“Yeah yeah yeah,” Mark grumbled, handing over the money. “I bet the next one will be a girl.”
He was wrong.
The next one ended up being two and both were boys.
The last one though, after everyone had given up hope (and bets) ended up being the little girl that Shane was never going to let date. She, like all of her brothers, had her father’s (and uncles’ and grandfather’s) eyes. Really, you couldn’t see a bit of me in any of them but little Sam who had my nose and hair and absolutely no plans on kowtowing to all the big boys around her.
I walked into the warehouse to find absolute chaos.
I understood Fee’s belief that her kids were part-demon half the time because mine did nothing but create messes and paint the walls and make each other cry, and try to get away with things that they knew they never would. So when I stepped into the living space to find Jason sitting on his brother, Jake, whose little face was getting beet red in anger as he let out a wail that pierced through my brain like a migraine. Jake’s twin in every way but personality, Joey, was off in the corner with a pen that he must have found in the God damn junk drawer with the child lock, drawing an elaborate mural on the wall.
Shane was in the kitchen, a sleeping Sam propped up on his shoulder as he mixed something on a pot on the stove.
He looked around the room, shaking his head in typical daddy-fashion, before his eyes landed on me and he gave me a small smile and a ‘what can ya’ do’ shrug.
And it didn’t matter that my walls would need to be Magic Eraser’d for the tenth time that week or that once Jake got up, he was going to do his damnedest to make his bully big brother bleed, or that Sam was taking a nap at a time that was decidedly not nap time which meant she would be up half the night.
All that stress fell away as I felt the sensation course through me, strong as ever, even after the years.
Comfort.
Rightness.
Home.
“Hey baby,” Shane said as I crossed over toward him, reaching up with his free hand and grabbing the back of my skull to kiss me hard and deep, until I felt it down to my toes.
“Blech!” Jason yelled. “Daddy is kissing Mommy again!”
“I’d worry less about that and more about…” Shane started, but it was too late. Jake had gotten his feet and took his brother down from behind, his smaller, younger body somehow much more compact and strong than his older brother’s. “What?” Shane asked when I gave him a raised brow. “They gotta get it out of their systems. No use stepping in. They’ll just start again in ten minutes if we do.”
That was the Mallick way of childrearing.
And I learned pretty quickly to give into it.
“Alright alright,” I said when afterward there were tears and a bruise that, in all Jason’s five-year old dramatics, required emergent medical attention. “Go downstairs and blow off some steam,” I demanded, making them all jump up to do just that.
“Have we thanked Hunter yet today for the idea of a play floor?” Shane asked, handing me Sam so I could go put her in her playpen in the living space that once used to be Shane’s bedroom.
“Come here,” Shane demanded, his tone a firm demand full of promise and I felt my sex clench as I straightened and turned.
“The kids could come up at any minute,” I said with a brow raise.
“Then we’ll have to be quick,” he said, grabbing me as soon as I stepped into the kitchen. “Come on, give me a proper hello.”
So then I hiked up my skirt and did just that, right there in the kitchen, with a multitude of crashing sounds coming from the floor below and a baby asleep in a crib, all the stresses of modern life and parenthood doing absolutely nothing to lessen our need for each other when the mood struck.
I was pulling my panties back up when Shane suddenly turned and said, “Oh, did you hear about Eli?”
“No,” I said, my heart constricting at the mention of him, that being the only sore spot in our, and all his families’ stories. But it was looking up, I reminded myself. “What happened?” I asked, praying it was something positive. He could use it.
“Well, it’s the damnedest thing,” Shane said, smirk and eyes wicked. “Seems he’s met a girl…”