Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 77118 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77118 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
“Trying to decide if I stop him or not,” she said, nodding her chin toward the side yard where our older son looked to be building some sort of obstacle course for him and his brother to ride over in their bikes.
“I mean, we have to give them props for having not only helmets, but elbow and knee guards on,” I reasoned.
We’d produced feral children.
Three of them, actually.
We’d only planned on two. Especially after finding the two we had doing shit like climbing onto the kitchen counters after using the drawers like stairs when they were all of five and three years old. Or peeing in the houseplants because they “looked thirsty.” Or cutting their own hair. Or coloring all over each other in permanent marker to give themselves tattoos.
They were a lot.
We were pretty sure we were done after them.
But then there was this night when we took a ride on my bike and fucked near the base of the Death Valley mountains.
Then, nine months later, there she was.
A daughter.
“Well, at least Shy isn’t out there,” I said, not seeing our daughter.
“Look up,” Nyx demanded, making my glance to the top of the playground equipment, where she somehow managed to get up and sit on the top of the monkey bars.
“Is she…” I started as she waved around toward the boys.
“Giving them instructions? Yep. Yep, she is.”
“I can’t decide if I’m impressed with her or concerned why a eleven and nine and a half year old are taking instructions from a six-year-old.”
“Are you kidding? That girl is going to take this world by storm,” Nyx said, proud of her little rebel.
She was the spitting image of her mother, too. Long, dark hair. Though Shy’s was usually knotty because she was always on the move, always rolling around and getting herself filthy and tangled. She had a soft, heart-shaped face with big, innocent-looking gray eyes that gave you a false sense of security around her.
One of the boys had gotten a slightly darker shade of gray. The other had dark eyes like mine.
The boys, we figured, were going to be a lot like me eventually. Even for their ages, they were tall and sort of gangly from the constant growth spurts. They’d bulk up as they got older.
Like their old man, they were covered in their own scars as well. Though, unlike me, they’d gotten all of theirs from doing shit like creating dangerous-looking obstacle courses that they would ride over in their bikes.
“This kind of thing is why we give Dr. Price a giant fucking basket each Christmas,” I said as the boys got on their bikes, ready to try out their new course.
“Oh, we might be saved!” Nyx said, pointing toward where another figure was joining the scene.
Tall and willowy with long hair crimped from sleeping in a thick braid, it was Crow and Morgaine’s daughter coming from somewhere with a chicken tucked under her arm and a crown of wildflowers on her head.
It surprised exactly no one when the daughter of Morgaine was earthy and obsessed with nature and animals.
“I wish we could know what she’s saying,” Nyx said as the nine-year-old seemed to go on a long, rambling speech, her arm going out occasionally, gesturing toward their makeshift course.
She was wise beyond her years, articulate in a way most adults weren’t.
That said, she was her mother and father’s daughter. So she was soft and sweet with an undercurrent of steel.
“Uh oh,” Nyx said as Shy swung herself down from the monkey bars and made her way over toward her friend.
“Huh,” I said, watching as the boys started pulling off their helmets and guards, then all three of our kids followed their cousin around the back of the house. “Should we be worried?”
“Not with that girl in charge,” Nyx said, looking back at me with a wicked glint in her eye. “Which means we have a solid hour of not having to worry about our little demons,” she told me, linking her hand in mine, then turning and running.
We always thought it would be hard to find time to fuck when the kids were babies or toddlers.
But back then, they mostly stayed in their beds and slept all night.
Now?
Now we were constantly awoken by random noises in the middle of the night that made us have to go and investigate what kind of trouble our kids were getting into.
“God, it’s been forever,” Nyx said. And as soon as the door was closed, she was yanking off her top, then her bra, before reaching to slide her pants and panties down her legs. “What are you doing? Get your clothes off,” she demanded.
And, yeah, you never let an invitation like that pass you by.
There was nothing slow or sweet about us then. We were too needy, too desperate to get more of each other.