by Stella James
“She gets this shit from you, ya know,” I turn to face my mother and I can’t decide what I want more, to hug her and tell her how sorry I am for every asshole thing I did when I was a kid or to beg her to take tiny Satan home with her. It really is a struggle to decide. Luckily Satan sees her grandmother and drops the apple in her hand to run over and wrap her tiny arms around my salvation’s legs.
“Grammie!!!”
“Well hello there Miss Lyddie, are you giving your mama a hard time?” Lydia shakes her head enthusiastically causing her blonde curls to bounce off her shoulders.
“No Grammie, I just wanted to eat some apples,” and cue the sweet and innocent act that is reserved especially for grandparents.
“Why don’t you come with grandma honey, you can help me pick out some cookies for grandpa.” God bless my mother. Bless her fucking heart.
“Yeah!!!” Lydia takes off with my mom following close behind.
I take my time waddling up and down the aisles. It’s getting harder and harder to feel like anything other than a giant rhinoceros. Everything is big. Not that Asher minds. I swear he gets hornier the more pregnant that I get. He says it’s because the fact that I’m carrying his child is so beautiful. I’m pretty sure it has more to do with my massive tits.
It’s hard to believe how fast the time goes by. In almost four years we’ve managed to have a child, get married, get pregnant with another child and build our home right on the lake. I never did go back to work after I had Lydia, I wanted to stay home and take care of her myself. Asher took over his dad’s garage about a year ago and business is really good. He has a part time receptionist but sometimes if I feel like I need to get out of the house I’ll go in and work on the books. We still see Bennett and Emmett regularly. As predicted, Judy took them immediately under her wing and they are now a part of every holiday and every family get together. They just adopted a baby boy last year and are currently in the process of adopting a four year old girl.
We’ve spent time over summer holidays with Rachel Grady and her daughter and also Brian Jamison’s wife Laura and their two daughters. I know it means something to Asher to be a part of their lives and I’m more than happy to support him. They are all wonderful people and have become good friends of ours. Asher still has the odd bad night when his thoughts won’t give him any reprieve and he wakes up restless. On those nights he slips from our bed and heads out to the garage to work on one of his cars. He hasn’t touched a drop of alcohol since that night he came home to me and I couldn’t be prouder. He fights for us every single day.
I round the corner of the last aisle just in time to see Lydia rip open a package of cookies and shove one in her mouth only to spit it back out on the floor while my mom talks to Barbara Mitchell.
Like I said, my child is Satan.
Asher
13 years after that…
I stand at the end of the dock and stare out at the water. I can hear Katie as she walks towards me. She sets the tackle box down beside us and wraps her arms around me. To this day, nothing warms me quite like her touch.
“Asher?”
“Mm?”
“Take me fishing.”
I reach down and untie the boat while she sets our gear in the middle and takes her usual seat. The sun is fully up now and when I glance at my wife, the light allows me to see her clearly. She’s got her hair tucked under one of my old hats and she looks beautiful. I turn off the engine and allow us to drift along the water. We cast our lines and sip the coffee that she made us before we left. She hands me a muffin and watches while I take a bite. True to form, it’s the worst tasting shit I’ve ever had.
“I swear I followed the recipe,” she says.
This amazing woman who has seen me at my worst and loved me anyways is the reason I feel whole every single morning. So I choke back her terrible tasting muffin and pray that I don’t get food poisoning. I do it because the smile I get in return is worth it. I wait until her back is turned and chuck the damn thing into the lake. I’m not a bloody saint.
“You see the girls this morning?” Our daughters are sixteen and thirteen. Lydia has been speaking her mind since she learned to talk. She’s smart, strong and gives us enough grief to make our heads hurt. She looks just like her mother with the height to boot. It scares the living shit out of me. Kacey is more on the quiet side. She takes after me with her dark hair but she has Katie’s green eyes. Katie is always saying that Kacey has no idea just how beautiful she is.
“Lyddie was still sleeping but Kacey was up reading. She asked if her and Burke could take the boat out later today. I told her to ask you,” she says with a smirk.
I groan at the idea of my baby girl spending her time with Trace and Sophie’s teenage son. He’s a good kid but I remember being thirteen and noticing on more than one occasion that Katie was no longer the little girl I used to play with. I don’t want that kid ogling my daughter.
“I don’t like that kid hanging around here all the damn time. Christ, it starts with fishing and before you kno-“ She holds her hand up in an effort to gently tell me to shut up, as she calls it.
“First of all, they’re just friends and they’re only thirteen for crying out loud. I like Burke, he’s a good kid. Second of all, do you not recall you and I being close to that age and spending time together. Nothing ever happened between us.”
“Yeah, well I still noticed your tits and every other part of your body. The fact that I did nothing about it is irrelevant.”
“Awe, you noticed me back then?” She asks sweetly.
“I was a teenage boy with hormones Katie, I noticed anything with boobs.”
“Hmm, is that so? And what about now Asher? Do you notice anything with boobs now, or just me?”
She looks at me with a playful grin and I can instantly feel the air shift between us. All these years later and she still makes my cock painfully hard and my blood pump. She pulls her hat off and shakes out her hair. Her top comes next and her jeans until she’s sitting in our little fishing boat wearing nothing but her bra and panties.
“Katie,” I give her a warning growl but all she does is wink before she dives into the water.
She breaks the surface and shouts at me, “Come on you big baby, the water is fine!” I shake my head and pull off my hoodie and jeans. I jump into the water and stay under until I’m right beside her. When I come up for air I pull her to me and as it has countless times before, her body wraps instinctively around mine.
“You’re gonna get messy Katie.”
“Good thing I don’t mind as long as I’m with you.”
Bonus Epilogue
Judy
When Kate and Asher were twelve…
I sit at my big blue kitchen table and look out the window, watching as Kate swings back and forth on the old tire swing that we keep meaning to take down. Asher stands off to the side and gives her a push whenever she needs one. I don’t think they’ve said more than a couple words to each other in the last hour yet they both seem content to just be.
“Something exciting happening in the back yard?” Tim says as he walks to the kitchen sink and washes his hands.
I glance back at him and smile. My husband just keeps getting better and better with age. By the time we are seventy he’s going to look like Brad Pitt and I’ll look like Tommy Lee Jones.
“Not really,” I sigh, “Just watching the kids.”
He comes to the table and glimpses outside. “I should really cut that old tire down before she ends up snapping the damn thing right off the branch and breaking her arm.”
“I don’t think she’d ever forgive you,” I say.
“Mm. And why is that?” He places his hands on my shoulders and leans down to press his lips against my cheek.
“Because you big dummie, they love each other and every time she sees that swing she’s going to think of Asher. If you go hacking it down you’re going to break her little heart.”
“They love each other? Our twelv
e year old daughter is in love? With Asher Montgomery?”
Ugh, men.
“Yes! She doesn’t know it though. Neither one of them do. Trust me, it will be years before they pull their heads out of their own asses and realize that they’ve been in love this entire time.”
“I see. That’s a very interesting theory.”
“It’s not a theory, it’s a fact. Mark my words, one day the two of them are going to be married with little mini versions of themselves running around driving them all kinds of crazy. It’s going to be wonderful.”
THE END
About the Author
Stella James enjoys reading, yoga and beer/wine. Not necessarily in that order. She writes in her limited spare time for your reading pleasure and also to silence the various characters that have taken up residence in her cute little head.
If you would like to be informed of upcoming releases or if you just want to be nosy because it’s fun, come and find her on social media.
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The Blue Falls Series
Worth the Chance – Book one/Cole and Lily (available now)
Worth the Risk – Book two/Trace and Sophie (available now)
Clipped – A Blue Falls novella/ Mona and Walker (available now)
Worth the Fight – Book three/Kate and Asher (available now)
Untitled – A Blue Falls novella / Hanna Mitchell (coming 2017)
Excerpt from Worth the Chance
Cole and Lily’s book
Available now
Prologue
2 years ago
My name is Annemarie, and I am no one. I am a ghost of my former self, mindlessly drifting through life with bruised skin and a broken soul. I have no family to mourn me, no children to need me, and no friends to miss me. He took everything from me and gave me nothing in return. What started as a fairy tale quickly turned to a nightmare that has lasted two years too long. When someone who is supposed to love you tells you that you are nothing, you begin to believe him. At first, you take in his hateful words and rationalize that they can’t possibly be true. This person loves me, he vowed to spend his life with me, of course I am more than just “nothing”. As time goes by and those words are spoken to you every day of your meager existence you stop rationalizing. You stop mentally fighting against the ugliness of the words and the certainty with which they are delivered. You begin to believe that they are in fact true. When someone who has vowed to cherish you puts his hands on you with such furious anger that you can no longer remember what his kindest touch felt like, you become convinced that you MUST have done something to deserve it.
That’s what happened to me. But everything will change tonight. If I don’t leave I will die, of this I am sure. Tonight he will go to his poker game, leaving my broken body behind with an arrogance that prevents him from seeing the small thread of strength that I am clinging to. I will leave. I will lift up the loose floor board at the back of our walk in closet and gather my small duffle bag with the bare essentials. Some clothes, a picture of my parents, and the small amount of money I was able to keep aside in secret when he was too distracted by his rage to notice. My new ID was surprisingly easy to come by, it’s a wonder what you can learn online. I won’t bother going to the police. I learned long ago that when a fellow police officer pushes his wife down the stairs causing her three broken ribs and a broken arm that his buddies in the squad room are more than willing to turn a blind eye. His job is so important, he’s such a good cop, are you sure you didn’t slip? That was the first time he physically hurt me and the last time I tried to press charges. Tonight, everything will change. Tonight, I will free myself from this life. Annemarie will cease to exist and I will become someone new. Someone strong. I will not remain in this cage, rotting from the inside out. Tonight, I will prove to him that I am more than just nothing. Tonight, I will choose life.
An excerpt from Running with the Devil
Plantain series book 1
By Amelia Oliver
Copyright © Amelia Oliver 2016
Available now on Amazon!
What I just sat in on here, was a meeting of Warrior of the Gods MC, MC as in Motorcycle Club. The reason I sit in the Vice President’s seat is because my dad, Owen Lofgren who was the W.G.’s V.P., is currently serving a life sentence in prison. As a deal he worked out with Sven to keep the Lofgren bloodline in the club, I’m to sit in for my Dad until Sven appoints a new V.P., which doesn’t seem to be something high on Sven’s to-do list. My dad’s been gone for five years now, and I’m beginning to think him and Sven enjoy this slow torture they’re causing on my life. As a woman, I’m not supposed to be part of the club, I’m not supposed to ride, or be a part of the things I do. Working on the business part of the club is what I’d planned to do, but no. Unfortunately for me, I’m really good at breaking into places. I’m also really good at hacking into computers. Sure, it was fun when I was a kid. Dornan, Joey, and I used to fuck around and steal shit, getting popped by the cops wasn’t anything but a minor offense. But this wasn’t minor anymore, these were guns we were about to steal, to rob very bad people who could come after us and kill us. My grandfather Ivan Lofgren, whose house I live in now, started this club back in the 1950’s. He left the service and felt like the bond of brotherhood he loved in the army, was something he was missing in his now civilian life. So he started a club with likeminded men. Of course the other founding members were Dornan’s and Joey’s grandfathers, so this shit is in our blood.