by Linda Kage
“You know, Lowe,” he said, his voice bland. “If you'd like some help, I know a person you could see about those acute cinephile tendencies you have.”
Gracen narrowed his eyes. “Big words make me angry,” he retorted, still quoting the movie. “Keep talking.”
“Ooh, that was a good one,” I praised, cupping his face in my hands to gaze into his eyes with adoration.
He winked. “I could do this all day,” he said, still quoting The Croods.
“Do it for the rest of my life,” I ordered and threw my arms around him, squeezing him tight and never wanting to let go.
He sighed against me and set his face on my shoulder, murmuring, “This is good. What do you call this?”
Stroking his hair, I finished the line, “I call it a hug.”
“My God,” Bella murmured, leaning against Fox as they continued to scrutinize us together. “You two are sickeningly sweet together.” Then she shook her head sadly and looked up at Fox. “I always knew he’d be happiest in one of those sickeningly sweet, everything-is-awesome relationships.”
“Wrong movie,” Gracen said, not even looking her way as he continued to hug me.
“‘Everything is awesome’ is from The Lego Movie, not The Croods,” I explained.
Parker and Bella glanced at each other. “Yeah, you called it,” he told her. “They’re the perfect, nerdy-sweet couple together.” He slung his free arm around her shoulders and clicked his tongue. “Now, are we going to get back to this game, so El and I can kick your asses, or are you twins forfeiting already?”
“Oh, whatever!” Bella spat back, elbowing him in the ribs to nudge him away. “It’s on, buddy. Prepare to bleed.”
“You know…” Gracen scowled at him as well. “I’ve wanted to throw you away ever since I met you.”
Parker furrowed his brow in confusion before glancing at me. “Please tell me that wasn't another line from the movie.”
Grinning, I bobbed my head. “It was. It totally was.”
“Lord.” Groaning, he rolled his eyes and then sent me a questioning glance. “And you claimed this immature dork was a twelve? Really?”
“Huh?” Gracen zipped his attention to me. “Wait. Is that what my Twelve nickname means? You told him I was a twelve? Out of ten?”
I bit my lip and felt a blush coming on. “Maybe.”
He grinned. “Definitely.” Then he pressed his brow to mine and told me, “But just for the record, I think you’re a twelve out of ten, too.” He rolled his brow lovingly against mine and sighed. “Damn, but if this isn’t love, I don’t know what is.”
And that is how Gracen told me for the first time that he loved me.
GRACEN
“They’re coming! They’re coming.” Yellow jumped in her seat and clapped her hands excitedly as she glanced across the restaurant.
From my chair at the table with the white cloth draped over it and a lit candle and small floral arrangement in the center, I glanced over to spot Fox and Bella joining hands as they made their way through other similarly set tables with people at them to reach us.
“Yep,” I said.
“Do you think she suspects?” Yellow leaned toward me to ask in a hushed voice. “She doesn’t look like she suspects.”
I gave a small smile and glanced at her, seeing that her gaze was still on them. “She doesn’t have a clue,” I murmured.
“Eek.” Yellow took my hand and squeezed before looking up at me. “I can’t wait to see the look on her face when he asks.”
Oh, I couldn’t wait to see the look on all their faces.
“Hey, guys,” Bella said once they reached us. Fox pulled out her chair for her, and as soon as she was seated and tucked in, she leaned toward us, hissing, “This place is seriously nice. Did you see that entrance?”
“It was kind of hard to miss,” I answered dryly. “Since we had to walk through it to get here.”
“I know!” Yellow answered Bella, even as she nudged her elbow at me to get me to behave. “That chandelier alone probably costs as much as our house.”
Our house.
I still loved it when she said our.
We’d gotten a place together about four months ago, and it was awesome. There were the usual hiccups, of course. It would’ve been absolutely boring if we’d gotten along and agreed about everything. But the challenging clash of differing personalities and genders kept things interesting and entertaining.
As the ladies went on about the molding and wall sconces, I glanced to my left.
Fox sat stiffly, looking tense and uncomfortable.
I nudged his arm and shifted my upper body his way.
“You know…” I teased. “It might help if you considered breathing every couple of minutes.”
He sent me a stiff glare. “I’ll think about it. Afterward. When’s it supposed to begin, anyway?”
“After drinks and appetizers,” I murmured, glancing toward the women to make sure they weren’t listening in. “And before the main course.” Then I snickered and lifted my brows as I turned back to him. “You better hope she says yes, or this is going to be a damn awkward meal.”
He squinted at me. “You’re a moron.”
Our waiter arrived before I could answer, toting a bottle of wine to peddle to us. He rested it against the towel draped over his forearm as he showed us the label and explained its attributes.
Yellow and Bella were all for giving it a try, so we watched the whole production of him serving each of us.
“I don’t know why, but super sophisticated places like this always make me want to break out in nervous laughter,” Yellow announced, pressing a hand to her chest as she lifted her wineglass.
“I’m always worried I’m going to burp at the end of the meal,” Bella confessed.
“Or fart,” I tossed in, making the girls roll their eyes at me.
Fox tossed me a sharp glare, probably chastising me for saying the word fart aloud on his big night.
I shrugged, mouthing, what?
“Are you okay, baby?” Bella asked suddenly, making him whirl toward her with a guilty, wide-eyed expression. Her brow furrowed in concern. “You’ve been awfully quiet all evening. Did you have a bad day at work?”
“Oh my God, that reminds me,” Yellow blurted, successfully diverting Bella from focusing too intently on her nervous boyfriend. “You will not believe what Jada had me do at work today…”
I leaned toward my boy, and hissed, “You need to fucking relax, man.”
Gritting his teeth, he turned to me slowly, hissing, “How?”
“I don’t know.” He was the damn life coach here. Not me. “Drink more.”
He snorted and rolled his eyes before picking up his glass and downing the contents in one swallow. Yellow kept Bella occupied all the way through the serving of the appetizers and salads.
When a man wearing a black shirt that was half unbuttoned and tucked into black pants with his dark hair styled into an eighties ‘do stormed into the room and approached a table over in the corner, both Bella and Yellow jumped and stopped talking to each other to watch curiously as he halted in front of an older man and announced, “No one puts Baby in the corner.”
Then he reached for the hand of a younger woman wearing a simple pink dress.
“Oh my God!” Bella exclaimed, slapping her hands to her cheeks. “Is this a flash mob? I think it’s a flash mob! We’re going to get to see a flash mob performance! Oh! I’ve always wanted to see one of these.”
Fox glanced her way and grinned big as the Johnny Castle-wannabe led his Baby across the room, and someone at another table stood, belting out, “Now I’ve…” He pressed one hand to his chest as he spread out the other. “Had...The time of my life.”
A woman at yet another table stood to add, “And I’ve never felt this way before.”
“Holy shit. This is awesome,” Bella breathed.
I glanced her way and grinned when I saw her and Yellow clasping hands and swaying to
gether, unable to control their smiles as they watched the show.
By the time it wrapped up toward the end with the scene where the guy lifted the girl into the air above his head, nearly half the room had joined in, either singing the acoustics or dancing to the music with them.
I silently nudged Yellow’s arm, and she reluctantly tore her gaze from the performance to glance my way. Heaving in a breath, I lifted the ring between us, causing light to sparkle off the huge diamond set in its platinum band.
Her mouth fell open as she dropped her attention to it. Then her eyes widened. Zipping her gaze back up, she leaned toward me and hissed, “But I thought—”
I pressed a finger to my lips, quieting her. “This is for you too,” I whispered. “It was always for you too.”
She blinked and shook her head. “You mean, I helped plan my own proposal?”
With a rueful shrug, I admitted, “Hey, what better way to make sure you got exactly what you wanted? And besides, I couldn’t think of how else to keep it a secret from you.”
“Oh, Gracen.” Her eyes sparkled with tears. “This is all so amazing. It’s just...”
Across the table from us, Fox was drawing the attention of everyone by making a production of getting out of his seat and pulling a small, blue Tiffany’s box from his pocket.
“Oh shit,” I hissed, grabbing Yellow’s hand and stuffing the ring onto her finger. “He’s starting. Damn. No way in hell are they getting engaged before we do.”
She giggled and buried her face into the collar of my suit jacket to muffle the sound, but neither Fox nor Bella were paying us any attention as Fox gallantly kneeled before her and opened the lid.
Bella slapped her hands over her mouth, and her eyes glistened with tears as she alternated between looking at the ring inside and Fox’s earnest expression.
Yellow straightened enough to lean against me and watch them as Fox spoke all the right and proper words that I’d totally skipped over when I had proposed. Then Bella dove at him, hugging him as she shrieked, “Yes! Oh my God, yes!”
The room exploded with cheers, and my fiancée and I exchanged a private grin with each other before we joined them, clapping as well.
“You guys!” Bella finally turned our way, ready to share her moment. “Look. Oh my goodness, would you check this thing out?”
“Let me see,” Yellow cried, leaping from her seat to hug my twin. “Oh my God. Congratulations!”
But when she started to pull away, Bella blinked and paused before grabbing Yellow’s left hand and dragging it to her face for a closer look.
“Holy shit. You too?” she breathed, looking up to blink at her future sister-in-law before glancing in shock at me.
I nodded, grinning smugly, while Yellow said, “Yes. Just now.”
“Wait. What?” Fox leaned past Bella to get a load of Yellow’s ring already on her finger. Then he whirled incredulously toward me. “But you agreed that I could go first.”
With a shrug, lacking all guilt, I said, “I lied.”
“What the hell, man? This whole night was my idea. I only agreed to let you in on it at all because you swore the girls would love a double engagement. But I was always supposed to go first.”
“Hey. Eleven minutes, motherfucker,” I told him unapologetically, feeling no regret whatsoever.
“What?” he snapped, totally not understanding.
“I was born first,” I reminded him. “Eleven minutes before Bella. Ergo, I get engaged first.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Fox cried, his entire face turning a bright, tomato red. “You upstaged my proposal because of your stupid eleven-minute twin rivalry?”
“I didn’t upstage you at all,” I argued. “No one even noticed my proposal. You two were the ones who got all the applause.”
Which was exactly why I’d snuck mine in privately. While Bella had adored the attention, Yellow would’ve been super embarrassed to gain such a show. But she’d loved watching the flash mob as much as Bella had, so we’d both gotten it done exactly how we needed to.
“Just ignore him, baby,” Bella told Fox, taking his arm and forcing his attention to her. “He can have this one. We’ll get him back later. Maybe we can get married before they do.”
I snorted. “Yeah, good luck with that.”
Yellow sighed and leaned toward me. “We’re getting married tomorrow, aren’t we?”
Ah, my love. She knew me so well. “Probably,” I admitted.
And that’s how I got the drop on Fox and proposed before he could.
BELLA
“Eleven minutes, my ass,” my husband murmured with relish next to me. “What do you think of your eleven minutes now, motherfucker?” he went on, taunting my brother who wasn’t even around.
“Fox,” I hissed, cuddling the infant I was holding tighter to my chest and trying to cover her ears. “No cursing in front of the baby. She’s only, like, twenty minutes old. Good Lord. We can’t start out this quickly as such bad influences.”
“Shit, sorry. You’re right.” His voice went hushed as he nodded his agreement. Then his gaze went to his newborn daughter resting on my chest in the hospital bed, and he seemed to melt. “So can I hold her yet?”
He looked so eager and hopeful, I couldn’t say no, even though I felt pretty attached to the little bundle. She was just so warm, and small, and absolutely perfect. I didn’t want to let her go. But I guess I’d share if I had to.
The usual exchange process that probably passed between every pair of first-time parents ensued.
Careful.
Easy.
Do you have her?
I got her.
Okay, good. Just keep supporting her head.
And then Fox was holding his baby girl.
“Hey there, precious,” he cooed, lighting up as he gently tickled a finger across her chest. “Look at you. You’re just so sweet and flawless. I can’t believe I’m your daddy.”
I smiled wearily, beginning to feel the draining effects of childbirth as the adrenaline rush began to wear off.
After crossing the room, Fox sat in a visitor’s chair and gazed down at his daughter. “Your mom said I could be the one to tell you the origin of your name, so here goes. Once upon a time, Grandma and Grandpa Parker had a baby boy. That was me, by the way. And they still hadn’t decided what to name him yet, until Grandpa Ten—don’t worry; you’ll meet him soon enough—said, ‘Why don’t you just ship your two names together?’ And since Knox mixed with Felicity is Fox, it stuck. So when your mommy and daddy tried to come up with a name for you, we decided to follow their pattern. And that’s how you became Bex: a little bit of Bella and a little bit of Fox to make a whole lot of love.”
Bex’s only response was to fill her diaper with a very unpleasant sound.
And smell.
I blurted out a laugh. And Fox stood up to return her to me. “Here, you can have her back now.”
“No, no,” I told him. “You gotta learn how to do this.”
“But I heard their first bowel movement is like black tar. So, uh-uh, no. I’m not going near that shit.”
“Fox!”
“Poop. Sorry.”
I scowled, then said, “Ooh. Maybe we can just wait for one of the grandmas to show up. I’m sure they’ll trip over each other in a rush to change the first diaper.”
“Hell, yes. Good idea. They can’t be too far away.”
To prove him right, a light tapping sounded on the door to our hospital room. Fox and I exchanged giddy, conspiring grins. “Yes,” he hissed before calling, “Come on in.”
We were so saved.
It wasn’t just both sets of grandparents that trooped inside, but each of our siblings and their spouses too.
As soon as Fox said, “She just filled her first diaper. Who wants her?” both my mother and his, plus Bentley too, called, “I do!”
As the three women oohed and aahed over how precious Bex’s fingers and toes were while they set her in the bassinet
and proceeded to unwrap her and change her diaper, Gracen and a very pregnant, waddling Yellow made their way to me. She was actually three days overdue, and I was a week early, so she could pop at any moment.
They were having a girl, too, I guess. Her name was going to be Sienna, something Gray claimed they’d picked out on their first night together because it was a color. Or something. I don’t know; they were never very clear on the origin of her name, but I liked it, so that was all that mattered. Because Sienna and Bex were going to be the best of friends and the closest of confidants. I already knew.
“Oh my goodness, you did it,” Yellow cheered, taking my hands and squeezing. “How are you feeling?”
“Good.” I bobbed my head and gave her a loopy grin. “Exhausted. Maybe a little high on pain relievers.”
My sister-in-law laughed. “Well, you look great.”
“What’re you talking about?” my twin asked her incredulously. “Her face is swollen up like an overripe watermelon.”
“Gracen,” Yellow snapped, glaring at him as she elbowed him in the gut. “You don’t tell that to a woman who just gave birth.”
“Yeah,” I warned, pointing at him. “So don’t you dare say that to Yellow in a few days when she’s all swollen and splotchy from pushing out your child. I’ll kick your ass.”
“Yes,” Yellow agreed. “Please don’t say that. I’d definitely cry.”
“I would never,” he promised her, taking her hand and kissing her cheek. “One, because you’re not my sister. And two, you’d look beautiful whether you were swollen or not.”
“Um, excuse me,” I growled. Did he just insinuate that I did not look beautiful right now?
As if sensing that my brother was picking on me, my husband glanced over.
“So. Gracen,” he said, stepping away from our two dads and Beau who’d been gathered around him so he could stroll our way. Smirking at my brother, he opened his arms and announced, “Look which one had the baby first. Huh? Huh?”
Gracen hissed out a breath through his nostrils and stared straight ahead, sadly murmuring, “And there it is.”
“You’re damn right, there it is. You think I’d forget? Hell no,” Fox said, rubbing it in. “I have been waiting to get back at you for nearly two years now. And behold…” He splayed his hand toward my mother who was cooing madly as she lifted a freshly changed Bex into her arms and was propping the baby against her shoulder to bounce her and pat her back. “The first Lowe grandchild. Suck on that eleven minutes.”