I did remember. It’d been terrible.
My mother and father had done nothing but fight for hours about how Downy didn’t spend any time with the ‘family.’
And I’d been the one to take the brunt of that.
Meaning my father forced me to stay away from them in an attempt to get away from the fighting.
I’d spent the entire time outside, watching.
I watched as Downy and that ‘kid’, as he liked to call him, had a grand ol’ time, and I didn’t.
“Yeah,” I said slowly. “Why?”
Downy grinned.
“I didn’t put two and two together until I saw his parents,” he pointed at Jacklyn and Ryan. “They haven’t aged as much as him,” he pointed at Drew. “I specifically remember you telling me that you would marry him one day.”
That’s when my mouth opened.
I had said that, but I hadn’t put two and two together until Downy had just pointed it out.
“You married that woman, and I told you it wasn’t a good idea!” I pointed out to Drew.
Drew then laughed his ass off, as well as his parents, as understanding dawned.
I’d told him the same thing the day he’d told his parents that he was marrying his ex-wife.
“We brought up that comment for years,” Jacklyn said as she wiped her eyes free of the tears that’d formed during her laughter.
I grinned.
“I aim to entertain,” I informed them.
Drew pulled me into the curve of his arm.
“You definitely please me, baby,” he whispered into my hair.
I looked up at him, at his smile and the light shining in his eyes, and squeezed him tight.
Attie looked over at me, and she winked before mouthing, “Told you.”
I stuck my tongue out at her, and then enjoyed the rest of my night in the arms of the man that I knew since the age of nine that I’d one day marry.
I was happy indeed.
***
Seven months later
“Does it look bad?” I asked my brother.
My brother studied my face, and, fucking straight as could be, he said, “It looks fine.”
I took him at his word, too.
That was until Drew lifted my veil twenty minutes later, and his eyes zeroed in on the hideous thing.
“It’s bad, isn’t it,” I said softly.
He shrugged. “I said for better or for worse, didn’t I?”
My mouth dropped open, and then I started laughing. Right in the middle of my wedding, with my hundred and twenty of our closest friends and family in attendance.
“Dad,” Attie whispered in affront to her father. “You’re not supposed to tell her that her pimple looks bad. She’ll take it the wrong way.”
Drew’s smile widened.
“Well, I also promised to tell the truth. Which vow would you rather I follow?” He asked with a raise of his eyebrow.
I grinned.
“Both,” I said. “You follow both.”
He winked and pulled me into his chest, placing a kiss on my nose.
My growing belly—something we only learned about last month—pressed into his taut one.
“Freakin’ crazy girl,” he said. “I don’t care about your pimple. Your face isn’t why I’m marrying you, anyhow.”
I smiled.
“Why do you want to marry me?” I questioned him.
He grinned.
“You really want to know?”
“I do,” I said.
“I love you because you make me feel happy. Because you make me sleep well at night. Because you make me laugh. Because, when I wake up beside you, you make my heart race. Things like that.”
Those were almost the exact words I’d spouted off to him twenty years ago.
“You just got bonus points,” I informed him.
He grinned and winked, knowing exactly what he’d just done…and earned.
I patted him on the hand, meaning he should let me go.
He did and I turned back to the preacher.
His eyes hit on the pimple, and I narrowed my eyes.
“Ignore it!” I barked.
The preacher grinned and resumed the ceremony, and soon I forgot all about anything but Drew.
That was until Attie’s water broke thirty minutes into our reception.
An hour later, we were holding Attie’s daughter, Sienna Drew, in our arms.
“Dad!” Attie said loudly. “Give her back.”
Drew looked at his daughter, and then back down to his granddaughter.
“Why?” He asked. “You got to have her for nine months. It’s my turn!”
I snorted and took a seat, my wedding dress poofing up at the sides.
The door to the room burst open and Mace, in full army fatigues, burst through the room.
“I didn’t make it!” He fake wailed.
I rolled my eyes as Mace walked up to Drew and fell in love with the little girl at first sight.
“Oh, boy,” I said to Attie.
Attie smiled at me, and I smiled back at the love I could see shining in her eyes.
“You did good, baby girl,” I told her softly.
“With the man or the baby?” She whispered back.
I looked back at the three of them, then back at her.
“Both. You did good with both.”
Attie smiled and then bellowed.
“Can I have my baby now?”
Drew glowered at her.
“I already said no!”
I chose to laugh instead of strangle him.
I had priorities, after all.
My main one being I wanted to use the man on my wedding night, not bury him.
***
Downy
3 months later
“Downy.” My wife said through clenched teeth. “It’s time to grow a pair.”
My eyes narrowed. “Memphis, I do have a pair. How do you think you got two kids out of me, and another one on the way?”
Memphis grinned.
“Just do it.” She ordered yet again.
Sighing, I walked to the door of my house, and opened it for my sister.
She stared at me like I’d grown a second head.
“What’s wrong with your face?” She asked.
I rubbed my cheek where my beard had to be shaved due to some stitches I’d received about an hour ago.
“Punk thought it’d be funny to sucker punch me in the face while I was ordering a sandwich at Subway.” I murmured.
She looked at my cheek, up to my eyes, and then back to my cheek.
“Maybe he was offended by what you put on your sandwich.” She offered.
I narrowed my eyes.
“There’s nothing wrong with adding ketchup to my fuckin’ sandwich!” I yelled.
Memphis started to snicker from somewhere behind me.
“Did you ask me over here to yell at me, or did you have something more to say?” She asked, crossing her arms over her chest.
I looked over my shoulder to see my two kids playing in the middle of the living room, then gestured her to come inside.
“Follow me to the den.” I said. “I have something to show you.”
She followed behind me, and I closed the door once we got inside, gesturing to my desk with a tilt of my head.
She looked at me suspiciously.
“What?” She hesitated.
I pointed to the desk, and she finally let her eyes trail away from mine.
“What is this?” She asked.
“That,” I smiled, proud of what I’d done. “Is the apology that I should’ve given you a long time ago.”
Words escaped her as examined it, and then a large smile overtook her face.
“This is a picture of Danny getting arrested.”
“I pressed charges on him…and his woman.”
She blinked. “What?”
<
br /> “Being the assistant chief of police has its benefits.” I told her. “And when I found out that Danny had ten unpaid tickets—ones that his partner had tried to have buried—I got him. It wasn’t much. He’ll never see jail time…and likely won’t lose his job since we’re so fuckin’ low on officers…but it made me happy.”
She picked up the picture frame, the one holding the photo of Danny in cuffs being herded into a police car with my hand on the top of his head guiding him down, and beamed.
“I’m going to hang it up by my bed.” She declared.
“I’m sure Drew’s gonna love that.” I snorted. “Let me know how he likes it.”
She turned those eyes—the ones exactly like mine—to me and stared.
Then she gently placed the frame down onto my desk, and promptly threw herself into my arms.
“I love you, Downy.” She whispered. “It scares the shit out of me each day you put on that badge, but I’m so freakin’ proud of you.”
My arms tightened around her.
“I love you, too, Aspen.”
She squeezed me just a little bit tighter before letting me go.
“But I’m still not admitting that ketchup is an acceptable sandwich topping.”
I ruffled her hair, knocking her ponytail sideways. “Well, somebody has to be wrong in this life. It might as well be you.”
She gave me a look that clearly said she didn’t agree.
“What’s for dinner?” She asked, changing the subject.
“Eggs.”
“Let me guess. Scrambled eggs and ketchup.”
“If you don’t like it, you know where the door is.” I informed her, knowing she wouldn’t leave.
Her smile was brilliant.
“I’m not staying for the eggs. I’m staying for the good company.”
We walked out of the den arm in arm, and I was glad I had my arm around her when Lock slammed into her the moment we’d crossed the threshold to the living room.
“Aunt Pen!” He screamed. “We’re getting another puppy.”
My mouth dropped open.
“Who the hell told you that?” I snapped.
“Mommy said.”
“Mommy most certainly didn’t say that!” I told him. “I said she was having another baby, not a fuck…”
“Downy, you finish that curse word in front of my kids, and I’ll forget you like your socks to match for the next week.”
I snapped my mouth shut and glared at my wife.
“You wouldn’t.”
“Try me.” She countered.
Aspen started to snicker. “I can’t wait to see what three babies do to your gray hairs.”
I sighed.
“Fuckin’ a.”
“You got that right, big brother.”
A flourish at the door had both of my kids screaming in excitement as their Uncle Drew came through the door, and I grinned when both latched onto his legs.
“You did good with him. You know that, right?” I asked my sister.
Aspen’s eyes met mine.
“I do.” She promised.
With my arm wrapped around her shoulders, we both watched her man as he allowed my kids to take him down on the ground and start crawling all over him.
Aspen pulled away when it looked like the kids were getting to him, and then joined the fray, sitting directly on Drew’s back and tickling him from behind.
“I like this.” My wife said from beside me.
I looked at my wife and agreed with a nod of my head. “I do, too.”
Coming Soon
Bad Apple
9-2-16
Chapter 1
Everyone’s brave until they figure out the roach has wings.
-Fact of Life
Kitt
I walked into The Uncertain Saints’ club house, completely expecting I would get trashed.
What I didn’t intend to do, though, was get pregnant.
However, life works in mysterious ways.
Ways that seem to take a hold of you and shake you until you get your shit straight.
That was what Apple Drew, aka Core, was to me…the shake up I needed to get my head on straight.
I was going to school to become a family law paralegal and I was on the verge of quitting.
When I’d started going to school to become a paralegal, they never told me that I’d have to deal with the kind of trash that I did on a daily basis.
Today, for instance, I realized that maybe family law just wasn’t for me.
People were assholes, pure and simple.
And all I wanted to do right then was see my brother and go home.
My brother who’d bet me that I wouldn’t come.
But I’d show him how wrong he was.
I smiled at the man that opened the door for me.
“Hey, Mig!” I greeted excitedly. “How’s the baby?”
Mig smiled, and his wife, Annie, came up behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist.
“The baby is being a rotten turd,” Annie offered as she stuck her head under Mig’s arm. “He takes after his father.”
Mig snorted.
“That’s what you say every time he keeps you up all night,” Mig said to his wife. “But then he starts walking two months before most kids, and you say he takes after you.”
Annie grinned unrepentantly. “Yeah,” she admitted. “I do do that, don’t I?”
I skittered past them into the main room of the clubhouse.
The place itself was located just off of the Caddo River, a nifty little river/lake that ran from Texas all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico.
A long time ago the river was used to transport a plethora of goods that were sold in the southern states. It was a main source of income for the small town of Uncertain, Texas way back when.
However, over time, it had become just another river until a few years ago when bad things started happening surrounding all of the cities that had Caddo running through it.
It was suspected that the river was being used to transport illegal goods up and down the river.
Since the river was relatively unsupervised, a lot of the time people got away with their illegal activities.
Then The Uncertain Saints happened, effectively tearing a hole in the bad guy’s plans.
The clubhouse was deliberately put on the river, in a very popular part that saw a lot of through traffic.
The house stood on beams that lifted the entire thing a whole single story up in the air. It resembled more of a beach house than one you’d expect to see on the lake, but I loved it.
It wasn’t old, per se, but it had quite a bit of that old feel to it.
When the Saints had built it, they’d used quite a few old houses and barns to make it.
Now, although it was less than ten years old, it looked more like it was hundreds.
“Hey sweetheart,” my brother, Ridley, called.
I turned to find him staring at me with an expectant look on his face.
I sighed and pulled a Hershey’s bar out of my pocket and handed it to him.
“Happy?” I asked.
He glared at me.
“I don’t mind you living in my house…,” I interrupted him before he could get any more words that might offend me out of that stupid mouth of his.
“It’s our house,” I chided. “It’s no more your house than my house.”
He shrugged.
“Papaw signed it over to me, and you know it,” he said, knowing it would rile me up.
I ignored him and walked to the cooler that was sitting out on the back deck that overlooked the river.
Lifting the lid, I reached for the Mike’s Hard Lemonade that my brother most likely bought specifically for me.
The ladies that’d recently started to become a permanent fixture in the Uncertain Saint’s MC were more wine drinkers.
I was most likely the only o
ne that drank actual ‘wiener drinks’, as my brother liked to call them.
Apparently, there wasn’t as much alcohol in it, and he made it a point to tell me that all the time.
He hated that I always had my drinks at home, but never made it a point to grab his.
Yes, my brother and I lived together.
No, neither of us had anyone.
And yes, I brought men home.
My brother didn’t bring any women home, but that was more because he was still in love with his dead wife.
I’d just closed the cooler lid when I heard the new prospect.
Well, I didn’t know for sure if it was him, but the plain leather vest on the man’s back was a good indication he was the one my brother had been telling me about.
He’d been there for a while, but this was my first club party in well over six months.
He was a permanent fixture here, by now, and by the look of all the ladies crawling all over him, he was popular to boot.
Then he had to go and open that mouth, making shivers race down my spine with the deep, raspy cadence of it.
I immediately took my drink and headed the other way, not wanting to get caught up in the mess that was a prospect.
The Uncertain Saints didn’t let many people into their fold.
In fact, there were only six members total, throughout the entire club, and not one of them had the time or inclination to add more to their group.
I knew it had to be a special circumstance that made it possible for the men of the Uncertain Saints to even consider adding that man to the group.
Which meant he was fucked up.
And I didn’t do fucked up.
I had my own fucked up to deal with.
Kind of like quitting my job.
Two hours and four hard lemonades later, I was feeling quite nice.
I hadn’t thought about my job once, and I was having a great time watching the comings and goings.
“Why the long face?” The man I’d been studiously avoiding all night, Apple, asked.
I turned my face and shrugged. “Nothing.”
And at that point, there really was nothing wrong.
“You look like you’re about to kill someone,” the annoying man observed.
I shrugged, picking at the invisible lint on my shoulder before I picked up my spoon and shoveled another bite of the chicken spaghetti someone had made into my mouth.
It was pretty good, but it wasn’t like Papaw fixed it.
Oxygen Deprived (Kilgore Fire Book 3) Page 22