And Chris, well, he was now working in San Francisco. I couldn’t say that we were best friends who exchanged Christmas and birthday cards, but when he came to visit his family here, I’d buy him a beer in the new bar that had replaced the James’s old one, courtesy of the insurance payout they’d gotten. The man that he was had changed in my eyes when he’d done what he did that night, and had then apologized to Ariana for what he’d done to her too. Every time I saw him, I said thank you again for what he did for Lily and Rebel. He didn’t want the thanks, but he had to know I’d always be grateful to him for saving my girls.
“Dadda,” my son Nash yelled as I walked across the grass toward him, doing some sort of wiggly dance and not even trying to hide that I’d caught him doing something he was banned from doing.
“What did I tell you about riding the dog like a horse?” I shouted back, grinning when he shrugged and looked up at the sky. “Come here, you little monster.”
“Tate,” Lily called, walking toward us holding Rebel’s hand. They were dressed in hers and little hers matching maxi dresses, something they did often. Rebel might look like me, but she was the mini version of her mother for sure.
It pained me to admit it but she totally suited the name Rebel Rowser.
And my son… again, I had no part in picking his name because I’d done the Mayan and Chinese gender test, again, and it had said it was going to be another girl when Lily was pregnant with him. I’d been adamant it was right and had told Lily we didn’t need a gender scan because of it. Obviously, it was wrong, again.
So, I now had two kids with names that still blew my mind. Rebel Rowser Townsend, and Nash Gaston Townsend. Why Gaston? Because at the time of his birth, Rebel’s favorite movie had been Beauty and the Beast and Lily had fallen in love with the name of one of the characters from it.
I apparently hadn’t learned from my first drunken tattoo either, because after Nash came into the world (and I’d recovered three days later), the men had gone out to celebrate the birth. Way too much to drink later, I’d gone to the bathroom and had somehow managed to get both legs in one of the legs on my pants. Thinking a miracle had happened, I’d hopped out into The Bar yelling, “I’m a mermaid! Rebel’s gonna love the shit out of this.”
Had I figured it out and corrected the situation at all? Short answer – no. Instead, I’d stayed like that until I ripped my pants, and had headed to my friend’s tattoo place. There, I’d gotten a tattoo of a mermaid on my ribs with the rose from Beauty and the Beast for the kids, and for some reason I’d also had mermaid scales tattooed in pretty colors down one thigh.
Not bad enough? My cousin Cole was visiting at the time, and he’d had a unicorn horn tattooed down the inside of his left thigh. It was pink and purple and had little stars tattooed around it. Both of us had thought we were the shit on the way home, but in the harsh light of day not so much. Mine was better than his though, his looked like he had a weird cock on his thigh and had just shaken off some dick sprinkles.
Why had my friend done another messed up tattoo on two drunk guys? Well, here’s the problem with getting the guy you’d known since you could walk to tattoo you at all – payback. We’d never report Tanner, and he knew that, but he also remembered all the things we’d done to him as kids. At least we had memories of a beautiful event for life, right?
On a plus note, my daughter loved her dad’s mermaid leg, and regularly told her friends and their parents how her daddy was a mermaid here – as she pointed to her crotch. It ended up with weird looks from the dads, and some awkward propositions from the moms. Whatcha gonna do? The answer to that was Lily telling Rebel not to tell her friends about Daddy’s mermaid secret, otherwise I’d lose my mermaid magic. I gave it another year before she called bullshit on it and realized her daddy was just an ass who had mean friends that tattooed him when he was inebriated.
I’d also had Lily tattooed over my heart, but this time I’d been sober and I’d picked the flower instead of the word. Now, every morning when I woke up and went into the bathroom, I saw her name the right way around in the mirror, the flower, and my kids staring back at me. No man could ask for more than that, and if they did they were out of their minds.
With this pregnancy, we’d done it the science way – by getting three gender scans done. All of which conclusively confirmed it was another boy. Lily had also taken pity on me, and had announced at the reveal party, which went normally this time, that I was choosing the baby’s name.
Great, awesome, what a relief – but I couldn’t think of a name for him. We were only weeks away from him coming into the world, and I still didn’t know what the hell I was going to name the poor kid.
“Grandad,” Rebel squealed suddenly, dropping her mom’s hand and running toward me.
“Uh…”
“Hey, kiddo,” Petey bellowed behind me. It was a relief because for a second I’d thought she was calling me Grandad, but it also sucked because he always managed to materialize out of thin air. That would be cool, but the guy took great pleasure in scaring the shit out of me, but at least he’d stopped calling me rude names (a majority of the time). My son’s squeals joined his sister’s as he ran over to him too.
Petey and Rachel were great parents and grandparents. After his second brush with the grim reaper, Rachel had cut back on the work she was doing, and now only did a movie once a year at most. Was it a trip being related to a famous woman? Honestly, no, she was just Rachel, my mother-in-law. Even the people in town didn’t make a big deal out of it, not that she’d have let that happen. That woman was as down to earth as my own family.
“Hey, Dad,” Lily called, walking up to me and wrapping her arms around my waist. At least someone wanted me.
“Grandma wants to have a sleepover tonight, is that ok?” he asked as he joined us with a kid wrapped around each leg.
Looking down into Lily’s sparkling eyes, I saw the same thoughts that were going around my head shining back at me.
A night alone.
No kids.
Just us.
“Yes,” we answered at the same time, not even looking up at him.
* * *
Ten hours later…
With experience comes wisdom – apparently. It also hardened you to your wife giving birth. During Rebel’s, I’d fainted. During Nash’s, I’d had to sit down because she did it the natural way and I hadn’t expected to see what I did a second time. No cake can prepare you for that, I’m warning you now.
Her water’s breaking as I was thrusting into her had my dick crawling to hide behind a lung. She’d been on her hands and knees in front of me, I’d only just entered her and was thrusting slowly as I skimmed a hand up her back, and the next thing, she grunted and that was it.
“I’m never having sex again,” I muttered, pacing beside her as she lay calm as anything on the bed. The drugs had a lot to do with that, but she was becoming a pro at giving birth so that might have added to it.
“You’ll be fine,” she tried to reassure me, her eyes not leaving the screen of her iPad. “Lion’ll be here soon.”
That stopped me, mid-step. “There’s no way in hell we’re naming him Lion, Lily.”
“Don’t be so silly, it’s a great name.”
No, it wasn’t. Maybe for an animal it was, but for a little kid? Lion Townsend? Hell, no.
“What if we spelled it with a y?”
“Veto,” I replied firmly.
“Ludwig?”
“Veto.”
“Moss?”
“Ve-to!”
“Ferdinand? He’d have loved one of the kids to be named after him.”
We’d lost KFC a year ago, shortly after we’d lost Bojangles. Apparently chickens didn’t have long lives, but it had still been a shock. They’d turned out to be great pets for kids, following Rebel around, and snuggling up beside her when she sat down to watch a cartoon. In the end, we’d put a doggy door in the back door, and they’d used that to come and go when they’d wanted
to.
Lily, Rebel, and even Nash wanted to get replacements, but it was me who wasn’t ready. Instead, I focused on Chewy, Ozzy and our youngest dog, Hairy Paw-ter who was a German Shepherd. We’d found him looking emaciated on the side of the road when we’d been driving back from seeing my cousins six months ago. The poor baby was terrified, but the second Lily jumped out and said, “Hey, puppy!” he’d run over to her and started snuffling for loves.
On the way home, we’d seen that his right eye didn’t quite look right, so we’d taken him straight to the vets, and gotten him vaccinated and checked over. The diagnosis that followed was a shock – he was blind in his right eye. Everything about him looked healthy, apart from being underweight and his eye, so we’d called in the behavioral specialist from before, and had taken it from there.
He was great with kids, wasn’t territorial, got along with the other two like they’d known each other their whole lives, and we loved him. Well, apart from one thing – the damn dog thought he was a lapdog thanks to the girls never letting him walk when we’d first gotten him. That was cute when he was a large puppy, but now he was a big ass dog and would flop down on your lap, turn onto his back and wait for you to give him the loves.
And he only did that shit with me!
Turning back to Lily who was waiting excitedly, I raised an eyebrow. “Veto!”
“But you loved him.”
“I’m not naming my son after a cock,” I told her firmly, just as the door opened behind me, and the doctor and nurse walked in, stopping instantly and looking at me in shock.
Jesus, shit. This could only happen to me. At this stage, it’s a wonder anyone was ever shocked by anything that came out of a Townsend’s mouth, especially my own.
“She wants to name our baby after a chicken,” I explained through clenched teeth. “He was a cock, too.”
When they just blinked at me, I sighed and looked down at my feet.
Snapping out of it, the doctor shook her head and walked over to where my wife was lying on the bed like she was a royal or something. Which she was, she was totally my queen – one who’d scared my dick into hiding for life, but a queen none the less.
As they went about doing whatever it was they were here for, my phone pinged in my pocket with a text from Archer. It was a text that gave me a grand plan though, a way to make sure this birth went perfectly, that I didn’t pussy out, and so that everyone could share the moment with us.
It. Was. Genius!
Two hours and three minutes later…
“Are you on Instagram recording this live?” she screeched, tightening her hold on my hand to the point I could almost hear my bones screaming.
“We’re having a baby, Lily. People want to share this moment with us,” I repeated for the tenth time, holding my phone up so I could get a better shot of her lying on the bed.
No, I wasn’t standing at the bottom and showing everyone everything, I wasn’t that stupid. No one needed that image haunting them for life, and people would be eating their dinner right about now, so why ruin it for them?
“I’m going to show them what the inside of your colon looks like. No, I’ll show them your taint. Give me the phone!”
“Ok, Lily. On the next contraction, I want you to push as hard as you can,” the doctor said loudly, getting her attention off of me and onto the job at hand.
“I’m not doing it while he’s showing the world what happens when someone gives birth to a baby with a head the size of an air balloon,” she growled.
“It’s not that many people,” I lied, seeing the figure showing how many people were watching quickly going up.
Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.
At that moment, the next contraction hit, and her leg came flying out as she reared up to bear down, pushing me down the bed and into the line of fire. All the world got to witness the baby’s head coming out, the sheet and the doctor’s hands thankfully shielding her actual vagina from the view of the nine-hundred-and-four viewers. But the baby itself? Yeah, I was betting a lot of people lost their appetite that night.
Unfortunately, they also got to witness the moment I saw it as I looked at the screen of my phone, the blood leaving my head, and me fainting out cold on the floor. It was a second of baby vagina viewing, and ten minutes of an up close view of my nose where the phone had landed on it.
At the end of it all, I had a headache, but I was also holding my new son as I lay next to my wife on the bed.
Spencer Hurst Townsend.
All seven pounds and one ounce of him, screaming his head off, looking just like his daddy.
About the Author
I’m a British author who grew up all over the world. My parents were diplomats, so we were posted to all of the corners of the earth and it was a blast. Some wouldn’t seem so awesome if you heard about them, but my parents always made it a fun experience and it molded my brother and I into who we are today.
I live in Wiltshire in the west country of the UK. At random times of the day, I’ll hear a moo from the fields around me, or get a whiff of that…uhhh…’country air’, and I love it! I might not have grown up in the UK, but I’m a British girl to the bone (regardless of the suspicious whiffs coming in from the fields).
I’m a single mother with a son who is nearing his teenage phase. Maybe he’s reached it early? Who knows. But he’s awesome and has a personality and sense of humor that I can only attribute to my family. We’re slightly bonkers, we have a wicked sense of humor and we find the positives in every situation. I’m so proud to be his mum and to watch him grow and mature.
Writing was something that I’d always done. I had a teacher in the third grade who always set us the task of writing a story and making it into a book every weekend. After I left school, I kept this up and wrote as often as I could or just plotted out books. This evolved into me taking the plunge and publishing my first book in 2016 and I’ve been typing ever since.
I’m proud to be an Indie Author, and I absolutely love writing out my crazy Providence characters and the more complex ones in my other series’. It doesn’t matter if it’s romantic comedy or something with more suspense – so long as it has a HEA I’ll do it!
I’ve got so many more planned, so the best is yet to come.
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More books by this author
Providence Series
Forever Mine – Ren & Maya
More Than Forever – Luka & Isla
Until Forever – Cole & Ebru
My Forever – Cole & Ebru pt 2
Choosing Forever – Brett & Sabine
Until Tom, Finding Forever – Tom & Sonya
Forever Ducked – All of the crazies
Bound to Me Forever – Adam & Scarlett TBA
Holding On To Forever – Layla & Mark TBA
Amity
Redemption – Mace & Ava COMING SOON
Devotion – Ethan & Sadie COMING SOON
Tranquility TBA
Absolution TBA
Salvation TBA
Serenity TBA
Grace TBA
Valiant
Compass – Hunter & Piper
Revenant – Bo & Noah COMING SOON
Endurance - TBA
Sanctum - TBA
Advocate TBA
Amnesty TBA
Purgatory TBA
Release TBA
Counterblow TBA
Preservation TBA
Sanction TBA
Vanquish TBA
Doughty
Force Projection – Kyle & Jagger
Book 2 – TBA
Providence Gold
Mad Gold – 2019
Tainted Gold- 2019
Strike Gold – TBA
Gold Dust – TBA
Heart of Gold – TBA
Going For Gold – TBA
The Commission Series
Judge – 2019
Jury – 2019
Executioner – TBA
Justice - TBA
Covent Garden Series
Quids In
Hanky Panky – Coming 2019
Tainted Gold: Providence Gold Series Book Three Page 21