to ignore.
Regardless of our mutual dislike of each other, we still went out of our way to make sure that we were taken care of.
I mean, sure, we couldn’t stand to be in each other’s presence for longer than just a few minutes before we started fighting. But no matter what, I’d look after her just as she’d do the same for me. There was an obligation there that’d been set in place since she was six years old and I was nine years old and met for the first time.
Even though, at first, we hadn’t been as civil.
It was only after I’d followed the job to Bear Bottom, Texas from Arkansas that I realized that I hadn’t been the only one Silas and my father had sent packing. Jubilee had gotten the same invitation, and she’d accepted.
Though, luckily, we didn’t accept the same job.
Which was funny if you thought about it.
Where I was a protector of life, Jubilee was the preserver of death.
I was a sheriff’s deputy and also worked as a pilot of Angel Flight, Jubilee was an undertaker. A mortician in layman’s terms.
I could see her out of the corner of my eye, and what I saw still made me roll my eyes.
Jubilee, despite her jovial name, was as goth as one could get without having the white facial makeup. Though, there were days that she didn’t need it since she was so fucking pale—which was why I assumed that she didn’t bother with wearing it. Why bother applying the pale base when your skin was the exact shade of ghostly white that you’d set out to attain with makeup?
She and AnnMarie couldn’t have been more different.
AnnMarie, my high school sweetheart, had been all brightness and sunshine. She’d had blonde hair that she styled in the cutest pixie haircut, blue eyes, and a precious smile that could knock you off your feet. She was sweet, caring, and welcoming to everyone.
Jubilee was…not.
Jubilee had black hair so black that it sometimes shined blue in the right light. It was curly as fuck and hung down to her ass when she wore it down. She wore black clothes, black nail polish, and black jewelry if she wore any at all.
Hell, the only spot of color on her at all was the necklace that AnnMarie used to wear—an oval opal on a delicate silver chain. Something that I had actually given to Jubilee for Christmas, but AnnMarie had stolen and had never given back.
At the time I’d given it to Jubilee, it’d been my first Christmas with AnnMarie, and Jubilee’s first Christmas with Eitan. We’d all exchanged gifts, and Jubilee and Annmarie had laughed as they’d gotten their gifts that I’d bought the two of them with my hard-earned part-time paycheck at the auto body shop that I did bodywork for.
I’d gotten AnnMarie a deep purple oval stone necklace because purple had been her favorite color. I’d gotten Jubilee the white opal because I had no idea what she liked and felt bad for not getting her anything.
I thumbed the silver belt buckle Jubilee had gotten me and took another sip of my beer.
An obnoxious laugh had me stiffening.
Sometimes I wondered if Zuri laughed like that just because she knew that it grated on my nerves. It was a high-pitched, ear-piercing laugh that never failed to hit an octave that sounded like nails on a chalkboard.
And just when she stopped, I let out a relieved breath only to see BJ come up to the bar four stools down from me and order his ‘girl’ a margarita despite having a waitress that was running back and forth to them all night.
I knew why he’d showed up near the bar. He wanted me to see him.
Well, goddammit, I had.
And now I was pissed.
Would it be so fucking hard for him to stay across the goddamn bar and give me goddamn room on one single day of the year?
Why yes, yes it would kill him.
The mother fucker.
I downed my beer and was just about to turn on my barstool, giving him the attention that he so obviously wanted, with my fist, when a feminine sigh sounded from my other side.
“Listen,” Jubilee said as sidled up to the bar. “Getting drunk and then starting a fight with those two isn’t going to do you any good. The town is on your side because you’re the one wronged. You start stooping down to their level and you’re going to regret it. You’re a sheriff’s deputy, act like it.”
Jubilee sat down on the barstool next to me and continued drinking her beer, and I reluctantly started to calm down because goddammit, she was right. I needed to cool my jets. I needed to get a handle on this anger that I felt toward them, yet it was hard seeing as every goddamn time that I did try to let it go they brought it back up again.
With a vengeance.
But I didn’t stop drinking.
There was no way that was happening today.
“Why are you talking to me?” I grumbled, gesturing to the bartender for another round with a raise of my glass.
She nodded her head, but didn’t fill me up a glass of beer, but a glass of water.
I glared at the woman at my side.
“Why must you always make deals with the bartender before I get here?” I asked with annoyance.
“Because if I don’t, nobody else will. And your dad and I have an understanding,” she muttered darkly.
I didn’t bother to say anything to that. Jubilee’s dad, Pete, and I had an understanding, too.
No matter what happened, or how much we disliked each other, I would always have Jubilee’s back. I was sure the same went for her and the ‘understanding’ she had with my father.
Whatever the reason, we’d never let anything happen to the other. Despite both of us hating the other.
Jubilee’s and my dislike for each other went way back. It didn’t start the day that we both were struck by lightning and Eitan and AnnMarie died. No, it started back when her father and my father first brought us around each other at the age of six and nine and she stole my favorite hat and threw it into the fire.
It only got worse from there, and eventually our aversion had turned into a strong dislike, closer to hate.
Not that I would say I hated Jubilee now, but I definitely didn’t like her.
I took another swig of beer—hers this time—instead of saying anything to her idiotic statement.
“Thirty-four years old,” she murmured. “How do you feel? Old?”
I looked over at her and glared. “You’re only three years younger than me, and I’m sure I’m in way better shape than you. Why don’t you tell me how you feel?”
She made a disgusted face. “I was just trying to make conversation.”
“Well make it with someone else. You annoy me,” I muttered darkly.
Jubilee rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”
Another dark laugh had us both looking in the direction of Zuri, who’d come up to get the drinks this time.
“Still can’t get along, I see?” Zuri sneered.
Jubilee blinked. “Actually, we’re fucking and having a grand ol’ time. But we still like to talk cruelly to each other. It makes us hot.”
Zuri’s face went slack. “You’re what?”
Jubilee grinned and leaned forward, her mouth perilously close to mine.
And, blaming it on the beer, I turned my face so that our mouths connected. Then I kissed the shit out of my enemy.
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