Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 76381 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 382(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76381 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 382(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
“I think it’s my husband who needs the anxiety relief this time,” I said, watching Riff come back out into the living room, then backtrack down the hall three times before he seemed somewhat satisfied that he’d gotten everything he needed.
“You know I have a key to your house, right?” Raff asked, smiling at his brother. “I can pop by and get whatever they need.”
“Right. Yeah. Okay. Um, I think I have everything,” Riff said, rushing out to our car with all the luggage.
“He forgot the keys, didn’t he?” Raff asked, smiling just before Riff came running back in, grabbing the keys, and heading back out.
“You’d think he’d be calmer on the third go around,” I said, letting Coach help me back onto my feet.
“I mean, he’s not sweating and passing out,” Raff said with a chuckle at his brother’s expense, “so, I guess it’s an improvement.”
“He only passed out the one time,” I reminded him.
Let’s just say that he’d made the mistake of wanting to watch. And immediately regretted it. His club brothers had made fun of him about it ever since. The jokes about needing smelling salts never failed to get a laugh.
“Alright, lady and gents,” Raff said, clamping his hands on the boys’ shoulders, “go give your mom a hug. We gotta get going.”
With that, the kids came with hugs and kisses, the boys looking worried, and our girl demanding she got to hold the babies first.
Raff grabbed the old and somewhat grumpy Vernon, taking him to drop off at the clubhouse for the next few days before bringing the kids to his house.
Then they were gone, and we were on our way to the hospital.
We made it this time.
And Riff and Coach stayed safely up by my head, holding my hands, feeding me ice chips, helping me stay as calm and relaxed as possible.
Though not too calm.
I may or may not have demanded that the doctor force a vasectomy on Riff right there in the room.
But at the end of it, we had two more little boys in our family.
“I was only halfway joking about the vasectomy,” I told Riff as he sat in the bed with me while the babies slept peacefully in their incubators.
“You weren’t joking at all,” he said, shooting me a smile before pressing a kiss to my sweaty temple.
“Look at it this way, if you get snipped, we can have consequence-free sex anytime we want,” I said.
“That’s some good motivation,” he said just as one of the twins started to cry.
Riff - 20 years
“Darlin’, it’s okay if you want to opt out of this,” Riff told me. For about the twentieth time since our older boys came up with this idea for how they wanted to spend their eighteenth birthday.
In a cabin in the woods.
‘Roughing it’ they’d said.
What can I say, our boys were very outdoorsy.
Our daughter grew to really like girly things eventually, especially now as a teenager herself. But she was always game for an adventure.
One of the younger boys was wild and feral too.
But that last one, the youngest one, he got his mama’s love of all things indoorsy and relaxing. He was the only one of the kids who enjoyed doing yoga with me, who took himself to a time out to do meditation when he was grumpy, and who, yes, loved reading.
In fact, we were standing in a bookstore in a little town in the middle of nowhere, watching him stack his arms full of books from the children’s section. From the looks of things, he had two complete series he wanted to bring with him. Even though one of his bags for the trip was already full of books.
Honestly, he’d probably read all of them too.
Sitting outside to get fresh air so his brothers didn’t rag on him about it, but he’d be reading for the whole trip.
“I could get you a hotel room right here in town,” Riff offered. “You could have a kid-free week all to yourself to read.”
Riff had gone into panic mode the second the boys walked away after telling us their plan for their birthday.
“Hey,” I said, voice calm, “it’s okay. I’m okay,” I assured him. “I know I have some… bad memories of the woods,” I admitted.
There was no denying that. Years may have eased the pain of that trauma, but it was still a part of me.
It was the part of me that forced our little girl into martial arts class from a young age. That had me making her carry weapons, and wear tracking devices hidden in her shoes, her purse, her backpack, or her jewelry. Because the idea of someone hurting her like I’d been hurt was enough to keep me awake at night.
“But I have some good memories of the woods, too,” I told him, leaning into his chest. His arm easily went around my lower back, curling me into him. “You carrying me through them,” I reminded him, those memories easily coming back, full of all the hope and relief I’d felt then. “Keeping me warm in the cabin…”