Any strength that I had left fled me, and I leaned my head back, listening as Coleman gave him directions out of the airport and onto a road called the M5 that would take us where we needed to go.
I was just starting to go into a light sleep, when I heard Coleman yell, “What are you doing? You’re on the wrong fucking side of the road.”
“Don’t yell at me,” Cole screamed back. “I took the turn off that you told me to, and this is what happened. They drive on the wrong side here. Why would they do that?” Cole was almost hyperventilating as he jerked the wheel of the car, turning it around and going straight back up the exit that he’d driven the wrong way down.
Thankfully, with it being the middle of the night, there wasn’t that much traffic around so he only encountered one irate driver during the manouver.
Finally, after lots of swearing and wheel jerking, as well as yelling back and forth between Coleman and Cole, we were on the right exit. Coleman was even slowly starting to let go of his lock hold on the dashboard in front of him.
I made the mistake of closing my eyes again, giving into the exhaustion that was trying to take over my body, and was jerked out of my near sleep state, once again, by the sound of a horn blowing constantly to the right of us.
“Sorry, sorry, my bad,” Cole muttered holding his hand up. I heard a gasp and the sound of the window lowering. “Well, that’s just fucking rude. I said I was sorry!” He yelled at the driver of the car beside us, who was making a wanking motion with his hand and then gave Cole the bird.
“You had your hand up the wrong fucking way,” Coleman roared. Obviously, he’d reached his max and was done trying to help Cole out nicely.
“It was the peace sign, you big shit!”
“No, this is the peace sign. This means fuck you!” They argued back and forth in the front of the car, holding their hands up and twisting them as they both tried to make their points to each other.
Ebru stayed quiet throughout. The only sign that she was even awake was the crinkling of wrappers and munching noises.
Eventually, through some miracle, we made it to Appledore by four-thirty in the morning, driving slowly as we took in the beautiful village around us.
“I thought you were joking when you said it was called Appledore,” Cole sounded incredulous as we passed an official sign with the town’s name on it. “Do you realize that this is probably where Dumbledore was from?” His tone totally changed to almost a kid’s excited one. “Holy shit, we’re in the land of the ‘real Potter’. Oh shit, oh shit.”
Coleman sighed and continued to direct him. Pulling up in front of the beautiful house that I’d seen in the photos of Sabine, I felt my heart start to speed up. She was inside there, my baby was inside her-inside there.
I was just getting out of the car as the front door opened and out she walked, totally oblivious to the group of her in front of us. Then again, it was still really dark so she could be forgiven for not seeing us, but her lack of awareness was worrying.
I didn’t have the chance to yell as a dark shadow rushed up behind her, just as another one appeared out of the shadows and took the first one down with a thud. Sabine jumped and screamed as she turned and saw them.
I ran as fast as I could across the road toward her, Coleman right behind me, to get her away from the fighting pair. It wasn’t a small scuffle, there were full on punches and choke holds happening and they were rolling toward her at a fast rate.
I got to her first and pulled her out of the way just as one of the figures reared back to punch the other. The one on the receiving end flew backwards, landing where Sabine had been standing seconds before.
“It’s me,” I said quickly just as she screamed again, this time right in my face. Her struggles stopped immediately, and she gave me some of her weight as she slumped recognizing my voice in the dark. The stitches in my side were screaming at me, but all I could think of was getting her to safety.
Coleman detoured and joined in with the pair on the ground. How he knew which one was which, and I assumed one of them was ours, I didn’t know, but he must have because he grunted something out to one of them and they both launched themselves at the remaining guy who was still fighting hard beneath them.
There was another round of tussling, and then one of the forms on the floor punched the other hard and just like that it was over.
“Clear,” Coleman called out as he took something from one of his guys and secured the unconscious figure’s hands behind him. I watched as a couple other men came forward, picked the guy up and carried him away.
“Deal with this shit,” I ordered Coleman and was about to turn back to Sabine to hug her and start begging, when she lifted her foot and stomped hard on mine. The she elbowed me in the side, right on the bullet wound.
Stars burst in front of my eyes, and I lost my grip on her as my knees gave out with the pain.
“Oh man up and get off the ground,” my beautiful girl snapped above me. Even the sound of her voice and knowing that she was in front of me couldn’t distract me from the pain, though.
“He was shot,” Mom explained, her voice coming from right in front of me. The pain was that bad that I hadn’t even heard her walk up.
“I took it in the ass,” Tom whined, no doubt waddling as he walked up to us.
“Oh my God,” Sabine gasped, dropping to her knees beside me. As I lifted my hand I saw the blood on it again.
“Ah fuck,” I slurred just as I did the most manly thing I could, and passed out for the second time in twenty-four-hours.
Chapter Six
Brett
J ust to complete my humiliation, I was now having the three busted stitches in my side fixed by the guy from the photos. Whom I’d just found out was also her neighbor.
“I’ll just finish this one and then pad you up with a dressing,” the guy whose name was Finlay, Finlay, informed me as he worked on my side.
After I had passed out, he’d come out of his home after hearing noises and seeing the big group of people in front of Sabine’s house, and I’d been carried inside where he’d looked at the damage done to my wound. I’d been out cold throughout this and had only come back around when he was filling the syringe with local anaesthetic beside me. I’d, obviously, had a minor freak out, until Sabine had explained that he knew what he was doing and to stop being a ‘fucking baby’.
Not wanting to make matters worse for my dignity, I’d lain there while he got to work with my family watching everything. I could have done without Tom’s occasional snorts and laughing out the word ‘dead’ as he lay face down on Finlay’s floor, though. Yes, admittedly the guy was good looking, and yes he lived next door. And, yes…movement caught my eye and I couldn’t stop the growl that slipped out as he put his hand on Sabine’s leg as she said something.
“Control yourself,” Sabine hissed at me, throwing me the most evil glare that I’d ever seen on her face. Unfortunately, she just looked so fucking cute doing it, that I grinned making her scowl harder.
“I’ll wrap it tight when I’m done,” Finlay broke into the tension between me and Sabine. “Don’t take the dressings off for twenty-four-hours, though, just to prevent infection and give it time to heal. It had ripped pretty badly,” he muttered, tying off what I hoped was the last stitch. “Unfortunately, I only have these bandages.”
My eyebrows almost met in the middle of my forehead as I looked at the lime green bandage with paw prints, fucking paw prints, on it.
“Uh, so, how does this guy know what he’s doing?” Gramps asked from behind me. It was punctuated by one of Tom’s snorts and the word ‘dying’ being gasped out, so I gave Gramps the nod seeing as how he was closest to him. Unfortunately, Gramps forgot, either whether it was intentional or not, and kicked him in the ass…right on the bullet cheek.
The scream that filled the small living room seemed to echo off the walls and increase in volume as it echoed around us, making us all cringe. Thankfully, Mom took control of the situati
on and helped him waddle out of the room.
“He’s a vet,” Sabine explained once the noise from the big sniveling bitch stopped as Mom closed the door to the other room.
“Thank you for your service,” we all replied automatically. It was just the done thing. Regardless of which allied military you served in, you were entitled to that respect and gratitude. I hated him a bit more for it than I already did, though, and then I felt guilty that I felt that way. The guy had risked his life after all.
“Which branch?” Gramps, the nosy bastard, queried. “I knew some British military guys once. Really great men. Could drink anyone under the table too. I was also military when I was younger,” he puffed out his chest as we all stared at him. That was a big fucking lie.
Cole snorted, “When? The Civil War?”
“No, you weren’t, you big fat lying shit,” Grams snapped at him. “You filled in the paperwork, bought the uniform and forgot to hand the forms in. That doesn’t count.”
“It wasn’t my fault,” he replied, glaring at her. “They were shut when I went to hand them in.”
“Because it was one in the morning and you were drunk out of your skull…” she shrieked, leaning in toward him. “And, you were wearing the uniform that you bought out of a costume store! It. Doesn’t. Count!” Every word was punctuated with a poke to his chest, hard enough to visibly move that side of his body.
The look that came over Gramps’ face should have had us all covering our ears. It was the one he got when he had something dirty to say – which happened a lot. With his eyes half mast, he pointed out loudly, “That’s not what you say when you want to play ‘Hiding the General’.”
Grams stopped poking him as a blush turned her face pink. “Yeah,” she agreed loudly. “I do like it when we play Finding My Privates.”
We all let out a chorus of strangled noises and gags as both Finlay and Sabine turned slowly in Gramps direction looking confused and disgusted.
“Um, I’m a veterinarian,” Finlay explained slowly, as if he was explaining something to a child.
Once the meaning of what he was saying registered, I couldn’t help the relief I felt knowing that he hadn’t been in the military. The smugness at the fact had me grinning too. Again, I got a dirty look from Sabine, but it just made me grin harder this time.
Finlay went back to finishing off wrapping the bandage around my mid-section, but even the paw prints couldn’t ruin the high I was now feeling.
“So, does he get a cone of shame too?” Cole asked as he finished sticking the end of the bandage down. “I’m only asking because, it’s raining like a bitch outside and if he looks up for too long that thing will fill up fast.” The saddest thing about it all was that he was fucking serious too.
After a couple minutes of us all staring at Cole not knowing what to say, Mom came in and broke the awkwardness that now had Cole shifting from foot to foot.
“I’m so sorry, Finlay. I’ve got another one for you,” she sighed, gesturing towards where Tom was.
Just as he left the room, Ebru sat down with a loud huff and shouted, “I’m hangry!”
Cole was instantly in soon-to-be-father mode. “Where’s the nearest Taco Bell?” He asked as he went into the maps app on his phone. “I’ll get her five of those to tide her over.”
“There’s no Taco Bell here,” Maya, who’d been asleep on the couch, explained with a yawn as she stretched.
The gasp of outrage and disgust from Ebru teamed with the look of terror on Cole’s face was hilarious.
“You big fat lying bitch!” Ebru hissed. The normally sweet woman had bouts of Satan with her pregnancy hormones, and I would have felt sorry for Cole, but I’d had years of his shit so I felt no pity for him.
“Who doesn’t have Taco Bell?” he looked out the window like he’d see the magic taco sign beckoning him, saving his life. “That’s…oh shit.”
Ebru sat glaring at him and rubbing her stomach periodically, until Sabine said the words that would save Cole’s life, maybe. “There’s a large store not far from here. We can go and see what they have.”
And, so started the next fucked up adventure. Before we left, I’d tried to get Sabine alone, but she’d just snapped ‘later’ and had stormed out of the house with the rest of my family. I really should have spared myself the next dose of humiliation, but because Sabine was going, and I’d do anything to stay close to her, I stupidly joined them.
Twenty minutes later in aisle four of Morrisons supermarket….
“This must be where Dumbledore is from,” Tom announced loudly to us all as we walked around.
“Right? That’s what I said,” Cole replied as he looked into a freezer and picked something up. “What the hell are ‘fish fingers’?” He yelled, looking at the box in his hand with disgust.
Looking over his shoulder, I shuddered as I saw that he was reading the packaging right. Who the hell made something called Fish Fingers? That was just sick.
“Fish sticks,” Sabine replied patiently picking up three boxes of the things. Yeah, no, I wasn’t going there.
Things started to go a bit more smoothly after that, or so I’d thought.
“Alright, I’ll go and get the bread,” a voice sounded behind the shelving unit separating our aisle from the one next to us making both Cole and Tom gasp.
It was familiar, but I didn’t know where from until the big tit twins yelled, “Hagrid!” and ran around the corner, slipping on the shiny tiled floor.
Following at a slower pace, we arrived just as they apologized and walked away from a little old man, who was himself walking like Tom.
“It was meant to be Hagrid, but all we got was Dobby,” Cole muttered.
Tom was about to answer when he did a double look to his side at one of the shelves.
“Chocolate fingers?” It came out so loudly that the old couple that they’d just harassed, and everyone else, turned and looked at us. “Chocolate fingers and fish fingers? What kind of perverted shit is this?”
Not one to be outdone in humiliating the ever-loving shit out of us all, Cole then yelled, “Tampax? They do that here too?”
“Of course they do, you window licker,” Ebru snapped. “Women get their periods in every country. There isn’t one country where it doesn’t happen. Therefore, in every country you’ll find tampons and pads.”
“But aren’t they Royal here?” he whined, not realizing that the entire store was now staring at us with their mouths open.
“What’s that got to do with it?” Ebru continued to push the cart back toward us from where she’d been looking at a box at the end of the aisle. It was now overflowing with crap. “This isn’t for me,” she gestured to it all with her hand as she stopped in front of us. “It’s for the big tittie baby behind me.”
Cole was about to respond when Crystal, who had been sitting in the chair in the cart, stole the show.
“Fffffffffffff uck,” she shouted in her adorable little Tinkerbell voice, breaking the word into two, and unknowingly opening up one big can of shit for her daddy.
Very slowly, we all looked in Ren’s direction who was now backing away shaking his head.
“It wasn’t me!”
Maya’s face was turning an interesting shade of red as she glared in the direction of her husband.
“Fffffffffffffff uck uck uck ffffffffff…” She sang at the top of her lungs, again.
Ren pushed past us to where his baby daughter was sitting giggling away now, and started flapping his hands around like he was trying to put out a fire. Unfortunately, he was fanning it instead.
“Shhhh, stop,” he was all but begging her while he kept an eye on his wife who was slowly walking toward him. “Please, stop before your mom kicks my ass.”
“Ass!” Crystal chortled, actually chortled. From the grin on her face, you’d think she knew the amount of shit she was landing her daddy in, but she couldn’t. Plus, it was Luke and Isla’s evil spawn that were the geniuses of the baby family. “Fffffff
ffffff uck ass!”
“Oh my God,” Maya screeched. It was one of those times when it was meant to be a whisper, but she failed by at least forty levels on the volume scale.
Unfortunately, you could still hear Crystal practicing her new vocabulary over the big old ball sack, Gramps, who was laughing his ass off alongside Tom.
“Her…her…” Gramps struggled to get it out as he wheezed, and then went into another round of deafening roars of laughter.
Throughout it all, I looked longingly toward the exit and wondered if anyone would notice if I just went back home.
“Don’t you dare,” Sabine hissed beside me, grabbing my hand. She was breaking my fingers, but I suddenly didn’t care. She was holding my hand and I was too happy to worry about the state that my fingers ended up in. “You brought them, you suffer!”
Following where she was looking, I saw that Maya was still standing glaring at Ren, who was now patting his daughter down like he could find an off button. Gramps and Tom had moved so that they were now leaning against one of the shelving units, laughing.
“Her first sentence,” Gramps wheezed. “And she says, ‘fuck ass’!”
What happened next was a lesson in karma as the shelving units holding up Gramps and Tom gave way. There was a loud crash as they both hit the floor and ended up surrounded by the various types of chocolate fingers.
"My ass," Tom howled. “Oh Jesus, my ass. It’s on fire!” He followed it by rolling around on top of the boxes on the floor and grabbing what he could of his butt.
“Fffffffffff uck asssssssss!” Crystal squealed, clapping her hands at a rapid rate at the show in front of her and giggling.
Seeing people approaching us, including someone who looked like the manager of the store, and then looking at the women standing beside us who were all glaring and grinding their teeth ready to tear into the two cockmuppets, I commenced begging.
Providence Series Books 5-7 Page 5