“Oh,” she breathed.
I followed the direction of her gaze, stilling my strokes when I saw the moon.
“It’s so big,” she breathed.
My eyes took in the moon as it shined over the water through the trees.
It was an eerie orangey red in color and looked almost other worldly.
I turned back to the woman underneath me.
“I could’ve never pictured anything more perfect than this…with you…right now,” I rumbled softly.
Her eyes teared up, and she lifted her mouth to mine.
“I love you, Casten,” she whispered against my lips.
“I love you more.”
We came like that, staring into each other’s eyes.
And I never, in my life, felt anything so perfect.
***
“And what was your other condition?” I asked an hour later with her laying in my arms.
She sighed and sat up, leaning onto one elbow.
“I need to see Jet,” she hesitated, “and I need you to come with me.”
Chapter 21
Sometimes giving someone a second chance is like giving them an extra bullet for their gun. Maybe they only missed the first time.
-Words of wisdom
Gustavo
I watched my daughter walk through the door, holding hands with Casten as if her life depended on him being there.
“Why are we all here?” my wife asked. “Shouldn’t this be private?”
I shook my head. “She wanted us here…in case.”
My wife nodded and placed her head against my shoulder as we watched our daughter walk to the man that had nearly taken the life from her…the air straight from her lungs…twice.
“Can we listen?” I asked Ridley.
Ridley nodded. “Sure.”
He flipped a switch on the wall, and we both froze at hearing that achingly familiar voice.
When my daughter had first met Jet, it hadn’t occurred to me that they’d become more than just each other’s best friends.
Hell, they were young kids, their whole lives in front of them.
But they’d become inseparable when they were teenagers. Somehow, though, I’d known that they weren’t meant for each other.
Jet was always a selfish boy.
Tasha was a giving girl, and together they didn’t make the best of couples.
And now, years later, I was reminded of why.
Because Jet always looked out for himself, first.
Never thought about anyone but himself.
And his parents catered to his every whim. Because of their control over his life, he was now currently handcuffed to the table when he could’ve been free to live his life. And my daughter now had a man at her side that always put her first.
Not the other way around.
I had no doubt that they’d be together forever.
And as he held her, quietly listening while Jet tried to talk his way out of a hole, I couldn’t find one single issue with Casten.
He was a good man.
And I couldn’t wait to give this man my daughter’s hand in marriage.
***
Three months later
“And who gives this woman to this man?” the preacher asked.
I smiled down at my daughter.
“Her mother and I do.”
Epilogue
Hell hath no fury like a hungry, pregnant, led by her emotions woman. May you rest in peace.
-Casten’s secret thoughts
Casten
Year 1
I walked inside our new house, fully expecting Tasha to meet me at the door like she usually did, but I was disappointed.
She wasn’t anywhere in the front room, living room or office.
“Tash?” I called.
“In the kitchen!” she yelled back.
Curious, I walked into the kitchen and froze.
“What are you doing?” I asked carefully.
She looked at me over her shoulder, a wide smile on her face, and said, “I’m cooking your dinner. What does it look like I’m doing?”
I took in her attire.
She was wearing her wedding dress.
It looked just as good on her now as it had a year ago.
“You look…fancy,” I finally settled on, laughter tinging my voice.
She turned around and gave me the front view, and my breath caught.
So beautiful.
“You’ve got sauce on your dress,” I said, pointing.
She looked down and shrugged.
“I wanted to wear it because I didn’t want it to sit in the closet like everyone else’s. Do you care?” she teased.
I walked forward and wrapped my hands around her cheeks.
“No. I don’t care. I kind of like it. Weird, just like you,” I teased.
She hit me in the belly with a clenched fist.
“That was rude,” she quipped, turning back around to tend to her pasta sauce.
Guess we were having spaghetti.
I watched as her hips swayed to some silent music that only played in her head, and I grinned.
I loved the hell out of this woman.
Thoroughly and completely.
The one thing that was weighing on us, though, was my inability to give Tasha children.
She said she didn’t care.
She only wanted me.
But I cared.
I wanted her to be happy. I wanted to see her holding my children. I wanted to hold them in my hands. I wanted to give her the world.
But I couldn’t.
We’d been trying to have a baby for a year now, ever since we’d gotten married, and it still hadn’t happened.
We knew it’d be a long shot…but it was hard as a man to not see this as a failure on my part.
Not that it was technically considered ‘failing.’
But it felt like it to me.
“What are you thinking about, my Little Storm cloud?” Tasha provoked me.
I looked up from studying her dress and shrugged.
“Wondering if you’re ever going to step outside your comfort zone and cook something besides spaghetti on Monday,” I teased her.
She had a busy life.
She worked late most days…then again, so did I.
Sometimes, spaghetti was all she had time for. And I was thankful, no matter what.
I did like to give her a hard time, though. Mostly because I liked to see the flush that stole up her chest to her face as her temper rose.
“I think…” I hesitated. “I think we should adopt.”
Her eyes went huge.
“Really?”
I nodded. “Yeah. Really.”
She took a deep breath, then let it out slowly.
“I think…” she smiled brilliantly. “I think I’d like that.”
***
Tasha
Year 2
I ran from the kitchen into the living room, then pulled open the front door.
“Thank God you’re home!” I cried, placing a baby…a naked baby…into Casten’s hands. “I’m having a meltdown.”
I picked up the train of my dress and hooked it around my arm as I ran back into the bedroom to pick up the second of our two children.
“Oh, this is soooo gross,” I cried as I picked up Davy from his crib. “Grrrrooooossss.”
“What’s going on?” Casten asked, taking in the pandemonium.
“Your kids decided to shit…at the same time…and blow out of their diapers…at the same time…in their crib…during nap. At the same time!” I screamed at him as I moved into the bathroom then dropped down to my knees beside the bathtub.
I pulled the spray nozzle down and slowly started to hose him off.
Davy and Ivy were twins.
When their birth mother had chosen us, we’d been beyond excited…and so happy.
Col
or us surprised, though, when we got to the first ultrasound and realized that she wasn’t pregnant with just one baby, but two.
We jumped at the chance, so thrilled that words couldn’t explain.
We’d been trying for a very long time, and it was wonderful to see the light at the end of our tunnel when it came to these two precious lives.
Water splashed on my dress, and I was thankful that that was all that got on it, seeing as it could’ve been worse.
Way worse.
“I can’t believe you’re wearing that again,” Casten laughed from the doorway, his large hands cupping the now-diapered bottom of Ivy.
I looked down at my wedding dress, seeing the old stain from last year when he’d told me he wanted to adopt a baby, and smiled.
“I’m making good memories in it,” I told him.
He grinned and walked away, leaving me to finish cleaning up Davy.
Yes, good memories indeed.
***
Casten
Year 3
“Casten!” Tasha called from the bedroom.
I stood up from where I’d collapsed an hour before, completely exhausted from having to wrangle two one year olds for a fucking party that was pointless when they wouldn’t even remember it.
“Yeah?” I asked, rounding the corner to our bedroom.
I smiled when I saw Tasha.
“Can you help me?” she asked, trying in vain to reach around to unzip her dress.
I walked up behind her.
This year her wedding dress only zipped up to middle of her back, and the reason why was evident as she turned around, finally showing off her belly.
“Ahhhh,” she sighed in euphoria. “I can breathe again.”
I grinned.
“I don’t know what possessed you to wear that to a birthday party of all places,” I grumbled.
She stuck her tongue out.
“It’s a tradition. I can’t just not wear it because we had plans for today. I only get to do it once a year,” she scrunched up her nose.
I held up my hands then immediately dropped them to her swollen belly.
“How’s our baby doing today?” I asked, rubbing her tummy like I always did these days.
Ever since she’d started showing, I’ve become obsessed with her baby belly.
I couldn’t go a single hour when I was in her presence without touching it.
Mostly, I did it because I couldn’t believe we’d actually created a life together.
I’d never thought it possible.
Hell, it’d been nearly three years of unprotected sex, and we’d never had a pregnancy scare.
So when Tasha had come to me with her suspicions about four months ago, I couldn’t quite keep the pride out of my voice. Or my step.
I was like a fucking rooster strutting around, puffing out my chest.
“Will you go make sure their light is off before you get in the shower with me?” she pleaded, batting those beautiful brown eyes at me.
I smiled.
“Sure.”
I made my way back out to the kids’ bedroom, unsurprised when I saw the light on in their room.
They’d started climbing out of their cribs when they were nine months old. And now, at one-year-old, I was lucky if they didn’t destroy their room before morning.
I made my way to the crib that they were sleeping in and looked down at their two exhausted faces.
And felt like I was on top of the world.
Resting my hands on their backs, something that I did every night, I felt the gentle rise and fall of their chests and I realized something.
I had two of life’s most beautiful things right there in the palms of my hands.
And later that night, as my wife laid against my chest, her little belly poking me in the side, I counted my lucky stars.
***
Tasha
Year 10
I rubbed barbeque sauce off of the white fabric that lined my breasts and groaned.
My wedding dress had seen better days.
Maybe this would be the year that I managed to get it dry cleaned.
“How do you spell daddy?” I heard from the living room.
I didn’t take notice until I heard what he said for a second time.
“One more time, daddy.”
“B.A.D.A.S.S.,” Casten said, enunciating perfectly.
I blinked, then turned and rounded the corner of the kitchen.
He was scrolling through the television, one hand behind his head, with the other extended across the arm of the couch with the TV remote in his hand.
“What was that?” I asked Casten.
“What was what?” Casten asked with a smirk.
I smiled.
“Those letters you just told Sissy,” I said carefully, trying not to laugh.
Casten tossed me a grin.
“You heard me just fine, woman,” he returned.
I shook my head and turned on my heels, walking back to the kitchen and the dinner I was in the process of making.
I loved that man.
I loved everything about him, our kids and our life together.
And I always would.
Coming Soon
Oxygen Deprived
Book 2 in The Kilgore Fire Series
8-4-16
Chapter 1
Men and women are different. If a man is scorned, he’ll show up at night. If a woman is scorned, she’ll show up at your job and smash your shit in front of everyone.
-Proven Fact
Aspen
I stood at my front window, eyes narrowed as I watched man after man move heavy boxes out of the back of a moving truck into the house directly across the street from mine.
Every single one of the men that were helping were all drop dead gorgeous…and I knew them all.
It was kind of hard not to when the fire station was right next door to the police station.
If I didn’t know them directly, I knew their faces; and it wasn’t a good thing, either.
They all would know my shame.
Would know that…
“I can’t believe you’re under house arrest,” my best friend said.
I grimaced at her.
“At least my job is from home,” I muttered darkly.
Somehow, in the light of day, this wasn’t anywhere near as okay as I thought it’d be.
In fact, once I ran out of milk, around two in the afternoon, nothing was funny. Not at all.
“This suuuucks!” I said loudly. “Why did this happen to me?”
There was silence for a few long moments, then my best friend’s laughter.
“Probably because you were caught beating the crap out of your ex boyfriend’s truck, and then his woman,” Parker said, laughter filling her voice.
I turned my glare on her.
“Shut your face,” I said through clenched teeth. “Or I swear, by all that’s holy, I’ll shove that coke can up your ass.”
Parker could no longer contain her laughter, and she fell to the floor with the hilarity of it all.
Me, on the other hand, yeah, I didn’t get it.
Parker continued to laugh until tears rolled down her cheeks, but I stared at her for long moments, letting my dissatisfaction show.
“I’m sorry,” she said, trying to catch her breath. “But you’d laugh at me, too, if you were in this situation.”
I sighed.
I would.
I wouldn’t be able to help it.
However, I was the one in this situation, not her, so it was hard to say what I would and wouldn’t do under different circumstances.
I crossed my feet out in front of me and stared at the blank wall where my TV used to be.
Danny had taken that while I was in jail, as well as my Xbox, controllers, dish receiver, and kitchen appliances that were small enough to fit into his mom’s SUV.
How did
I know that?
Because my neighbors told me.
They’d spent hours telling me how they watched him take everything.
“Why does your cat have a note attached to her neck?” Parker asked, her eyes caught by the sight of the white paper that stood out starkly against my cat’s black fur.
“She’s a whore,” I said simply.
“Why?” she asked, crawling on her hands and knees toward the cat.
She stopped, read the note, and then snorted out a laugh.
“She’s a muffin stealing whore?” Parker asked.
I nodded.
“I was bored,” I said. “I even took her picture and submitted it to Ellen so she could be put into that pet shaming contest that everyone is doing.”
“Ellen? The Ellen Degeneres Show?” Parker asked. “I don’t think Ellen does that.”
“Well, she should,” I muttered. “Speaking of Ellen, she’s on!”
I was now on day two of my five-month house arrest, and I was fairly sure by day seven, I’d very likely kill myself.
Parker and I watched about five minutes of it before she stood, stretching her arms up high over her head.
“I’m going to Wal-Mart. Do you want me to get you anything?” she asked. “I’ll drop it off tomorrow on the way to pick the kids up from school.”
I shot up off the couch and ran to my office, picking up a piece of white computer paper and folding it in half.
Once I was sure the marker wouldn’t bleed through, I picked up the only writing utensil I could ever seem to find, a Sharpie, and quickly wrote down a list.
Once I had that done, I walked back to the kitchen where I pulled out seven twenties and walked back towards where Parker was still standing, watching the show in front of her.
“Here,” I said. “This is my list.”
“Aspen,” Parker started. “This only has a TV on it.”
I nodded.
“Yep,” I agreed.
“But, I thought the chief of police ordered Danny to give all your stuff back,” Parker said. “That doesn’t make sense to get you a TV.”
I gave her a look. “Does your brother ever do what he’s supposed to do?” I asked. “I doubt he ever follows orders unless The Chief makes him do it, and even then he’d actually have to come over to ask me whether he gave it back. It’s not like Danny’s going to offer up that information.”
Vodka On The Rocks (The Uncertain Saints Book 3) Page 21