This time, there were no unanswered questions.
This time, our future wasn’t in jeopardy.
This time, I said yes.
38
Keith: Long Time Coming
“Are you sure you don’t want to wear the bowtie?” my father asked, holding the unraveled cloth in his hands. “Just asking for a friend.”
“No, and you don’t, either. This is a beach wedding, Dad. Informal is the name of the game. Come here.”
“Why?” He stepped forward.
“So I can loosen a few of these buttons. You look like a priest.”
And as we stood facing one another I purposely avoided his gaze. He’d been trying to corner me all day, and now that we were alone, I could feel the energy pulsing off him.
He grabbed my hand. “Keith, I need to tell you something.”
“Dad, I swear if you tell me the honeybee story, you’re out of the wedding party.”
“I hate that you boys talk amongst yourselves. Jake ruined a perfectly good bachelor party story. I hope he’s happy because now everyone loses. Anyway, no, I want you to know how unbelievably proud I am of you.”
“Thank you.”
“And I think maybe I need to apologize.”
“Dad, you, of all people, have no reason to apologize. I’m only standing here today because of you.”
“Oh, but I do. You were right. I did favor Mitch. I see that now, but it was only because I felt guilty for not having him in my life as much as I should have. So when he was home, I overcompensated, putting him on a pedestal without really noticing it.”
I put my hand up. “Let me stop you right there. I am not that insecure kid anymore, and I don’t hold you responsible for anything. Hell, without you, I’d probably be a prison bitch.”
“Oh, yes, there’s no doubt.”
We laughed, a sense of humor being one of the most important things I’d inherited from him.
“And I’m glad you gave Mitch the attention he deserved. We had you all the time. He needed you. And he’s like the perfect human, so you did a good job.”
“You’re perfect too.”
We both saw the humor in that at the same time and laughed accordingly.
“Or… like perfect in a recycled furniture kind of way.”
“I’ll take it. And someday when I’m a father, I want to be just like you… only handsomer and thinner and with more hair. And without all the uncontrollable gas.”
“You’re such a jerk,” he said, grinning. “You and your siblings are ingrates. All of you.”
“We are what you made us.”
“Then I’ll die a happy man. I couldn’t be prouder of my kids – of you. You’re the exact man I always knew you could be, and I just couldn’t love you more.”
We hugged it out, only breaking apart when the motorhome we were using as a dressing room began to shake. Mitch opened the door, halting when he understood he’d just interrupted something.
“You want me to come back?” he asked, already turning to leave.
“Hey.” I opened my arm and motioned him in. “Get over here.”
Mitch strode over and wrapped his arms around the both of us.
“So, I don’t mean to rush you, but your bride is ready. And, oh, James is trying to ride one of the tortoises.”
“I’m ready,” I said, patting his shoulder. “I was just waiting on my best man to arrive.”
Mitch’s smile couldn’t get any wider or more blinding. “I’m here, little brother. Let me lead the way.”
* * *
My bare feet burrowed into the sand as I watched Sam pace toward me holding a small bouquet of flowers in one hand and her arm hooked though my father’s on the other. Her white dress flowed out around her in gentle waves. She resembled a water fairy with flowers braided into her hair. I blinked away the tears as she made her way toward me, the picture of beauty and health.
I scanned the small gathering of people – everyone we loved. There were no sides separating the bride and groom’s family, just an intimate blending of the two. A small, laid-back wedding was all we required, and what better place to celebrate our union than on our beach where it all started?
My father stopped, lifted Sam’s hand, and kissed it before turning her over to me. Maybe I expected her to be a swirl of emotion, but there were no tears in her eyes. No fear. Sam knew exactly what she wanted: me, every day for the rest of her life.
“Look,” I said, pointing to the area behind the altar. There, in roughly the same spot in the sand I’d once asked her to by my girlfriend, was a heart with the words, Will you be my wife?
She placed her hand on my chest. Only the slight tremble of her bottom lip spoke to her sentiment. “Thank you for never giving up on us, Keith.”
I leaned in, brushing a kiss upon her sun-lit cheek.
“It’s just what we do.”
Epilogue: Keith
“Scoot all the way down, Bud.” I bumped Wyatt along with my ass to make way for his mother and little brother.
“I don’t want to sit too close to the edge,” Wyatt said, his innocent eyes peering up at me. “What if a pirate gets me?”
“Impossible, bud. And you know why? Professional courtesy.”
“He’s four, Keith.” Sam elbowed me, casting me a sly smile as she adjusted our baby on her other hip in order to comfort her oldest son. “What Daddy means to say is they are toys, and toys are fun – nothing to fear.”
“Actually, that’s not at all what Daddy meant to say, but thank you for putting words in my mouth, Mommy.”
Finn leaned in from behind. “At least you can get a word in edgewise. That was a luxury I lost after daughter number three exited the birth canal.”
“And whose fault is that, Finn?” I asked, glancing back at his all-female crew. With her curly brown hair and agreeable personality, Indiana was a copy of her father, while identical twins Kimi and Paige were blonde and straight-laced like their mother. “You’re physically incapable of producing a male heir.”
“If your sister would have given me one more shot, I’m confident I would have proven all you dickhead haters wrong. But nooo. I have one little mishap with a condom… no offense, honey.” He squeezed Indiana to him. “And then a few years after that, I make the grave error of forgetting to mention the prevalence of twins in my family. Suddenly, I’m the one with the vasectomy? How’s that fair?”
Offering no sympathy, Emma countered his complaint. “Look, if I could trust your sperm, there’d be no need for such drastic measures. But you Perrys insist on populating the world one broken condom at a time.”
The adult talk going straight over his head, Wyatt pulled on my sleeve, eager for my undivided attention, and I gave it to him, no questions asked. My little sandy-haired, bronzed-skin cutie was already a beach bum, spending hours playing in the sand and dipping his toes in the Pacific. On the adorable scale from one to ten, I could objectively report that he scored a twenty.
His little brother Thomas enjoyed the same high ranking, even though he wasn’t nearly as interactive as his brother. At thirteen months old, Tommy was a one-syllable kind of guy, who babbled his way through any conversation. He was also a competitive eater and would shove into his mouth whatever was handy: dog toys, onions, sand. Nothing was safe. In one glaring lapse of supervision, I even discovered our little food connoisseur chowing down on a paperback book. By the time I figured out what he was doing, Thomas was a third of the way through the novel. Let’s just say the story didn’t read as well coming out the back end.
Just thinking about my little family caused bursts of happiness to pop through my chest. It seemed I had a limitless capacity to love. Who knew? I’d thought marrying Sam on the beach that day was the pinnacle of all things awesome, but I found that with each addition to our tribe, my heart expanded a little wider. And it gave me a new appreciation for my own parents, who’d raised us all into adulthood with a focus on family, a sense of right and wrong, and clear hearts prime
d for love.
I picked up Wyatt and wrapped him in my arms protectively. “Don’t worry, kiddo. I got you.”
Grasping my face in his little hands, he tipped my head to the side and whispered into my ear. “I’m still scared of the pirates.”
Obviously his mother’s fairytale explanation hadn’t been enough to ease his concerns, so it was time to explain professional courtesy to my preschooler in a way he could understand. “Listen up. The pirates won’t bother us because they like me.” I dropped my voice and looked around for spies. “I haven’t told you this before, Wyatt, but before I met your mommy, I was a pirate myself.”
“Really?” My boy stared up at me with eyes so wide and trusting I wanted to live in his magical world forever. Sure, it wasn’t the full truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. But like my own dad had before me, I’d learned that I could feed little Wyatt a big boy plate of yummy old white lies and he’d eat up every last bite.
“Yep, I had the long hair, stinky clothes, dopey smile; the works.”
Kyle tipped his head back from the bench directly in front of us. “Back when your dad and I were kids, Wyatt, pirates were also known as stoners.”
Sam smacked him. “Do not bring that word into my son’s vocabulary. Don’t you have your own kids to parent?”
Smugly, Kyle hooked his arms behind his head. “I don’t have to. He parents me.”
And, sadly, he wasn’t kidding. I glanced over at Kyle and Kenzie’s firstborn son, who’d inexplicably been born a genius. Talk about a miracle of science. Little Arlo was already at a junior high school reading level, and he was only six. There was talk amongst the family that maybe the kid had somehow been switched at birth, but his resemblance to Kyle was too strong to make a legal case against the hospital. Somehow my younger brother and his Bigfoot-loving wife had sired a child with a Nobel Prize-level IQ.
I glanced over at Arlo, who’d been looking up at the vast darkness of the artificial dome ceiling that created the fantasy that was the Pirates of the Caribbean ride.
“Dad,” Arlo finally spoke. I listened in, always enjoying the profound words that carefully exited his mouth. “How many years are there in a millennium?”
“Is this one of those questions you already know the answer to but you ask it just to make me look bad?”
He shrugged his little shoulders.
“Um, okay well.” Kyle scratched his head searching for an answer – always searching. “Like ten, maybe.”
“No,” he sighed. “That’s a decade.”
“Oh…huh. Really?”
“Yes. The correct answer is one thousand.”
Kyle tipped his head back again. “See what I’m saying? No need to parent.”
I reached up and manually turned my little brother’s head to something that did require his attention. “I was actually talking about that one.”
Our eyes both diverted to Kenzie trying desperately to pry their unruly three-year-old off a wheelchair he’d commandeered on his way into the boat.
“That’s not a ride, Axel,” Kenzie said, yanking on his little body while blowing the hair out of her exasperated eyes.
At least there was some justice in the world – a balancing act of sorts. It seemed all the dominant genes had been depleted making Arlo, leaving poor Axel with little more than the ability to wander around with a bucket on his head, ramming himself into walls.
“You gonna help with that?” I asked him, flicking my head in Kenzie’s direction.
“Nah, she’s got it.”
“Kyle!” Kenzie snapped, and he jumped to attention like he’d been pierced with a pirate’s sword. He was out of the boat before the exclamation point attached itself to the end of his name.
Yep, my siblings and I were learning that there were no Fast Passes in parenting.
There were, however, VIP tours for the rich and famous, and that’s where we were now, celebrating one of Dad’s birthday week days in the happiest place on Earth. Having the benefit of a celebrity in our ranks, we enjoyed certain privileges that most did not. Case in point: the temporary shut down of the pirate ride so our swelling group of twenty-six – twelve of which were children – could get into the waiting boats without sinking the wooden pier.
Mitch, sandwiched into the first bench between his wife, Kate, and their two kids, had to raise his arms to disengage from the crush of his family. His son Max insisted on sitting in the front row, which he called the splash zone, and because he was the oldest of the grandkids, all his worshipping cousins fell in line. Along with his sister, Madison, they were the stars of the show anytime they arrived for a family function. It was like Mitch déjà vu all over again… but now I embraced it. As I saw it, the more family I could surround myself with, the happier my life would be in the long run. So I embraced crazy situations like this, bobbing in a pirate boat while thousands of inconvenienced park-goers eagerly awaited my famous brother to make his move.
“Where are the others?” Mitch asked, glancing over in the direction we’d come from moments before getting on the ride. “I thought they were right behind us.”
“They were having some security issues, I think,” Finn said. “It’s not so easy for him to get through the crowds these days.”
Kyle rocked the boat as he stepped back in, dangling his rowdy son over his shoulder. “I’ve never seen it this bad, and I’m used to screaming fans.”
Right on cue, a group of female admirers called out, but it was Finn they’d set their sights on. He waved back amicably.
“Hey,” Mitch called to him. “Shouldn’t you be in the second wave – where the important people are?”
“Are you kidding? I’m but a speck in the ocean of the tsunami that’s about to slam into the pirate cove.”
On a hit television show, Finn was a celebrity in his own right, but given the high-caliber company he kept, he wasn’t wrong about his self-assessed level of fame. His place was rightfully here with the rest of us nobodies.
A scream went up, echoing through the cavernous room.
“Speaking of the tsunami…” Sam said, covering her hands over Tommy’s sensitive ears. “Here he comes.”
The main attractions came into view as they made their way onto the loading dock. Fans standing in the lines cheered wildly as Jake climbed into the boat with his sons Miles and Slater before turning to help Casey, who was cradling baby Lily in her arms. Mom, Dad, and Grace took their seats just behind.
Then a strange hush filled the dusky cavern as security guards flanked the last member of our twenty-six-person party, steering him towards the others.
Kyle turned toward me, shaking his head. “Here we go again.”
A frenzy of screams erupted as our brother emerged from the protective barrier and stepped into the boat, a chant echoing throughout the vaulted chamber.
“Quinn.”
“Quinn.”
“Quinn!”
Afterword
I hope you enjoyed Keith and Samantha’s story. If this is your first experience with the Cake series, there may be more of the story you missed. The Cake series consists of five books. Each has its own unique love story and so much more.
Cake A Love Story Meet Jake, a talented musician with a not-so-secret past. Closed off and jaded, Jake’s life is about to change when he’s paired with bubbly college student, Casey, at his brother’s wedding.
In book two, The Theory of Second Best, you will learn what happened the day Jake disappeared and why Kyle harbors such feelings of guilt. You will also get a fun, lively friends-to-lovers story set on an island with a cast of lovable characters.
In book three, Fiercely Emma, you will go back in time to learn what happened to the family during the month Jake went missing. Follow along with the McKallisters as they struggle to help teenage-Jake heal from the crime that nearly ended his life. You will also get a present day opposites-attract love story set at a music festival. Emma just might be the most misunderstood McKallister. This book is
her redemption.
And, in book four, Cake: The Newlyweds, Jake and Casey are back with new adventures and fresh struggles. As always, their story will be told with love, laughter, and a touch of heartache.
* * *
Like The Wind If you enjoy quirky banter and heart stopping action, check out my new rock star romance - a standalone novel that takes place in the backdrop of a California Wildfire.
*Released as an Audible Original title in audiobook Jan. 15th, 2019. Releases April 16th, 2019 to ebook & paperback.
About the Author
J. Bengtsson is an emerging author of New Adult biographies. Cake: The Newlyweds is the fourth novel in the book series based on the characters from Cake: A Love Story.
Never miss another release! Sign up for my mailing list and stay up to date on what is happening in the Cake world, click
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* * *
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Cake fans, take note. There’s a place for you, The Banana Binder, where we discuss all things Cake. It’s fun. Come join us.
www.jbengtssonbooks.com
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Also by J. Bengtsson
Cake: A Love Story
The Theory Of Second Best
Fiercely Emma
Cake: The Newlyweds
Rogue Wave
Like The Wind
Award Nominated Audiobooks
Cake A Love Story
The Theory Of Second Best
Rogue Wave: Cake Series Book Five Page 31