“Diedrich.”
“Brookings.” Blake's lips twisted into a grin. “You seem to have your hands full.”
Shane's tense expression relaxed slightly as his eyes drifted to the bundle sleeping on his chest. He cupped the tiny baby's behind in one hand, the little knit-covered head pushed deeper into his dad's broad chest.
“This traveling on the holidays is nuts.”
“Oh, stop,” Greta chastised. “It would have been fine if we would have left when I wanted to.” She put a hand on her hip and leveled a look at Blake. “But Shane had to pack the entire nursery.”
Lucy snorted. “How?”
Greta waved it off. “We didn't fly commercial. I have a friend who has a private plane. We can bring a U-Haul full of crap if we wanted to. But the storm forced us to land here.” She came around to the front of the stroller, lifting the blanket. Her voice dropped to a sweet coo. “Hey, baby. Do you want to say hi to Auntie Lucy?”
“You're going to get him out?” Shane asked tensely.
Greta paused in her crouch, her bright blue eyes flicking up to her man. Her expression softened when her gaze landed on him. “I can't leave him in this thing all day.”
“But what about the germs and stuff?”
Greta didn't answer. She just smiled at him. They exchanged a soft look that Blake recognized as the silent conversation held secret to a husband and wife. Finally Shane nodded and sighed.
The tall snowboarder made a step to the side and sat down in a chair that was entirely too small for his large frame.
Greta finished unbuckling their other child and slowly lifted Spencer Brookings out of his seat and into Lucy's arms.
***
The chubby little guy threw his arms out and squealed just as Lucy's hands slipped under his arm pits.
“Hey, Spencer,” she whispered, a warm sensation spreading through her chest. He pumped his legs up and down, kicking her in the stomach. “I see you've got more teeth.”
Spencer responded by grabbing a fistful of her hair and smearing a sloppy kiss on her cheek.
“See? Everything goes in his mouth. Who knows where Lucy's face has been,” Shane pointed out with a disappointed head shake.
“Normally, I would agree with you,” Blake teased. “But she's been thoroughly bathed recently.”
“Har har,” Lucy said, not caring about the hard time being directed at her. She was in baby heaven.
As an only child, Lucy didn't have nieces and nephews. Lucky for her, Blake's secondary family had a sister that was a baby making machine and had no problem making Lucy feel like a part of that family, too.
She wrapped Spencer in her arms and pressed kisses all over his soft cheeks. Then she rubbed her nose in his thick dark hair, inhaling his pure scent. Spencer hollered a baby yell of frustration and she loosened her grip.
“Chill, little man. We'll play in a minute.” She shifted him in her arms and his light brown eyes locked to hers. Her breath caught.
He looked just like his father.
And if his energy was anything to go by, he was going to be just as headstrong.
It was a feeling she expected to be bittersweet, but it wasn't. It was all sweet. She'd long held regret where Shane was concerned, thinking she should never have been in the middle of that whole thing. But seeing Shane with Greta, seeing their family begin and grow. It just took all of that needless regret and washed it away.
“I bet you keep your mama so busy,” she whispered conspiratorially, ignoring the tightness in her throat.
Spencer took hold of one of her cheeks and gave it a slap and a squeeze. Lucy closed her eyes, smiling. When she opened them, all she saw was Blake. His eyes were soft on her.
And she knew.
It was time.
“Okay, let's go play.”
***
Shane watched Lucy take his firstborn and go skipping across the waiting area. He was distinctly distracted when Greta leaned into his field of vision, the neckline of her shirt dropping low as she tried to get eye contact with him. He sighed in longing as he gazed at her ample curves. Motherhood looked so frickin' good on her.
“Eyes up here, buddy,” she said, humor lining her serious tone. He finally lifted his eyes to hers and found her shaking her head at him.
“What?” he asked innocently.
“Don't even think about,” she muttered.
“Too late,” he returned with a wink.
“Whatever.” She snickered at his incorrigibility, verifying once again that she found him perfectly adorable. “I'm going to find a bathroom and clean up a little bit. Do you have this?”
“Of course,” he scoffed, pretending to be wounded by her question.
“Just keep everyone alive and I'll be right back,” she instructed. She gave him a lingering close-mouthed kiss on the lips that had him wishing they were at home, then she walked away.
Which was another view he enjoyed taking in more than usual these days. He took a deep breath and held his brand new baby tighter.
“You and Greta seem to be pretty tight,” Blake teased, sitting down beside him.
“Yeah, she's all right,” Shane replied with a shrug.
Blake chuckled. “What are you doing with two babies under a year old, Brookings?”
Shane lifted his eyes to the ceiling. “It's not my fault, I swear.” And it wasn't. At least, from his perspective. “She can't keep her hands off of me.”
“Aren't you, you know, supposed to wait after having a baby?”
Shane rolled his eyes and grimaced. “Yeah, but Greta hates limitations and rules.”
“Oh, I know all about that.”
Shane swiveled his head and narrowed his eyes at Blake.
“Not like that. Calm down, Schwarzenegger. I just spent a lot of time with the O'Neils. I know how she can get. Especially of she feels even the slightest challenge presented. And she has this... ability to talk the people around her into thinking it's their idea.”
“Yes!” Shane said, startling the sleeping bundle in his hand. “Exactly,” he repeated softer this time.
“I remember this one time — it was just before our first huge tour. We were on a trial run with the label, opening for one of their bigger bands. Incidentally, it happened to be the only tour we never headlined. Anyway, it was a couple of weeks before we were going to head out and we all got tickets to see the Foo Fighters at the Pavilion.”
“That sounds like a great show.”
“Oh, it was. July 5th, in Boston. The setlist alone was unreal. Greta wanted to go more than anything...”
***
“You're joking. Please tell me this is a joke.”
Blake craned his neck back away from the television to see Greta setting down a huge box of what looked like theater props on the table that ran along the back of the couch.
“No, I'm not joking.” Greta tucked a strand of hair that had come out of her braid behind her ear. “I am going to this concert. And you are going to help me.”
Blake must've missed something. He looked around the O'Neil's living room at his bandmates, who were starting to congregate around the boxes. Each with their own expression of distrust.
“Why don't you just ask them again?” Sway asked, digging through the box and pulling out a fake beard. “Because this will never work.”
Greta crossed her arms over chest. “Ma doesn't ever change her mind. I mean, I might have been able to talk my dad into it. But then someone —,” she smacked the back of Harrison's head who was sitting right next to Blake, trying his hardest to pretend like nothing was happening around him — “had to go and tell Ma all about how it wasn't a place for girls.”
Harrison slid down further in his seat.
“Really, dude?” Blake asked. Normally he didn't interfere with whatever was happening in the O'Neil family affairs. Stella and Gerard let him stay there for free and fed him and would probably clothe him if Blake let them. He wasn't about to tell them his opinion on how to raise
their kids.
But he was also from the school of thought that people should be allowed to do what they want as long as it didn't hurt anyone else. Especially when it came to music.
Harrison rolled his eyes and gave Blake a glower. “It's the Foo Fighters. You really want to babysit my little sister at a Foo Fighters concert?”
“I don't need a babysitter,” Greta protested, indignation at the very suggestion causing her to narrow her eyes dangerously at the back of Harrison's head again.
Harrison whirled around, standing up at the same time. “You're sixteen, Greta.”
She rolled her stunning blue eyes. “You guys won't even notice me. I'll be one of the guys—”
“No. That never works. Girls can't be 'one of the guys' for the very simple reason that they are, in fact, girls!”
Blake's eyes flicked from Harrison to Greta. Her blue ones were already glossing over with tears and her lips pressed together tightly but it didn't hide the tremble.
Shit.
Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Damn. Shit.
“Don't you dare cry,” Harrison warned, but Blake heard the indecision in his voice. He was going to cave. They were all going to cave. Because Greta didn't cry. Not for small reasons. She only had tears for things that made her heart turn inside out. And none of them could handle it. That girl shed a single tear and she had five grown-ass dudes willing to do anything to make her dreams come true.
It was because she was too damn adorable. It was the same way with Harrison half the time. Something in the O'Neil blood made all of them dangerously hard to resist. And they had no idea.
“Let's just talk about this for a minute,” Luke stepped in, running a hand through his hair. “Maybe I can talk to Stella — ”
“Dude, not even I can get Stellar Stella to change her mind,” Sway interrupted, flopping his lanky body sideways into a nearby chair and throwing his legs over the arm rest.
“True story,” Mike confirmed, digging through one of the boxes and holding up a gray mustache. “What was the plan for this?”
Greta shrugged one shoulder and hugged her arms to her middle. Some of her bravado had faded, and Blake was struck (not for the first time) with her similarities to Lucy Newton, the girl he'd left behind.
Spending so much time at the O'Neil's was messing with his head. Sometimes when he looked at Greta, or heard her laugh, or saw her go running out the back door without any shoes on, he felt like he'd stepped though a doorway to his past.
It frickin' sucked.
The constant threat of reminder of what he'd left behind.
“I already bought the ticket. I'm not letting it go to waste,” Greta said, her chin lifting defiantly.
“Stop lying,” Blake finally spoke up. Her blue eyes darted to him, affront coloring her expression. “It has nothing to do with wasting a ticket and everything to do with your big fat crush on Dave Grohl.”
Her cheeks heated to an intense level of red he'd never seen before and Blake felt a grin spread across his face.
“Don't be a dick, Blake,” Mike chastised.
Blake flattened his palm against the center of his chest, doing his best to look shocked. Greta's lips twitched in an almost smile. She looked down to hide it, but Blake saw it anyway.
“Okay,” Luke tried to bring things back under control. “If you have a ticket, why can't you go?”
“Because she's sixteen,” Sway said, kicking his legs back and forth on the armrest.
“So?” Luke scoffed. “Harrison went to a lot of shows when he was sixteen. Some that were way more questionable than the Foo Fighters.”
“Thank you.” Greta threw a hand out, as Luke made her point.
“She's a sixteen year old girl,” Sway amended.
The guys all exchanged a look. Luke's frown deepened and he crossed both arms over his chest as he studied the floor.
Blake saw both sides. He totally understood why some people thought that having different rules for the genders was a good thing. It usually had roots in safety. But since Blake wasn't really about the safe things in life, he thought it was a waste of a good argument. Gender had nothing to do with it. Some people should stay home, and some people should not.
“This is so dumb,” Greta said, her voice trembling with frustration. “You guys can't possibly believe — ”
“Hold up, wild woman,” Blake cut her off. His eyes skimmed over the rest of the room to make sure he had their attention. He leaned forward on the couch, elbows to knees. “Don't we like it when girls come to our shows? Isn't that half the fun of being up there? Who wants an entire audience full of dick?”
“Geez, Blake,” Greta hissed at his crudeness.
Blake cocked an eyebrow at her. “Listen, I am who I am. I make no apologies for it. But I also think everyone else should be allowed to be who they are and do what they love. If a sixteen year old girl wants to come to one of our shows, are we okay with someone telling her she can't? Because, the way I see it, that's what this comes down to. Are we hypocrites? Do we really believe all this rock n' roll bullshit that we're chasing? 'Cause if we do, then we have a duty to protect the right of every sixteen year-old girl out there who wants to go to a rock show.”
The room was quiet as they mulled over his words.
“So you wanna talk to Stella?” Harrison asked.
“Hell no,” Blake reacted quickly. “I was talking about helping Greta sneak out with us and watching her back tonight. That's it.”
Greta's face softened and she gave him a small smile. “Thanks, Blake.”
“Occasionally I can be inspirational as shit.”
Mike chuckled. “You do have your moments.”
Luke's eyebrows were up. “All right then. How do we do this?”
***
“Her devotion to Dave Grohl has been around a while I see. So you guys helped her sneak out?” Shane asked, keeping his voice low so Marcus wasn't disturbed.
Blake chuckled and ran a hand through his short black hair. “Yeah. That was the easy part. Sneaking her back inside was where everything went wrong.”
“That wasn't my fault,” Greta said, joining them.
“Like hell it wasn't,” Blake snapped. “I'm still pissed at you for that too, by the way.”
“Me? What did I do?” Greta's eyes flew open wide in confusion. But Shane knew her well enough to see the humor tugging at her lips.
“I was on your side.” Blake pointed to his chest. “You totally betrayed my trust.”
“Please.” Greta rolled her eyes. “Betrayed. I was sixteen. Are you really going to hold that against me?”
“You,” he said too loudly, glancing at Marcus. He lowered his voice and narrowed his eyes at Greta. “Totally threw me under the bus. Stella still thinks something else happened that night that never did.”
“What?” Shane asked, wishing he knew what was going on. Sometimes there was so much history with this band, Shane was left feeling completely lost.
Greta's eyes dropped to her lap, her face taking on the expression of innocence.
“Greta,” Shane said, getting her attention. “What did you do?”
She smiled sheepishly. “Blake should probably tell you. I don't really...”
“Remember it?” Blake finished smartly. “That guy who gave you the tequila is lucky I never found him.”
“Tequila.” Shane shook his head at his wife. “I should've known.”
***
“I told you this was a bad idea,” Harrison bemoaned from the driver's seat as he peered up at the house in the dark.
“No, you actually didn't,” Mike corrected quietly, following Harrison's gaze.
In fact, they were all staring up at the big house sitting quietly in the night. No lights on. It felt like a trap. It looked like a trap. It may as well have had a great big sign on it declaring it as the most obvious trap in the world and calling all who wandered into it total morons.
“Heeeyy,” Greta slurred from the backseat of Harrison's Vol
vo wagon — the very back, where they usually kept the amps. Tonight it was covered with a blue tarp and Harrison's wasted little sister. She wrapped both of her arms around the headrest to hold herself up, her eyes trying to focus on the house they were all looking at. “I can see my window from here,” she whispered loudly.
Blake saw Sway's lips twitch as they exchanged a look. The girl was shitfaced. As far as they all knew, this was Greta's very first experience with alcohol. Blake wasn't as upset about it as, say, Harrison. But he was more upset than Sway, who just thought she was adorable. Which is why they made him ride in the back with her to keep her from hitting her head every time they turned a corner.
“This is all your fault, Blake. You and your anti-misogyny speeches,” Harrison grumbled, catching Blake's eye in the rear view mirror.
“Heh,” Greta laughed. “Misog... misa... I can't say that word right now.”
Blake bit his lip to keep from laughing. Sway didn't stop himself.
“Shit. She's completely blotto,” Mike said, casting a glance in the back and shaking his head.
“We need a new plan,” Luke stated the obvious.
Yeah, they did. The original plan was to park around the back of the grounds and Greta would climb the garden trellis to the tree with the branch that extended to her window. It was how she'd gotten out.
“Blotto,” Greta repeated Mike, bopping Blake on the nose with one finger.
She would not be climbing anything for a while. Hell, Blake had had to carry her to the car after the show. Which had been difficult enough.
“Maybe everyone is sleeping,” Sway suggested.
“Doesn't matter. Ma has ears like a fruit bat. She'll hear us open the door, not to mention trying to keep the drunk quiet.” Harrison gripped the steering wheel, his knuckles turning white. “I'm half-positive she can hear us right now.”
“Shhhhhh,” Greta hissed, putting a finger against her lips. Then she snorted a laugh.
Into the Night We Shine Page 3