Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 68698 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 275(@250wpm)___ 229(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68698 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 275(@250wpm)___ 229(@300wpm)
He looked exactly like Bowie did at that age.
God, that felt like a lifetime ago.
“Understand what?” I asked, letting my fingers run through the red hair on the top of my grandson’s head.
“Why you went berserk when that man tried to switch me,” he said. “I’ve followed him all around this hospital. They’re all freaking out because I won’t stop following him. I make them nervous, they said.”
Fuckin’ good.
“Fuck ‘em,” I replied.
“You’re gonna have to watch that language,” Morrigan said, in the corner with Danyetta, who’d beat us to the hospital by only a few short minutes.
Danyetta giggled. “Agreed.”
“Triple agreed,” Bowie’s wife said.
I sighed.
“This kid has a father that plays professional soccer who is known to be one of the most aggressive in the league. A mom that plays professional soccer, and won the award for most yellow cards last year. A grandmother that is married to a district attorney that deals with only the most violent of criminals, and then me. A grandfather who’s in a motorcycle club, and runs a fishing charter service that sees mostly men all day long. Do you honestly think that this kid is going to not know the word ‘fuck?’”
“Well,” his wife laughed. “When you put it like that, I guess it does sound a bit silly.” She hesitated. “But maybe for now, we should at least try to act like we have our shit together?”
“You just said ‘shit,’” I pointed out.
She started to giggle, her face flushed with happiness.
She held out her hands and said, “All right, you’ve had him for like ever.”
“I’ve had him for at most ten minutes,” he said, but still he gave me his son. My grandson. Holy fuckin’ hell. I had no clue that this possessive, willing to protect the goddamn world feeling would extend to someone that was my son’s but…there it was. I’d protect this kid with my life, just like I would my own kids and wife. Hell, even Danyetta and Bowie’s wife now fit in that category.
“Where are the kids?” Yeti asked.
I grimaced. “In school. We have like an hour before we have to leave to go get them. They’re gonna kill us for coming up here without them. But they all have tests today.”
The end of the six weeks was such a pain in the ass.
I would’ve totally taken them had I not already had a plan to keep them out tomorrow throughout the rest of the weekend.
“The only one that’ll be upset is Tiny,” Morrigan said.
Tiny was actually our oldest daughter. At seven years old, she may be the eldest, but she was definitely the smallest.
Our other two sons, who were four and five, towered over her.
Then there was Bowie who all but dwarfed them all.
“Tiny will live,” Bowie laughed. “Poor y’all.”
I rolled my eyes, then passed him his kid back with the utmost reluctance. “Poor me. She doesn’t cop that attitude with Morr.”
“She doesn’t, because she knows she can’t get away with it,” Morrigan pointed out.
Morrigan’s pregnancies had gone about as good as could be expected. She passed out a lot. They had to induce her four weeks early on each pregnancy, and by the third child, we’d decided that we were done. Even though we had plenty of more space in our hearts for more.
“When I watched her last week, she told me that I needed to work on my angry face, because it wasn’t as good as her mom’s.” Yeti laughed. “We worked on it for twenty minutes, and I tried it on Bowie. It totally worked.”
“It did,” Bowie laughed. “She did it over FaceTime when she told me I didn’t call her enough.”
He stood up and walked the baby over to Morrigan, who took him with a small smile.
I watched them all coo and aww over the baby, and I rubbed that part of my chest where it always felt so warm when anyone I loved was in the room.
“You did great, Bowie McBanks,” Morrigan whispered.
Yeti took that moment to squeeze my shoulder. “You did great, Aodhan McBanks.”
I caught her hand with mine and squeezed. “You did, too, Yeti Brooks.”
That’s right. Yeti was no longer a McBanks, but a Brooks.
A year after Morr and I had tied the knot, she’d met a man that hung her moon. And not the district attorney that kept stringing her along.
Daryl loved her and appreciated her like she deserved, and they had two more kids together.
Now, we celebrated our holidays together like one huge, happy family.
And I fucking loved it.
My phone buzzed in my pocket and I pulled it out to glance at it.
Tiny: You are so dead to me.
I grinned and typed back.
Me: why?
Tiny: I have Life360. I know where you are. So dead to me.
I burst out laughing. Then sent my girl a picture of her new nephew.
“Who’s that for?” Bowie asked, grinning.