“How much I love you.”
Her eyes went soft.
“I know that I’ve been an ass,” I said. “I know that I’ve done things, said things, that weren’t always right. But there was always one constant thing in all these years that’s separated us. When I get back, I want to have that honeymoon we always talked about. Until then, I want you to read the letters I write. I want you to remember that I love you with my whole heart, and there’s not one single thing that I regret about anything since we got back together. I’ve loved every single second of having you in my life, and I’m glad that I got to experience it with you.”
I reached for her hand and brought it to my mouth.
After placing a single chaste kiss on her hand, I turned and walked away.
I got all the way to the door that would lead me to the airplane that would be taking me half a world away from my little family when Kris called out, “I love you, too, Soldier Boy!”
The necklace I’d bought her dangled from her fingers. On it were three words in my messy doctor’s script: I love you.
Chapter 25
Every corpse on Mount Everest was once an extremely motivated individual. That’s why I love my couch. A couch has never killed anybody.
-Krisney to Hennessy
Krisney
Both of the babies were in slings—one on my chest and the other on my back—while we waited for Reed’s flight to land.
He’d been gone for three months, and our babies had changed so much.
I was practically giddy to tell him my answer.
He’d left, and I’d been here, burning to tell him yes.
When he’d been informed that he was being deployed to replace a doctor that was hurt it’d been with only one week of notice.
Before I’d had time to come to terms with him leaving, only six and a half days after our wedding, he was boarding the plane that would take him to a layover. Which would then take him to Germany.
Now, two months and eighteen days later, he was on his way back.
I wouldn’t lie and say that the last two months and eighteen days had been easy, because they certainly hadn’t.
Not only did I have to deal with two babies who were young and in need of so much attention, I had to sell my parents’ house.
Luckily, I’d made quite a whack off the money since a new development was coming to Hostel, meaning that they gave me top dollar for my parents’ house, only to have them tear it down a week after I sold it to them. With the extra money that I’d made, I’d told the dentist whose practice I’d previously been about to work for to go ahead and move on without me, and I stayed at home with my children and enjoyed their first two months of life without multiple things attached to various parts of their bodies.
Another thing I’d also had to do that was in no way easy for me was to testify in a court of law about what I’d seen that day that Crazy Caria had tried to shoot me in the stairwell of the hospital. The day that she’d also stolen two babies straight out of the nursery in the hospital.
There, I’d learned that Caria had planned on doing much more than just stealing two babies. She’d planned on “taking care” of mine, killing me, and then replacing me and the babies with herself and two random babies she’d stolen.
Caria had pled guilty by reason of insanity and had tried to have herself sentenced to a facility where she’d spend the next eighteen months under the care of a doctor who would ‘make her all better.’
Only the judge had surprised everyone by denying her plea for insanity.
The jury had then found her guilty of attempted murder as well as two counts of kidnapping.
She’d sat there, in her wheelchair, looking for all the world like she was dumbfounded.
But her eyes, when they turned to me, had told the entire truth.
She’d thought that she’d get away with what she’d done by pleading insanity, and she’d been completely thunderstruck that she hadn’t gotten what she wanted.
After leaving with Travis and Baylor at my side that day, I’d immediately sent an e-mail to Reed on my phone explaining all that had happened.
I hadn’t received an e-mail from him since I’d told him, but he’d called only two days ago and said he was coming home. After a quick explanation and flight number exchange, he’d had to go, and I’d been left feeling both nervous and saddened that I hadn’t gotten to talk to him longer.
Which led me to now.
I was probably going to hell for this, but I hadn’t relayed the information to his family.
So, sue me, I wanted to spend time with him, just us, and didn’t think I could accomplish that with his family at my back. All eighteen million of them.
Not that I didn’t love all eighteen million of them, but they’d had him for a long time. I’d had him for a short time.
I wanted him to myself.
The first couple of people started to trickle off the plane, likely the first-class passengers, which was where I knew for a fact Reed had been seated when he’d sent me his itinerary.
Frowning, I looked around me to see if I’d missed him and came face to face with Rafe.
“What are you doing here?”
He grinned. “I got off the plane.”
“When?”
“Just a second ago.”
“Why?”
“Because I was doing something.”
“What?”
He grinned. “Noneya.”
“Noneya?”
“None ya business.”
I snorted.
“Why are you standing right here?”
He looked back toward the terminal. “I want to see your face when you see him.”
“Why…”
And then I saw him.
He came off the plane looking pissed off as all get out.
At first, he didn’t see me, so I had to leave my perch at Rafe’s side and hurry toward him.
Reed’s eyes started moving around, and the moment they locked on me, his anger transformed to excitement.
He started hurrying toward me and would’ve barreled into me had he not stopped at the last second.
“Shit,” he said, stopping a few heartbeats short of throwing his arms around me. “This is awkward.”
I chuckled and leaned forward, giving him a side hug as I buried my face into his neck.
He smelled like sun, his deodorant, and sweat.
Everything that I loved about him.
“I’m so glad you’re home,” I whispered.
“Me, too.”
“What took you so long to get off the plane?”
“Nothing,” he muttered, sounding almost angry again.
“Actually,” Rafe said. “He got banished to the back of the plane because some chick kept trying to put her hands down his pants, and he wasn’t liking that all that much.”
I took a step back, eyes wide, and stared at him.
“What?”
At my angrily exclaimed word, the babies, who’d both been sleeping comfortably in their carriers, woke up with a vengeance.
Honestly, I was surprised they’d been sleeping that long.
They’d been at it all morning—crying, screaming and carrying on.
The doctor said that they were likely about to start teething, and since I had absolutely zero experience with kids, I’d had to take her word for it.
Which led us to the single hour that they’d been asleep in their carriers snuggled close to my body.
I don’t know what I expected. They always woke up at the same time.
This time being no different.
Reed being there, however, was.
He was excited as he reached into the carrier wrapped around my back and lifted our son, Dash, out.
Over the two months that Reed had been away, both boys had put on well over six pounds apiece. Now, they were an even eleven pounds for Dash, and twelve pounds one ounce for B
axter.
The minute that Reed brought Dash up to his face and inhaled his sweet baby scent, I fell in love with him all over again.
Dash didn’t stop crying, but Reed didn’t care. He just hugged him and closed his eyes, memorizing everything about him all over again.
“Y’all have fun with that.”
Rafe left after those few short words, and I shook my head. “Did you know he was over there with you?”
Reed nodded. “I saw him a few times, but I never figured out why he was there,” he explained, holding his arm out for me.
I took his hand that wasn’t cradled around Dash’s booty, and started out of the airport hand in hand with my man.
We made it to the car before I got Baxter out, who was still just as pissed now as he was when I’d woken him up.
The moment we were in the truck—Reed’s truck—we switched babies.
I smiled when he did the same thing to Baxter as he did to Dash.
“So, tell me about this woman,” I ordered.
Reed’s eyes went wired.
“I told her if she didn’t leave me alone, that I would have my wife kick her ass.”
“Oh, really?”
He nodded. “Really.”
“Point her out, I’ll take care of her sorry ass.”
Reed laughed. “Let’s get these boys strapped in and head home. I’m dying to be inside of you.”
I blushed profusely.
“Reed,” I whispered. “You can’t say stuff like that in front of those delicate ears.”
He snickered. “Didn’t you tell me that we needed to fix the insulation between our room and the nursery?”
I nodded.
“Then these words won’t be the only thing they hear tonight, unfortunately.”
I just shook my head.
“Let’s go.”
But when we got home, Reed didn’t take me to our room.
He stopped dead in the middle of our living room and stared at the mess.
“What…”
Then a dog—who looked exactly like our Pepé—stepped out from behind the recliner.
“So, about that…”
He looked over to me.
“You’re in so much trouble.”
Epilogue
PSA: Due to pregnancy hormones currently surging through my body, I could kiss you or geld you at any moment. Be prepared.
-Text from Krisney to Reed
Reed
Two years later
“Push.”
“I don’t want to push,” she snarled. “If I push, I’ll shit all over the fucking table, and then you’ll tease me relentlessly for the rest of my life. So no, I’m not pushing. You can go to fuckin’ hell.”
And that was that.
I rolled my eyes. “Kris, I’ve seen hundreds of women give birth. I know what the body goes through. I won’t judge…”
“You will not do. This. To. Me,” she snarled. “GO away.”
I ignored her and felt the fontanel of my daughter’s head—yes, we’d accidentally found this one out at the twenty-week exam—and said with more patience than I’d ever used with any other woman, “Push.”
“Fuck. You.”
Then she pushed.
And, for all those wondering, no, she did not shit on the table.
She did, however, scream my fuckin’ ear off as she dug one of her heels into my shoulder and tried to donkey kick me in the face.
“Oh, my fuckin’ God!” she screeched. “Why the fuck did we think it was a good idea to go on a fuckin’ babymoon three weeks before my due date?”
That, unfortunately, had been my idea.
But, as her doctor, I’d thought it would be okay.
We were only two hours away. What could go wrong?
Apparently, I didn’t factor in the hike that Kris wanted to take, or the goddamn flash flood that rolled over the entire goddamn bottom half of Texas.
No, because if I had, I might not have suggested going to a cabin in the woods with no one around for miles.
I also wouldn’t have suggested we go on a weekend where it was set to hurricane the shit out of Texas.
But I had suggested it. And we did go on a hike.
And now, we were stranded when the only two roads leading out of where we were located were washed out. I’d tried to leave earlier, for your information, but Krisney went into hard labor, which led us to now and her currently delivering our third child.
“Fuck you.”
I tried not to take her words to heart as she screamed in pain, but just as suddenly as that ‘fuck you’ had come out of her mouth, she bared down, and our daughter was born kicking and screaming, already acting exactly like her mother.
I caught her with smooth, practiced hands, and fucking smiled like a dolt as I did.
“Oh, God,” I breathed. “Baby, she’s perfect. Just like our boys.”
She had dark brown hair—a lot of it—and squinty eyes. A cute little button nose just like Dash, and a set of lungs like Bax.
Our sons, Dash and Bax, were now two years old. They acted, sounded, and played like other normal two-year-olds. Bax had a slight speech delay, but Dash more than made up for that with talking for both of them. Dash was a late walker, but now you couldn’t even tell that he hadn’t started to walk until he was well over a year and a half old.
Both boys were happy, healthy, and everything that I ever imagined.
Our new daughter, though, I knew was going to be a force to be reckoned with…just like her mother.
“Can you give her to me already, baby hog?”
Chuckling, I cleaned her off, sucked out her nose with a bulb, and handed her over.
“Aren’t you glad I brought my doctor bag now?” I teased.
She rolled her eyes.
Not only had I brought my doctor bag, but I’d packed the car with all the necessities a newborn baby would need…just in case.
And wasn’t I now glad I did?
“Yeah, baby.” Krisney started to sniffle. “I’m glad you did.”
I waited and attended to other matters—such as delivering her placenta and cleaning her up—while she bonded with the baby.
Once everything was as clean as I was going to get it—and no, I doubted we were going to get our deposit back for this one—I rounded the table and picked her up, carrying her to the clean bed.
Once she was settled, I crawled in beside her, pulled out my phone, and called my mother.
She answered on the second ring.
“You got time to Facetime, Mom?”
Facetime had become a thing for me and the boys.
Sometimes I worked late hours and didn’t get the chance to say goodnight to our kids. On those days, I’d Facetime Krisney and talk to the boys, tell them a bedtime story and give them air kisses.
So, they were not new to this game.
What was new was seeing another person on the receiving end of their phone call.
“Boys,” I turned the phone so it was pointing at Krisney and their new sister. “I want you to meet your sister, Amy.”
Life hadn’t gone as planned for Krisney and me.
No, we’d both suffered uselessly, and most of that was my own doing.
But I was making up for it now with every single breath I took. The day I died, I wanted Krisney to know that she had meant everything to me. Hopefully in fifty plus years from now, she would look back on our time together, and the happiness of our lives would outweigh the regret over losing those first twelve years together. Hopefully, when she looked back over our life, she only thought of the happy years we’d had after we reconnected, and never felt sad again.
I’d spend the rest of my life making sure that she was happy, and I would enjoy every single second of it as I did it.
“God, baby,” I breathed, looking down at my two girls. “She’s fuckin’ perfect.”
She glared at me. “Language.
”
I managed not to point out to her that she’d said enough F words to last them a lifetime.
“Yes, ma’am.”
What’s next?
Hail Mary
Book 6 of The Hail Raisers
Prologue
Dante
Dante, honey. You need to just relax. Nothing will ever happen to us.
I woke with a start, bile creeping up the back of my throat.
I screamed.
The tiny cabin was empty except for my bed, so my anguished cries echoed off the empty walls.
This cabin…me and Lily had bought it as our retreat. Our home away from home. The place we would go when we needed time alone, away from the daily grind. Time to be together, just the two of us, with no interruptions, not even phone calls.
Dante, this place is perfect. Let’s get it.
I made a noise akin to a wounded animal in the back of my throat and gritted my teeth.
I would not cry today. I would not cry today.
I’m a grown man! Grown men don’t cry!
Everything, and I do mean everything, hurt.
I’d drunk myself into oblivion the night before, and I was feeling the after effects now.
I moaned as I rolled out of bed and walked stiffly to the bathroom.
My foot hit the corner of the door, and I cursed.
Dante, don’t cuss in front of the girls. What are you going to do when they get in trouble at school for swearing when they fall down?
I ran to the toilet and threw up.
Today wasn’t going to be a good day.
And, as if God, the life giver and the life taker, was listening, I felt a piece of hair tickling my chest.
I reached into my shirt and pinched what I thought was the hair, and pulled.
The hair…it was long. So long that I knew without a shadow of a doubt whose it would be.
The moment that it was exposed to the harsh, bright light of the bathroom, I bent over the toilet and threw up the last of the whiskey that I’d drank a few hours before.
I moaned and let my head rest against the lid of the toilet seat, turning it so that I could examine the strand of hair.
Even after all this time…after she’d been dead for so long…I still found her hair in my clothes.
Everywhere.
The Hail You Say (Hail Raisers Book 5) Page 21
