by Lesley Jones
He leans back so he can look me in the eyes but doesn’t let go of my waist. “Well for one, you did just fine on your own and for two, you made me so fucking hard when you went off like that, I couldn’t string a sentence together.” He kisses me on the mouth.
“Let’s go and collect my daughter and tell her she’s going to have to learn to share her kingdom with another Daddy’s little princess.”
“Oh Joy.” Is all I can muster.
We wait till we are home and Ryder has arrived before breaking the news, Sophie is being dropped off tomorrow so we get Ava to ourselves tonight, Gabe called Ryder earlier and told him to come over for a beer after work and we now have Sonny on FaceTime. Ava is sitting on a bar stall at the bench top, she’s sitting next to Ryder whilst staring down at the lap top swooning over Sonny, her and Sophie have told me that they think that he’s hot and she’s blatantly flirting with him now as they banter over which code is harder, AFL or Rugby Union. This is all quite worrying really, seeing as Ava is ten years younger than Sonny and even worse, is holding her own with the argument they’re having.
“Anyway.” Gabe interrupts. “The reason we have got you all here together, is because we have news.”
Ava looks at me straight away. “Have you set a date for the wedding?” I shake my head and smile at her.
I actually haven’t really given the wedding any kind of thought in days. Weeks even, it’s obviously more important to everyone else than it is to me. Gabe pulls me in front of the laptop so we are standing between Ava and Ryder. All of us looking down at Sonny. “We just wanted you all to hear together that we’re pregnant. Your Mum, Lauren’s having twins.”
“No fucking way!” Sonny’s big voice bounces from the laptop and around the room.
“Twins! You’re having twins, you’re pregnant? Oh, my fucking God.”
“Ava.” Gabe and I both say at the same time. She bursts into tears and throws her arms around her Dad’s neck. “I’m sorry. I’m just so fucking happy.”
“Ava!” Even Ryder and Sonny join in the reprimand this time and we all laugh. My eyes travel back to Sonny’s on the screen. “Do you have a problem with this news Sonn?”
“No. No Mum, not if you don’t. But fuck Mum. Me and Jess were only talking about having kids ourselves the other day. Twins, bloody hell mother, do you know what they are?”
“Yeah. One of each.” Gabe and I both say together.
Ava starts to wail louder. “I’m getting a little sister, I’m finally getting a little sister. I’m so Totes Emosh right now. I need to call Sophie.” She heads down the stairs. Her high pitched wail going with her.
I realise Ryder hasn’t said anything but Gabe beats me to it. “Are we okay with this dude?”
Ryder shakes his head. “Man. You knocked up my mother. What the fuck bro? With twins no less. Now I have to share my inheritance with three other kids, probably four in fact, what with the way she treats Ava as her own. Can you just make sure that you cap it at two? Take up knitting or something Mum and stop keep having sex.”
Bloody hell, he had me there for a minute, I actually thought I was going to vomit over the laptop! We spend the next ten minutes laughing and joking with the boys before Sonny has to head to training. Ryder stays and has a few more beers, he’s joined by his girlfriend Layla, who comes by to pick him up so he doesn’t drive home, but then she has a few drinks too as Jo and Jake arrive with champagne after I text her and all of my friends our good news. She actually brings a bottle of non-alcoholic champers so that I can join in the celebrations. We end up with an impromptu gathering of our friends and family. After drinking a number of beers and at least three glasses of champagne, Ryder decides he wants to make a speech.
“I just want all of you here know, how happy… How fucking over the moon me and my brother are for my Mum and Gabe. These two babies are so lucky, she has done such a stellar job raising Sonny and me. You all know the shit she has been through with my Dad but she kept all of that. We could have had a truly terrible childhood, but I can honestly say, hand on heart we had the best of times growing up, she always kept the shit side of my Dad away from us and always made sure we were safe and protected from it. And if, despite all of that I was given the chance of the happiest of childhoods. I can only imagine what a great time these two new babies are going to have being raised by not only my amazing Mum, but also this bloke here. Coz he’s pretty special too and I have no doubt, no doubt whatsoever that together, they are going to make brilliant parents. In fact, I’m actually a bit jealous of Bruce and Sheila. Gabe, how about you adopt me? Is it okay if I start calling you Dad now?”
Despite laughing at Ryder’s jokes, I watch as Gabe’s eyes fill with tears at Ryder’s words and I know how touched he is by them. I watch as he shakes hands with my son and then pulls him in for a man hug. Right at that moment, I feel an overwhelming sense of calm, I am so happy and content with my life right now, my boys are happy and loving life. The babies I have growing inside me are well and healthy and whatever else life might throw my way, I can deal with it, because right by my side I have with me Gabriel Wilde. The man who will love beyond measure for the rest of my life. The man that I just know I was born to be with. The man I know was born to be my saviour.
EPILOGUE
I arch my back and moan out in complete and utter pleasure as Gabe’s expert tongue goes to work on my highly sensitised clit. He has spent the last half an hour torturing me with his fingers and his tongue, bringing me so close and then bringing me back down.
“Gabe. Please.”
“I know. I know, I got ya baby, I got ya.” He slides his body up mine and finally I get to feel his big beautiful cock inside me. It’s a Sunday afternoon. We had a massive night last night celebrating Ava’s eighteenth birthday, finishing up around ten o’clock this morning, although when we slipped off to bed around noon, there were still bodies everywhere. Luckily we have the room at this house; once I convinced Gabe that there was no way I was raising babies in his beachside bachelor pad we started looking around for a new home. Then it hit me. The home Gabe grew up in was sitting empty, Charlie had left it in his will to all four of his children, none of them had the heart to sell it. Until we made them an offer they couldn’t refuse, we spent three months renovating and modernising and I worked on the interiors of each room right throughout my pregnancy.
Unfortunately our babies arrived unexpectedly almost two months early so we had to move in while it was not yet complete; my pregnancy was okay considering my age and the fact that I was carrying twins. I had spent a total of nine days in and out of the hospital on complete bed rest due to spikes in my blood pressure but the doctors were confident they could get me to full term. As long as I sat around and did as little as possible, which I did, mostly.
After spending a beautiful Sunday afternoon at a local winery, having dinner and celebrating my birthday with all of our friends and family, we received the awful news that Jason had been found dead after a heroin overdose. He had gone to prison for four months for his two assaults on me, when he came out he moved in to Ryder’s old unit, he had the money from his share of the business to live on while he looked for a job but that was soon gone as it became apparent he was back on the drugs. Gabe and I got him into rehab twice more over the next couple of years but each time he relapsed and we hadn’t seen or heard from him in over three months. He was found in a room he was renting in Saint Kilda, it wasn’t an accident, he did it on purpose, leaving an envelope with a birthday card inside it read:
Happy Birthday Little Ren.
This is one that I will make sure you always remember.
Never Forget
YOU ARE MINE
He got his way, I haven’t celebrated a birthday since. It’s taken three years of counselling and a lot of tears to accept that Jason’s choices were his own and not my fault. Gabe, once again was left to pick up the pieces that Jason left me in, he held me and soothed me while I mourned for another man, he looked aft
er our new born babies when I couldn’t getting out of bed, because I was so weighed down over the guilt I felt at Jason’s suicide but eventually his love got me through, he was there, my saviour, once again making us face what life had thrown at us together. We had both agreed to counselling and had both learned to overcome our past demons.
I collapsed at the news of Jason’s death and was rushed to hospital the doctors spent the following two days trying to get my blood pressure under control, Reef Joseph and Ruby Angel Rose Wilde were bought into the world on the twenty sixth of April 2013, at 8:08 and 8:12 am, weighing 3lb 1oz and 2lb 8oz respectively. I missed the entire thing, and the first two days of their lives, thanks to the drug induced haze I was in. Luckily because of their size, they only spent a couple of weeks in the special care baby unit. They are now a happy, healthy, noisy, double bundle of joy; Reef – don’t ask, I let his Dad choose his name, looks like a cherub, with his chubby face and blonde curls, that’s where any resemblance to an angel ends; my son will have to grow up to either be a very fast runner or a very good fighter. Or he will simply have to learn to keep his mouth shut and not have a smart comeback to anything and everything you say to him. And Ruby, ahhh Ruby, where do I begin, my mother reckons I got the daughter I deserved, defiant, strong willed and totally independent, she is scared of no one and is adored by anyone who sets eyes on her, she too has a mass of curls but where her brothers are blonde, Ruby’s are as red as her name, and oh, did I mention she has a temper to match, never did I think that at almost fifty I would be having a daily battle of wills and doing anything to avoid a full on temper tantrum thrown by a three and a half year old, the only person she ever behaves for is her Daddy and that’s because her Daddy never says no to anything, what Ruby wants, Ruby gets where Gabe is concerned. Gabe, my rock, the absolute love of my love, who any second now is going to have me coming like a steam train, something he manages to still do at least once a day. Every single day of the year.
“Ahhh. Oh God Gabe.” I grab hold of the back of his hair, just as an almighty scream reaches our ears from somewhere in the house. We are both up and grabbing at clothes and pulling them on as we run to where the source of the noise is likely to be coming from, Ava’s room.
“Daddy!” Ava screams again.
When we redeveloped, we gave Ava her own space separate from the rest of the house, she has her own bedroom, bathroom, kitchen and rumpus room, which worked out well really as she has lived with us full-time for almost three years now, after the constant arguments with her Mum became too much for the both of them, we all decided it was for the best.
As we reach Ava’s bedroom there are a crowd of people, including Jo and Jake, who are still going strong as a couple, not bad for a pair of commitment-phobes. The fact Jake works away a lot seems to make it work for them. As we move the audience out of the way we find Ruby, standing in the middle of Ava’s bed, wearing Ava’s favourite Stella McCartney raw silk dress, with Ava’s favourite Channel silk scarf around her head and wearing possibly every piece of jewellery Ava possess around her wrists and neck and her face, quite possibly painted with every piece of makeup that Ava owns. The said makeup also being caked all over the bed and the aforementioned clothing. Added to this on top of her mop of curls are Ava’s brand new Gucci sunnies as well as Ava’s Beats head phones covering her ears as she sings her heart out into an empty beer bottle (No idea where she could have got that idea from) a word perfect rendition of Wonderwall.
She knows each and every word because it’s one of my favourite songs too and we always turn it up and give it large when it comes on in the car. We have this thing we do where I slow down and speed up. ‘Making the car do a happy dance’ as we call it, but anyway, that’s our little secret that we keep from Daddy. Ruby has her eyes tightly closed as she sings her little heart out, opening them as the song comes to an end, where the IPod is that the head phones are blue toothed to is, I have no idea. Everyone in the room cheers, including Gabe. Ruby opens her eyes grins and bows. The Gucci sunglasses fall from her head and just as she starts to lose her balance and it looks like she’s going to step on them.
Gabe scoops her up. “Great singing Angel.”
“Awww Daddy, don’t be a div, it was shit house.” I close my eyes in mortification. My daughter also has the mouth of a sewer.
Ava screams from beside me. “Ruby Angel Rose. Get back here and clean this mess up. Get my clothes off! Lauren, look at my Gucci’s, look at my Channel scarf, she always ruins my stuff. I’m getting a lock on this door, I swear to God.”
Ruby turns in Gabe’s arms to look at Ava and says, “I sorry Ave, I wanted to look priddy for your burtday and sing you the happy car dance song. I do loves you lots like jelly tots Avie.”
There’s a big “awww” from everyone in the room. Just then Harry my grandson. Yep, Sonny and Jess have a son just six months younger than the twins, it makes for an interesting conversation at kindy, as they are all in the same class, in the same school; they moved back over here to live as soon as Jess realised she was pregnant so they could be close to their families. Harry runs into the room, closely followed by Reef, both of them dressed in pirates outfits and waiving rubber swords the pair of them jump on the bed. “Avie… Don’t you shout at Rubes, she’s just my baby sister, she don’t know what she’s doing. You shout at her, I will punch your lights out.”
“We will.” Agrees Harry.
I groan inwardly, I’m not a bad parent, I’m really not but my younger children are truly Wild or should that be Wilde?
Gabe pulls me to him, Ruby still in his arms, Reef now in mine. “Let’s throw these two in the tub and get them down for a nap, then we can get back to bed.”
A shudder runs through me as Gabe slides his fingers under my t-shirt. His t-shirt and boxers in fact, as they are what I threw on when I thought that someone was being murdered. This is our life, the life we found and built together from the rubble of both our fucked up pasts. It’s chaos and madness most of the time, full to the brim with love all of the time and I wouldn’t change a single thing about it.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Where do I start? I wrote Saviour to keep me saneduring a difficult time for my family, the jury is still out on whether that goal was achieved☺. I only originally wrote the first eight chapters and had no idea what to do with them or where the story was going to go. That was supposed to be the end of it but when I sent those eight chapters out to friends and to some people that, at the time, I hardly knew, they asked for more. So I finished the book and decided to publish Gabe and Lauren’s story, I had no idea so many of you would love it and would want more, so now I have given you more, I have written the follow up and I truly hope you have enjoyed reading the continuation of their story as much as I have enjoyed writing it.
So where do I start? My Husband was lucky to be working away during the writing of this book and so he didn’t have to endure the lack of domesticity in our home during the process, my boys on the other hand, were stuck with me, so while I thank my Husband for his support, I thank my boys even more for putting up with my unwashed self, their unwashed clothes and all the dinners I didn’t cook and at the same time I would like to thank Brogan, my Queen Of Clean, for stepping in when the place really needed a woman’s touch.
My Twitter and Facebook champions, Mags, Ally, Marina, Peita and all of you other ladies that like, share, Tweet and re Tweet, I thank you, thank you, thank you.
I thank all of you bloggers for the mentions and reviews, you are what keep us indie authors going, without you getting our work out there, mentioned and noticed, we would need to spend so much of our own time, that there would be very little left for writing, you really are our life blood.
To Vicki, Kaz, Wendy, Michelle, Nic and Tash, my dream team of Betas, you truly are a group of amazing women, our conversations would probably get us locked up if they were ever to be made public, you make me laugh, you make me cry but I know for sure that despite the miles, we are all there for
each other, I love you all girls, not just for your help with this book but just for being you. Wendy, please don’t cry when you read this☺.
My Oh My Ladies – keep the naughtiness coming ladies.
My SC ladies – you keep me inspired, motivated, grounded and reasonably sane, I really don’t know where I would be without our little chats. May they never become public☺. When I make it back to England, we are going to have the biggest round of shots ever.
Happy 21st Birthday Chloë!
A MESSAGE FROM THE AUTHOR
To all of you that have bought and enjoyed Saviour and Resolution, I can’t thank you enough for your support and kind words, I never intended being a writer, it just sort of happened and without all of you and your messages telling me how you wanted to hear more of Gabe and Lauren’s story, I would have just left it at the one book, I only hope that their story has ended in a way that makes you all happy.
Lauren and Gabe’s story may have come to an end but I am now working on something new and completely different, I can only hope that you fall in love with Georgia, Cameron and Sean as you read their story, in the way that you did Gabe and Lauren.
-Lesley Jones
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