A week after we’d gotten them, we’d gone to visit the animal behavioral specialist that Levi had worked with to see if there were any warning signs we should look out for with them that hadn’t been picked up initially. My worry had been the effect of his early days on Chewy, and maybe him having triggers. Ozzy also looked like she’d been well looked after, but we just weren’t sure. The specialist had run some exercises and tested their reactions and hadn’t been concerned. At the end, she told us we should watch out for the normal things like biting, being territorial over food, Chewy marking his territory, or him being aggressive like you would with every dog. So far, touch wood, nothing!
Ugh, touching wood really wasn’t a good expression for me right now.
And the fox cub was growing and was perfectly healthy. We visited him every other day, always taking him in something new that Lily and Levi had found online. In an ideal world, he’d be released back into the wild, but so far the attempts to introduce him to some other foxes who’d been brought in because they’d been found injured and were recuperating before they were released had been a fail. Then again, in an ideal world he would never have been taken from his mother and raised with domesticated pets.
Last week it had become clear that where he was wasn’t the best place for him. There was a center an hour away who were experienced in cases like this, and they were looking to take him in to rehabilitate him there. At Barb’s place, there were too many tame animals, and it wasn’t helping with his nature, so they would probably move him within the next week.
With the baby coming, we were being safe and minimizing direct contact with him, but he was more like a baby himself than anything else, and I had to admit, I freaking loved the little bugger.
I also loved Chewy and Ozzy and was relieved when Lily had signed the adoption papers. Chewy was my shadow whenever I was around, following me for a shower, and sitting watching me on the toilet – which was scarring, but I didn’t have it in me to lock him out. The little baby whined when I did that and no one can do their business when they’re distracted, and the guilt had definitely been distracting.
One thing I knew though – if I could be a good doggy daddy, I could be a good baby daddy. The two weren’t different, everyone knew that. If you could raise and parent a dog, you could totally do it with a human. Right?
I’d met Lily’s dad and mom, who had flown in for the big news. To say they’d been shocked was an understatement, but her mom had recovered quickly and regularly Facetimed with Mom about grandma shit. Her dad wasn’t quite at that stage, but at least he’d stopped making the ‘you’re dead’ type gestures to me.
Well, mostly.
Last week he’d said goodbye to us, and when I’d turned to wave for the last time, he’d made a cutting motion across his neck, pointed at his eyes and then pointed back at me. Of course, when Lily or her mom looked at him, he was grinning and waving happily, it was when they weren’t looking that he did it. The guy who’d always whacked me on the back, invited me to his bar for a drink, and had stood shooting the shit with me was no more. I was now the boy who’d knocked up his daughter – his exact words.
At least the news hadn’t given him another heart attack, which was something I’d been worried about. No, instead it had given him a new boost for life – one which involved torturing me, apparently. For Lily and my son though, I’d deal with it. Salt in my coffee, vinegar in my coke, what tasted like pickle juice in my lemonade… it was all doable.
Trailing behind Lily and saying my goodbye’s to Chewy and Ozzy, I locked the door behind us and did my best to block out the whines and yaps of my babies. When we got to the truck, I automatically reached out to help Lily into it, knowing the step up caused her pain, and wanting to make sure she didn’t lose her balance. As always, I cursed the whole way around the front to the driver’s side because just touching her arm had my balls screaming louder than the two still demanding inside the house they come with us too.
“You ok?” Lily asked as I got in and did my belt up.
“Fine.” Big fat liar pants.
“You don’t look fine. Is your dick causing you problems?”
Giving her a look, I turned the ignition and put it into drive, sulking the whole time. We’d only gotten to the end of her street when I got a whiff of her perfume and groaned.
For three months, I’d learned all about her. I’d heard her stories about being the daughter of a famous actress, how the snide comments had affected her, how much she loved living in a small place where people didn’t give a shit about who her mom was, how she’d gone to prom with Tommy Balls(I shit you not) and he’d puked and passed out after an hour because someone had spiked the punch, how she loved fish tacos, how she preferred basic own brand tortilla chips over the flavored expensive ones, how she’d never been to Mexico but wanted to purely so she could try real tequila and tacos, how she dreamed of one day having a tiny pony like my cousin’s (this came after he’d sent me a video of it fetching the ball his son had thrown for it), how her favorite color was a purply blue like bluebonnets, how she was allergic to penicillin, her favorite time of the year on television was shark week not Christmas, she loved Converse and firmly believed you should have a pair for every day of the year… the list was endless.
I’d divulged my own likes, dislikes and dreams to her too, so we were even on that front, but I learned that with Lily there was no rhyme or reason – she just did what she did, and liked what she liked.
That reminded me to check what shoes she was wearing today, something which ended up just adding to my penis torture because she was wearing shorts. This meant I had to look down her fabulous legs to her feet…
Birkenstocks?
“You’re not wearing Converse today.” I pointed out, trying to distract me and break the tension building in the cab of the truck. In the last three months, the only time she wasn’t wearing them was when she was at home.
“It’s too hot, and my feet get uncomfortable and puffy.”
Fair point. It also made me worry about what was going on with the swelling. I’d made the mistake of Googling it when it had first started, and now I had a ton of horror stories going through my head. I’d forgotten the first rule of being sick and having the internet to hand – don’t Google your symptoms. Ever! Don’t watch the videos of operations or giving birth on YouTube either.
Scarred. For. Life!
The doctor’s office wasn’t too far from where she lived, so in no time we were pulling into a parking spot. Cutting the ignition and undoing my belt, I got ready to jump out to help her down when she grabbed my arm, stopping me.
“Ok, what’s your problem?” she snapped. “You’re like a bear with a sore head.”
I don’t know if it was the pounding in my crotch, or if it was because I’d been worrying about her blood pressure and the fact she was in pain, but it all came pouring out.
“No, I’m a bear with sore balls. I swear to God, they’re backed up all the way to my brain. All you have to do is blink and my dick gets hard.” Raking my fingers through my hair, I made a mental note to get it cut when it took that bit longer to get to the ends. “I can’t sleep because I’m worried I’ll end up trying to have sex with you while I’m out cold. In fact, I don’t think I’ve had a good night’s sleep all week, but mainly because I’m worried about you.” When she frowned in confusion, I clarified, “Your feet are swollen, your blood pressure made the lady make a worried noise, you have that split pussy disorder and I hate that you’re going through all of that.”
“Tate, I’m fine,” she tried to reassure me, but it wasn’t going to work.
“No, I’m not listening. I want the doctor to tell me you’re fine. I also want you to cut back on your hours at The Bar so that you’re not standing for long periods. If I could, I’d wrap you up in silk and mermaid hair so all you could do is rest and relax.”
Her lips twitching irritated me slightly – not one thing was funny about what she was going through.
“Mermaid hair?”
Ok, maybe that was kind of funny, but mermaids were magical creatures weren’t they? So their hair would have magical powers.
“Whatever,” I muttered, opening the door to get out. I didn’t turn around when I heard her moving, but I knew what she was going to do so I said my usual warning. “Don’t even think about it. You’ll wait for me to get to your door to help you out.”
As I slammed the door shut, I heard her say, “Dick,” under her breath, but I wasn’t going to rise to it. My cock did that enough for me just now.
Opening her door, I raised my hands and waited for her to lean into them, but when she didn’t I looked up at her and lifted my eyebrows. “Problem?”
“Why are you so grumpy?” she asked, crossing her arms and glaring at me.
Lowering my own back down, I went through the pros and cons of telling her the truth, or bullshitting my way through this with something like male PMS. Then again, I wasn’t a liar, even though the PMS thing could be plausible except BBS – blue ball syndrome. “I’m being a dick because I am a dick,” I blurted. “I mean, ok,” I started pacing in the small area in front of her. Basically, it was one step forward, one step back, but it counted as pacing. “This is fucking hard. I have blue balls.”
Apparently it wasn’t that hard after all. Smooth move, you blue balled asshole.
“Did you bruise them? Jesus, I didn’t hold on to those last night, did I?” When she made a move to jump down and most likely check on them, I waved my hands at her.
“No, no, nothing like that. It’s just… you’re you,” I waved them up and down her this time, “and my dick likes that. A lot. A lot, a lot. And it can’t have you, so my balls are going blue and screaming at me all day long. And don’t believe that blue ball myth stuff, that shit is real.”
She didn’t even blink throughout my rambling, only glancing down at the area in question when I got to the fact that it wasn’t a myth, and then looking back at me. With no expression or reaction to tell me what she was thinking, it left me trying to figure out if I’d dug myself a huge hole, and if I had could I dig myself out of it.
Thankfully, she put me out of my misery. “Would it help if I told you I had a blue vagina?”
In all the possibilities running through my head, not once had that answer been one of them. Screaming at me, kicking me in them, calling me a heartless asshole, calling her dad to come and save her, shit like that, yes.
“What?”
Nodding, she raised her hands to be lifted down from the cab of the truck, something which I normally loved doing, but right now I was still waiting for a hard ball booting. “It’s true. Sleeping next to you every night is torture. You’re a snuggler, you’re hot, you’re Tate and my vagina likes all of that.”
This conversation so wasn’t appropriate in the parking lot of the doctor’s office, one who was about to look after her because my dick had come inside her unprotected. Call it crude, but if you were in my predicament, all flowery words would have left you too.
“This is a new form of hell,” I groaned, gently putting her on the floor in front of me.
“Why? It means we can go home and do the horizontal hula!”
If she didn’t stop, I’d be doing the vertical hula up against the side of my truck…
“No, we can’t,” I groaned again, not removing my hands from her. Instead, they were rubbing up and down her sides and back, loving the contact with her. “After this, we’re headed to my folks' house.”
“Shit, that’s tonight?”
Yes, yes, it was. The family night from hell. We got together a lot through the week, we were just a close family who did that. Tonight was different though, it was man bonding night. The women were staying with Mom, while the men went to a bar half an hour away. We’d decided to do it after Levi and Archer had a falling out over some irrelevant bullshit to do with a car, and going to one in a place where everyone knew you, and you couldn’t spend time together without being interrupted or someone joining you, negated the bonding part. So, we’d found the new bar, and once a month we all went to shoot the shit, have a drink, and just switch off.
Something which hadn’t been a problem for me until Lily. Now, I wanted to spend all my time with her, learn more about her, look at baby shit with her, rub her back, and do a midnight run to the store for whatever it was she was hankering for.
Being around her had become even more important to me since she’d started showing and her blood pressure had made the woman frown and make a noise when she’d seen the reading. I wasn’t a stalker or clingy, hell no – I liked my own space. I was a man who wanted to make sure his woman was ok is what I was. Dad looked after Mom and made sure she was ok, Gramps looked after Grams, Noah and Madix looked after their women too. It was what a man did.
I was also a man who worked long hours that didn’t mesh well with the hours his woman worked – talk about hell.
“Ok, we’ll do it when you get back. You drive, do your thing, come back and pick me up, and we’ll say I need to go to bed early. Deal?” she decided as we entered the building and walked over to the elevator. “No one needs to know we’ve got plans that involve the sex.”
Unfortunately, the elevator doors opened at that moment, and a nurse pushing an old man heard all of it.
“I ain’t got no plans tonight, doll face. You want the sex, I’ll give it to ya,” the old man said grinning. Anyone else, it might have pissed me off, but the old guy whistled when he said the letter sand looked like he’d just been handed the world. He could enjoy his moment with my woman.
“And I’d take it from you,” Lily winked. “But I’m kind of carrying a full load at the moment,” she pointed at her stomach. “And it’s his, so best not to make those waters muddier, right?”
“I’ll take him off your hands,” the nurse offered, looking me up and down. “And I always wear cherry Chapstick.”
Well, fuck!
“Hey, me too!” Lily chuckled.
“Course you do, girl. You’re with Tate Townsend. It’s the only flavor he likes,” he whispered like it was a conspiracy theory.
“What’s this now?” Lily asked, looking confused.
Wincing, I caught her arm and moved us out the way so the two men could exit, before steering her onto the elevator and rapidly hitting the button for the second floor.
“Come on, come on.”
“Tate,” she warned.
How I hadn’t told her already, I didn’t know, but in my defense it had skipped my mind. Hell, she already wore the right one, so it’s not like it would have been relevant to any conversation we’d had.
Still…
Taking a deep breath, I turned to face her as the doors closed and we started moving. I had fifteen seconds to tell her the brunt of it.
Here goes….
Twenty seconds later…
Disgust, judgement, a look of betrayal, calling me a dickhead… none of that was what Lily did after I’d told her. Actually, I’d just opened my phone to the folder that had the pictures of my reactions to lip balm and had shown her that, followed by, “I’m allergic to all lip balms apart from cherry Chapstick, so I used to buy it for the chicks I was dating. I bought so much everyone thought I was gay and Mom started doing Pride parades for me.”
She’d done a triple take at the photos as I skimmed rapidly through them with my thumb (thank you iCloud for downloading them every time I got a new phone), listened with wide eyes, and had then burst out laughing.
She was still laughing now. In fact, she was laughing so hard, I had to carry her off the elevator and over to the receptionist's desk to check-in.
“I’m gonna pee, I’m gonna pee,” she howled, her hand going between her legs, making me realize my arm was right under that faucet if it turned on.
“Miss James,” a nurse called right at that moment, meaning I couldn’t put her down and had to carry her to the room.
“Pee,” she wheezed, her face bright red.
&
nbsp; “Good, we need a sample,” the nurse turned and moved to a door that had a toilet symbol on it. “The cups are on the side, just bring it out when you’re done.”
Awesome!
I leaned against the wall and waited for her in case she needed help, listening to what sounded like the urination version of Morse code.
Dash – splash – laughter – splash – splash – “Cherry Chapstick” – Dash – Dash – Send help and toilet paper.
Sighing, I smiled awkwardly at the two women who were now standing beside me, waiting to use the bathroom for their own samples. Not knowing what else to say, I wisely ignored the big bumps in their stomach regions and asked, “So, what are you here for?”
Ten
Lily
The last three months had been a lesson in all things Tate Townsend, and just the Townsends in general.
They were a close family who were hella loyal to each other. Sure, they ripped each other to pieces and enjoyed each other’s embarrassment no end, but the loyalty and solidarity between them was insane.
Pretty much everyone in town loved them, and all of their employees. I’d watched them over the last twelve weeks, and it had been a lesson in the true meaning of awesome. Every single employee was treated like a family member, regardless of how long they’d worked for them. If there was a problem for them at home, the Townsends helped. If they didn’t feel well, they’d get the doctor to them or nurse them back to health. If one of their kids was sick, they sent a balloon bouquet and helped where they could. I’d asked what their turnover of staff had been out of curiosity, and in the last year, there had only been one person who’d been fired, and that’s because he’d set of bombs and shit around the site and had then shot Dahlia.
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