My Bad

Page 45

“I’ve been tossing the idea around for a while,” he admitted. “Janie has started taking on a lot more duties than she used to. Kayla has slowly started taking over some as well. Their husbands have offered us quite a bit of help over the last year and knowing that Hoax and Carl are looking for jobs—something that’ll keep them closer to home and their lives—was just the conviction that I needed to make the call. But, seeing him when he heard about you? That you were almost hurt? Yeah, he absolutely lost his shit. That was all for you, too.”
I licked my lips. “He’s not doing anything stupid, is he?”
Dad wrapped his arm back around my shoulder and pulled me into his chest. “Don’t worry about what he’s doing. The less you know, the better.”
He was right.
Eight hours later, when I was called in to give my statement as well as bail Hoax out of jail for the assault of Kelley, I was able to say that I truly had no idea what had been going on.
Which worked out, because as Hoax walked toward me, I broke down into tears and ran toward him. Apparently, he’d used my distraught, pregnant hormones as well as my worry that he’d try it again, and this time succeed as a reason for doing the things he’d done—i.e., beating the shit out of Kelley—and I’d played directly into his hand.
Hoax and I walked out of the police station hand in hand.
The moment we arrived at my dad’s truck that I’d borrowed, I came to a stop and glared. “Swear to Christ, you owe me at least ten nugget meals or I’m going to never let you forget this.”
He wrapped his arms around my shoulders, pulled me in until his mouth was inches from my own, and dropped a kiss onto my nose. “I’ll buy you whatever the fuck you want, whenever you want it.”
“Anything?” I teased.
His grin got bigger. “Anything.”
A burger from Whataburger, a nugget pack from McDonald’s, an Icee from the gas station, and a dozen donut holes from the Donut Palace later, we were sitting in the main hub of Free while my father offered him a job.
He accepted it…and so did Carl.
Who, might I add, had knuckles that matched Hoax’s.
I had a feeling that the two were going to be trouble.
Epilogue
Why are contractions not called birthquakes?
-Pru’s secret thoughts
Pru
Three months and three weeks later
“Come on,” Carl said as he wiggled his new vest at Hoax. “Tell ‘em it looks good on me. Go on, admit it.”
Hoax rolled his eyes. “All right, Carl. You look good in the Bear Bottom Guardians cut. Now, you should probably start calling it what it is or your wife is going to gut you.”
“I’m beyond wanting to gut him,” his wife, Tinnsleigh, said. “But if I kill him, I’ll have to pay for my toes on my own, and I’m not willing to do that just yet.”
We all looked at her toes. “I really like the sparkly blue.”
“I do, too,” Conleigh said, wiggling her own toes that matched Tinnsleigh’s.
“I’m partial to the pink,” Izzy said, wiggling her feet for the men to see.
I looked at my bright orange with pink sparkles and grinned. “You’re trying to say that you don’t like mine?”
“Yours are…festive,” Carl said. “Are you celebrating Halloween ten months early?”
Hoax snorted. “Pru likes orange.”
That was true. I did.
But the red and green I’d wanted to get was spoken for by both of my sisters, and I didn’t want to get them exactly like theirs.
I liked being different.
“The toes thing was a good idea,” Piper yawned. “Though, I think we probably should’ve scheduled it better. You were almost late for your own induction.”
That was true, too.
But, that also had a lot to do with the fact that McDonald’s had jipped me a ten-piece nugget meal and we’d had to go back.
Hoax had offered to share his with me, but I’d refused.
The nuggets were my last meal for the next foreseeable future. I wouldn’t be eating again until our babies were born, and I wanted to make my last meal a good one.
Well, a tasty one. Good wasn’t really the correct word.
“I wasn’t late. I was on time,” I told her. “Nobody said I had to be fifteen minutes early to an induction.”
Honestly, I was scared.
I didn’t want to have to have a C-section, which was a higher possibility seeing as they were inducing me at thirty-eight weeks.
I’d wanted it to all be a natural process, but when both of our babies started to get big, the doctor had shown concern not for them, but for me.
Which was how we ended up going into the hospital for an induction when the last thing I wanted to do was to be induced.
In fact, I was just finishing up my last chicken nugget when the nurse came in with the meds that would start the process.
Hoax, seeing my panic, walked toward me.
“It’ll be okay, baby.”
He was right.
Eighteen hours later, two cleaned up and pissed off babies in his arms, he was smiling.
I was, too.
We’d done it.
“So what are their names?” my mom asked.
I looked at my two boys, both exact replicas of their father. Same eyes. Same mouth. Same nose and same cheeks. Hell, they even had his big feet.
“Well,” I hesitated, looking over at my now-husband. “The one in Hoax’s right arm is Samuel Jay, after Dad. And the one in his left arm is Dean Alias, after Hoax’s father.”
“You did not name your kids after Sam and Dean off of Supernatural,” Piper interjected, her cup halfway to her lips.
I blinked, then looked at Hoax.
He shrugged. “Already signed those birth certificates, baby.”
I closed my eyes and winced. “Shit.”
***
Six months later
I walked around the store, starting to get worried, when I finally spotted my tall, handsome man in the baby section of all places.
The one place that he’d never be caught dead in the middle of Target.
Yet, there he was.
I frowned and moved forward quickly, my buggy taking out a rack of half-priced clothes on my way.
“Shit,” I muttered, bending down to pick up what I’d just knocked off.
Throwing a cute little camo onesie in my cart along with the seven hundred other things I didn’t need, I finally maneuvered my way through the racks of clothes until I got to Hoax.
Hoax was on the phone, his head bowed, and he was gesturing wildly with his hands.
Definitely not holding our boys who were supposed to be with him.
“Listen to me,” Hoax growled quietly. “I can’t come meet right now. I’m watching my kids. But I can be there tomorrow afternoon. Usual place.”
Hoax and Carl had officially started with Free. They’d fallen into the assignments like they were always meant to be there, and honestly, I had a feeling that the rest of their team might one day follow.
Their skills were a valuable asset to the organization, and a lot of women had become a whole lot safer thanks to their dedication.
Hoax looked up at me just as I rounded the corner of the little display area that Target had set up as a ‘look what your nursery can look like’ kind of thing. That was when I saw Dean in the swing that Hoax was gently rocking with his hand, and Sam was on the ground, in the middle of a scruffy blue rug, with a toy in his hands that still had the packaging attached.
I rolled my eyes.
Hoax winked.
Picking Sam up off the floor, I placed him back into his carrier that was in the cart and gestured at Hoax.
He wrapped up his call and stood up, making my mouth water.
“Free?” I asked, letting my eyes lazily trail down his lean, muscular body.
I’d put on even more weight since he’d gotten out of the Army, and honestly, it was a little disheartening to stand next to him with an extra thirty pounds of baby weight that I had a feeling would never come off.
Yet, his eyes heated at the sight of me, and his mouth turned up into a small leer. “I like that.”
I looked down at the outfit that I’d tried on wanting to get his opinion on. At some point during my four outfit changes, he’d wandered away, which was how I’d ended up searching for him.