“Mom, no. I can still see the shiiiiiiii…OH FUCK ME!”
We could see white fizzing on his hands as he ran toward the back door waving them around. Not at all phased by his screaming, the twins sat on the floor laughing and clapping like it was the best thing they’d ever seen. I was inclined to agree and was now laughing that hard that I was scared shitless that I was about to piss my pants.
“Well, his hands are clean now,” Mom announced, screwing the cap back onto the top of the bottle.
The twin’s laughter was broken by the sound of a body going into the water of the pool. Looking at each other, Luke and I winced waiting for the drama queen to start up again.
“Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me. I’m in shit soup. It’s in my hair. Oh my god, it’s in my eyes. It’s in my mouth.” For a guy who sounded like Minnie Mouse, he could really project his voice when he was covered in shit.
“Well, those ribs are definitely off the menu now,” Mom grumbled, making her way over to the twins for a cuddle.
“Wait, you’d have still served them if he hadn’t jumped in Turd Placid with them still in his pants?” All of the meals I’d eaten, thousands of plates of food that she’d made us, flashed through my head. What else had happened to it that I didn’t know about?
Shrugging, she picked up the twins and carried them toward the room full of baby crap that they had for all of the kids. It was turning into a success commercial for a fertility clinic in my family.
“What color Porsche does he want?” I asked Luke, desperately trying to clear my mind of the horrible images going through them of the food I’d eaten here and the possible mishaps. I was gonna get that kid the best car in the history of cars when he was old enough.
Without even thinking, Luke gasped out, “Black!”
Nodding my head, I turned to walk to the toilet not sure I could hold on any longer. I’d buy that kid the world out of gratitude for the literal shit show that I’d just witnessed. And I was even more adamant now that I was going to have at least one kid as awesome as Luke and Isla’s. I just needed to make sure that the threat to Sabine was gone for good first.
Four
SABINE
Three pregnancy tests and a doctor’s appointment later - I was definitely pregnant. Looking down at the scan photo in my hand as I left the medical center, I almost bumped into the big guy who was walking next to me. He looked vaguely familiar, but I didn’t trust my memory just now with anything, so I gave him the polite stranger smile and walked quickly to my car.
Now that I thought about it, and not the scan…I was having a baby. Shit, focus on what you were thinking about Beeny. The name that my sister had given me when we were kids made me smile sadly. I should probably try and get in touch with her; she might be able to help me figure out what the hell I was meant to do now.
Turning on the engine, I looked in my rearview mirror as I put the car into reverse to make my way home. Seeing the man from before sitting in his car behind me, I remembered what I’d been thinking about before.
For weeks now I’d had the feeling that I was being watched or that there was someone else around. I was probably imagining things, but I was sure that I’d seen him before.
Doing a quick glance in the mirror again as I finished reversing and put the car into first gear, I met his cold eyes and quickly put my foot down on the accelerator.
Maybe Fin could help me?
Brett
It had been almost a week since the incident with Cole and Kali and I was still at the ranch. I could work from here, and my house in Houston just reminded me of Sabine, so I was using the time with my family to pass the days until I could go and get her and explain all of this shit.
“Brett…” Coleman burst through the front door making us all jump. He looked far from the normal calm and put together guy that we were all used to seeing. Walking up to me, he dropped some photos on the table. “Looks like our team in the UK forgot to tell us something.”
Looking down at the photos, I spread them out and smiled sadly when I saw Sabine. She was standing in front of a beautiful property, something that anyone would picture if they heard the words ‘rural Britain’. The smile quickly dropped, though, when I looked at the changes to her, specifically the slight increase to her middle section. I frowned as I looked closer at what she was holding in her hand, recognizing what it was immediately. In fact, the one Ebru had had done this morning was still on the table right in front of where I was currently sitting where Cole had dropped it for us all to look at.
Why was Sabine carrying one?
Did that mean…?
“She’s,” I choked. “She’s pregnant?”
The rest of the family’s chairs screeched across the floor as they all stood up at the same time to look over my shoulder.
“I don’t know how the fuck they missed putting this on the reports,” Coleman fumed as he paced around. “And why didn’t we see this in the previous photographs?”
“Dude, it takes time for the…” Cole gestured a huge bump in front of himself looking nervously at Ebru. She was larger than Maya had been by that stage, but she wasn’t exactly huge. “They’re all normal, and then boom.”
All of the women in the room glared at him, but I couldn’t stop staring at the tiny bump on Sabine. I knew that body, every beautiful inch of it, and that bump definitely hadn’t been there before. The fact that the woman that I loved, that I hadn’t been able to hold in what felt like forever, was carrying my baby and I hadn’t been there was strangling me. I wanted to be there for her, I was missing out on so much.
“We’re clearing this shit up, Coleman. It gets finished now and then I’m getting on a plane.”
“Brett, man, you gotta think straight. We can’t just finish it, we don’t know enough about who and where,” he argued.
“Fuck that,” I stood up and leaned across the table. “That is my woman. That is my child.”
We held eye contact long enough for him to know how far past done I was now.
“Okay,” he sighed. “We’ll step up security and I’ll get the guys to dig deeper. It’s impossible Brett, but we’ll do everything to keep y’all as safe as we can.”
“Focus on keeping her safe,” I pointed to the photo in front of me. “That’s what matters.”
“Brett,” Mom started and then quickly stopped when I spun around to look at her. Joining Coleman on the sighing, she turned back to the photographs.
“Wait, who’s this guy?” Cole pointed at a man in the last photo that was standing talking to Sabine with his hand on her stomach. It must have been stuck to the back of another one because I hadn’t seen it before now.
“What the fuck?” I was growling and gripping the table. He had his hand on Sabine and on my fucking baby.
“That’s, uh, that’s her neighbor.” Coleman sounded like it had been choked out of him.
"Meh, he looks like a poo-poo head,” Cole shrugged, as he picked up the photo. “I wouldn’t get upset about it. I mean, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger and all that shit.”
“Yup, like radiation,” Tom said around a mouthful of one of the muffins Mom had made this morning.
All of us turned to look at him at the same time, but it was Coleman who eventually asked, “What part of you thought that was a useful thing to say?”
“You just sounded like a clichéd inbreeder, man,” Cole added. “Who did radiation ever make stronger who wasn’t a television or movie character? I’ll bet you can’t name one person.”
Sitting down and looking through the photos, Tom thought as he chewed his muffin. Finally, he answered.
“Brewse Bannere!”
“You’re full of shit. He was the Hulk and fictional doesn’t count,” I sighed pinching the bridge of my nose. This was almost painful.
“Did too,” Tom nodded. “Look it up on the internet.”
I was about to lose my shit, when the cretin burst out laughing.
“Oh my God,” he held onto t
he table as he snorted. “You must be dying.” He punctuated it with a slap on my shoulder. “Aren’t you dying?” Another slap and the tears were pouring down his face with the hilarity he’d found in the situation. I was gonna kill him. “Dead!” Slap. “Dead, dead, dead,” each word was followed with a slap. “I mean, look at him,” he wheezed gesturing toward the photo with the neighbor who had his hands-on Sabine.
My parents weren’t fools and they knew that I didn’t give a shit that it was my brother, I was getting close to the point where I would kill him. So, Mom quickly dragged him from his chair and yanked him in the direction of the kitchen.
As he was pulled out the room, all we could hear was him laughing and repeating, “Dead!”
“Get the fucking plane ready,” I snapped at Coleman. “We leave as soon as fucking possible!”
Making my way toward the back door, I intended to go and get whatever shit I’d need. Fortunately, that was also the direction that Tom had also gone in, and as he yelled what would be his final, “Dying!” I picked up my pace and launched myself at him.
Just as I hit the back of him, there was a distant cracking noise followed by a burning in my abdomen.
We both fell to the ground, me groaning and Tom squealing. Rolling to the side, I put my hand on the burning feeling in my gut and felt something hard under my hand.
“He’s been shot,” Coleman’s voice broke through the ringing in my ears. “Get out there and find him! Someone call an ambulance.”
There was a rustling as Tom felt for the phone in his back pocket. “I’ll do it…what the fuck happened to my phone?”
Typical asshole. I’ve been shot and he’s moaning about his phone. I was just about to scream at him when Coleman growled, “That’s a bullet hole through it!”
“What the fu…”
“Um, Tom, did you start your period or something?” Tom was interrupted by Cole.
My head hit the ground with a thud as the pain took over my midsection, making me pant. I could hear Coleman on his phone talking to the family’s helicopter pilot instead of the emergency services.
He must have seen something on Tom just as he ended the call, because he said, “What the shit? Bend over.”
“Fuck you, man! I haven’t fallen for that trick since I was fifteen.”
If I could have laughed at the silence that followed that, I would have, but I was pretty certain that I was dying.
"I’m not even going to go down that route and ask you why anyone would tell you to do that, but right now I’m fucking serious. Bend over!” Coleman’s voice was at that deep growl that told me he was now seriously pissed off. There was more rustling and some squeaks from who I assumed was Tom. “You’ve been shot too.”
“I’ve been what?”
“Shot.”
“Where? Ow, stop touching it. That hurts!” Tom squealed before it must have sunk in. “I’ve been shot?” Coleman grunted as Cole muttered something. “Oh.”
A loud thud and two deep sighs followed it.
"Is it just me who finds the fact that he got shot in the ass funny?” Cole asked whoever was around us at that point. I could hear Mom trying to get to me and being held back by someone else. It was probably for the best that she didn’t see what happened next.
The mental image of Tom being shot in the ass and fainting with the knowledge hit me and I started to laugh causing the hard thing under my hand to move slightly as my stomach tightened. It pushed up against my hand and more of the warm sticky stuff that I’d felt rushed out through my fingers. The pain and the disgust was too much and I joined my brother in la la land.
Eight hours later….
The bullet had only gone into the fat of my stomach so, although it hurt like a bitch, it had been easy for them to remove it and sew me up. I had antibiotics and painkillers to take, but I wanted to keep a clear head so I was adamant that I wasn’t going to touch them.
Tom had also been lucky. The bullet had hit his phone before going through the fat of his ass cheek and hitting me. He’d been playing on his injury after they’d fixed him up, until Coleman came in and told us that the security detail on Sabine had picked up an ‘unknown’ following her.
That had been the final straw for me, and the journey that we’d been planning for first thing in the morning was happening now.
Because we were travelling to the U.K., even though we were on a private jet, we had to clear the normal airport security, so we were all in line waiting to go through.
“It hurts,” Tom whined beside me, shifting from foot to foot. If my side didn’t hurt so much, I’d laugh every time he had to walk. He looked like he’d been Brutus’ cell block bitch as he waddled with his knees bent and his ass padded on one side.
At the moment, I was too focused on the airport security agent who was watching us approach, taking in Tom’s awkward walk and the bulge in the back of his pants.
“Shut up,” I snapped. The more attention he drew to himself, the more likely it was that we would be held up by him getting a fucking cavity search. The little bitch wouldn’t fly commercial, either, so we couldn’t leave him behind. Added onto that issue was the fact that there would be no one there to look after the little shit, seeing as how they had all decided to join me. So, I needed him to straighten his act out – literally!
Just as we got to the conveyer belt, dropped our jackets, bags and shit onto it, and walked up to the metal detector, he broke his twenty-second silence.
“You have no idea how sore my ass is,” he whined, again. “I mean,” he bent over even further, “I took the full thing. You only got the tip!”
The agents in front of us stopped and looked at each other before looking back at us.
“Um, passports please?” The bigger one of them asked, watching Tom as he hobbled behind me.
Handing them over, I waited for the inevitable to happen.
Looking closely at all of the details in the passports, the agent looked back at me and waved me through before turning back to Tom and taking in his bent form. “Could you come with me, please, Sir.”
“I hope they have enough lube!” Cole yelled from his spot behind us in the queue as Tom waddled after the agent toward the ‘special room’.
I fucking hoped that they didn’t. The little bitch deserved it!
And now we’d be delayed until he finished getting fingered by the guy with hands the size of an elephant’s foot. Maybe if I told the pilot to just leave they’d go back home?
Looking back at my family, I noticed that Mom and Gram’s narrowed eyes were watching me and decided that I could face that delay caused by Tom’s pat down. Only a fool would take those two on.
Five
BRETT
I was in a living hell. I’d been stuck on an eleven-hour flight from Houston to Bristol with the family from hell – mine.
The whole time Tom had been bitching about the pain in his ass and had ended up lying face down in the aisle of the plane. Gramps was, once again, moaning about how he shouldn’t have had the left-over pizza in the fridge before we left home. Thankfully there was more than one toilet on our plane so there was no risk of me going in after him.
We were about an hour into the flight when Gram yelled out a question from the puzzle book that she had been playing with.
“What’s the capital of Spain?” I had been too busy focusing on breathing through the pain in my side and planning what I was going to say to Sabine when I saw her, so I didn’t answer. Everyone else was caught up in either the kids, sleeping or shitting. “It looks like it begins with an M,” she pressed.
“Mordor,” Tom slurred from his prone position, blocking the aisle.
“Um? Oh yes, I can make that fit,” she muttered as she scratched the page and scribbled it down.
Cole chose that moment to come and sit next to me, letting out a tired sigh.
“You decided what to say to her?”
Hoping that my shrug was answer enough, I leaned back and listened as he s
tarted throwing ideas at me. None of them helpful, including taking Sabine a Happy Meal because that was what worked at the moment with Ebru. Once he realized that I didn’t really care what he had to say, he sat back silently.
“Shut up,” I growled, looking out of the window at the sky. Couldn’t this fucking thing go any faster?
“What?” He asked, sounding confused. “I didn’t even say anything. I was just sitting here minding my own business.”
“You were thinking and the sound’s fucking annoying!”
Choosing Forever Page 4