Burying my head in her throat, I tried to catch my breath, but it was hard to when I could still feel my gut clenching down hard as I continued to spasm inside her.
Tilting her head so that her mouth was next to my ear, Rose panted, “I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with you.”
Those words did things to me, things that if I’d had any strength left in my body would have had me booking a flight to Vegas. I didn’t care about a big wedding or who came to it, I just wanted her to be mine. People say a piece of paper doesn’t make a difference, and I used to be one of them, but we were so fucking wrong. I wanted that piece of paper, I wanted to see her signature with my last name in it, and I couldn’t wait to see her carrying my baby one day.
Slowly lifting my head, I looked at her through half-mast eyes. “Tomorrow?”
Thinking it over for a second, she looked at the time on the screen of the microwave. “It’s a bit late. What about the day after?”
So that’s what we did. The next day we booked our flights to Vegas, along with friends and family, and the day after she was Mrs. Rose Evans. Two hours after it she had a matching tattoo on her finger and I had the date of our wedding tattooed in the space next to the date I’d proposed to her on my ribs. I even stayed sober after it, well relatively sober. If anyone asked me if I’d ever do it differently, I’d say not one bit, except that she would have been mine for the year we were playing pranks on each other, too. Our relationship was still light and we had a lot of fun together, and I’d learned that when we argued, all I had to do was bring her something from Nice Buns and it was all forgotten.
Men, you need to learn your woman. The saying ‘happy wife – happy life’ wasn’t just for cups and cards, that shit was legit. Learn what makes her happy enough to forgive you and go to town on it, because when your woman was happy, you were happy.
Chapter Twenty-One
Rose
Thirteen months later…
Rose: I need to lose weight: (
Raoul: I’m not sure what the best thing to say to that is, but the honest question I have is – why?
Rose: I tried to sit up in bed after you left and ended up rocking myself back to sleep again.
Raoul: Baby, you’re pregnant.
Rose: I know. What if I crush them with my boobs?
Raoul: I love your tits, I love your ass, I love your belly… and I fucking love you. And our babies will love you, too. Xx
I’d spent five minutes trying to find an emoji that covered a fart noise response to Raoul’s last text, but so far it hadn’t been invented. I knew what he meant, but he wasn’t the one carrying two babies around inside him. And I wasn’t kidding, I actually had rocked myself back to sleep again trying to sit up this morning.
I was now on maternity leave from work – or as I like to call it: vaginal tears, stretching, and mutilation vacation – and I was bored. I wanted these babies out of me like yesterday, but so far they were as stubborn as their father. I was so big that I couldn’t even go outside and work on the garden. Amazingly, the thing looked even better since Raoul had moved in. He’d decided that he wanted to be the one who looked after it for me, so the garden guru only came once every four months now, instead of every three to five weeks like he had before.
“What is it, Rose?” Jarrod asked as he sat down next to me on the couch. He’d come over with food earlier and was keeping me company while I wallowed in pregnancy pity. Every pregnant woman has felt that self-pity, the one where you feel like you’re the only one who’s ever been this uncomfortable, and it feels like it’s going to go on forever.
When I just sat there playing with the wrapper that my sandwich had been in, he started singing Every Rose Has Its Thorn, poking me in the side every so often. Nothing was going to snap me out of my funk, though, not even the elbow or knee that was currently sticking out of my stomach next to my belly button. Well, nothing that was until he poked again and something burst under me making me gasp.
Pulling back, he looked at me wide eyed. “What? What happened? Did I poke it in the head?”
“I think my water just exploded.”
Standing up quickly, he took a step away from me. “Just from poking you?” he asked, looking around us for something. “What do we do?”
I’d seen quite a few births, some of them slow, some of them fast, but first births tended to be slow and took their time to happen. That’s why I wasn’t expecting it when the pain hit at the same time that every muscle in my stomach tightened.
“I’d say call Raoul,” I groaned, trying to remember to breathe through it all. That breathing shit was for the birds, though, there was no way in hell you could do it when your body was doing this.
Pulling out his phone, he hit the screen and held it to his ear. “Just to let you know, your man’s going to kill me. He wanted to be here for this.”
“Oh, he’ll be there for the best parts, trust me.”
Raoul
She’d wanted a water birth – with twins. We’d tried talking her out of it, but during the pregnancy she was adamant that she was doing it. The OB-GYN had agreed that she could try it if everything was going smoothly, but once we’d gotten to the hospital she didn’t want “stupid fucking water”, she wanted the drugs, so she’d had an epidural.
“Ok,” Glynnis, the OB-GYN, said. “You’re fully dilated already, Rose. On the next contraction, we’re going to get you to push while your husband counts down from ten. He’s going to hold one of your leg, Leah beside you will take the other leg, and we’re going to get these babies out into the world. Are you ready?”
I’d done a lot of reading when we’d found out she was pregnant with twins, and what I’d read about the possible complications during birth scared the shit out of me which is why I’d been so against her even trying to do it in the water. So I’ll admit I was prepared for her to need a caesarean and I’d psyched myself up so that I didn’t lose my shit if it happened. But instead, she had the babies smoothly, almost like she did this every day, and they were born exactly eight minutes apart.
It had taken a couple of days to get over the shock when we’d found out we were having identical twins during the first scan. You’re prepared for there to definitely be one, but I hadn’t been prepared for them to find two, that’s for sure. And identical? I’d gone online and had found out that identical meant they were the same sex, you never got one of each that were identical, and I’d immediately pictured two little girls who looked just like their beautiful mother.
Then shock number two happened during the second scan when we’d been told that they were boys. We’d agreed we wouldn’t find out the genders of the babies, but as she’d passed the wand over Baby A you couldn’t miss it. Admittedly, I’d tried to be sneaky and had looked up what a penis and vagina looked like during an ultrasound, but I didn’t expect to be able to see it like I had. I thought I’d still be guessing until they were born, but even Rose knew what we were looking at.
And now, I was holding my sons while she slept it off. They were the perfect mix of both of us. My nose, her mouth and lips, my ears, her jaw… they were the definition of perfection, and they were my whole life along with their mama.
“Can I go home yet?” she croaked, making me smile.
Seeing as how we’d been over this twice, I already knew the answer. “You know they said you had to stay in a little longer.”
“But they let Jose go home after she had Liv and Jack.”
“Yes, and as they said – she was allowed to go home after both births because they were single births, and both mother and baby were fine.”
I got it, no one wanted to be in hospital but she’d just had twins. Jose had been different, she’d had one baby and even though Liv had been her first, they’d allowed her home. Decisions like that were more common nowadays, and depended on factors like: the mom’s stats, the baby’s stats, the difficulty of the birth, existing health conditions, and the support they had at home. Granted, none of th
at was a problem for Rose, but seriously – two babies, one body, one vagina. I wanted her to stay in until they were happy that the three of them were ok.
Seeing that I wasn’t going to budge on it, she looked down at our sons, smiling when one of them made a noise in his sleep. “Do we know what we’re calling them yet?”
We’d gone through a lot of names in the last nine months, but none of them had seemed to fit. “What about doing what my parents did and choosing one Hispanic and one English name?”
Her eyes lit up as she held a hand out. “Pass me my phone.”
And for the next hour while we traded babies, and she fed them for the first time, we both went through lists online and wrote down our favorites. When it came time to for us to share them with each other and decide, it turned out we had the same favorite English name, Teo, and that her English name was better than mine, so we named him Ryan.
When I’d woken up this morning, I hadn’t banked on the day ending with me holding my newborn sons while I watched Rose go back to sleep, but it was the best night of my life along with the night thirteen months ago when I married her and had fallen asleep afterward holding my wife.
Epilogue
Rose
Eighteen months later…
“Ok,” I whispered as I closed the door to the boy's room behind me. “We need to get this set up as quickly as we can.”
Glaring at me from where he was leaning against the wall, Garrett repeated what he’d said when I’d told him my plan this morning. “Why am I always the one who has to help you out with this shit? I have a life, and I have a lot of things that I have to do in that life.”
“Because you owe me,” I said simply, walking past him to the stairs. “We agreed on this.”
“I asked you to hide the ring once. Once! How does that mean I still owe you?”
Waiting until I got to the bottom of the stairs, I turned around and growled, “Because of where I’d had to hide it. When someone throws a ring at you and says to hide it when the person’s walking into a room, it doesn’t leave you much time to find somewhere. I had to sit like that for an hour.”
Before you gag and think gross, no it wasn’t down there. I mean, it almost was, but fortunately I’d thought quickly and had shoved it down my bra. Unfortunately for me, it had hooked around one of the dermals that my husband loved so much and pulled it out. This meant it hurt, I had a sad husband, and that I went out and got it replaced and another one added because I was a sap. This had all only happened a week ago, too, so the memory was still fresh.
He fucking owed me and he knew it.
Realizing I wasn’t going to be swayed on this, he sighed and followed behind me. “Ok, what are we doing?”
“We’re…” I began, but the front door bursting open and Raoul walking in holding his hand interrupted us, also scaring the shit out of me.
No, actually what scared the shit out of me was what he said next. “Snake got me. I thought it was a prank, so I moved the bush when I heard it rattling and it tagged me in the hand.”
There are two types of medical professionals in the world. The calm in the face of a family crisis type, who quickly assess the situation and can treat their loved one like it’s an everyday occurrence. And then there are the rest of us, who forget everything they’ve ever learned, they forget how to even breathe, and who then turn to their brother-in-law to do something, who was pinching the bridge of his nose and probably asking himself how he was related to his brother. That type was me right now.
“What do we do?”
Looking up at me, he did a double take when he saw I was panicking. “What are you asking me for? You’re the one who does this shit for a living?”
“Right, right,” I breathed, trying my best to remember what we did for snakebites. When nothing came to me, I did the first thing that popped into my mind. “Alexa, what do you do when someone’s bitten by a snake?”
Raoul
Leaning my head back onto the headrest of the passenger seat, I flexed the hand that was now wrapped up in a bandage. Rose was in the seat behind me still recovering from the fright that we’d had, while Garrett drove, more than likely trying to contain the urge to kill one of us.
Figuring it would break the ice, I chuckled, “What are the chances of it being a dry bite?”
“At least thirty percent,” he growled, his jaw muscle working furiously visible even in the dark.
Not that I could blame him for being pissed off, it was now almost five o’clock in the morning and he’d said that it was a dry bite – although he wasn’t a doctor, so it was wise that we’d gotten it checked out.
“We need to move,” Rose croaked. “What if it got the kids?”
“I already text that guy who works for the Townsends,” Garrett muttered, making the turn onto our street. “He’s coming tomorrow and will work his magic.”
Ignoring him, she continued, “Maybe we should burn it to the ground?”
Snakes had been more frequent within the town thanks to the building going on outside it. It had started with houses and then it had moved onto a strip mall, and the snakes and animals didn’t know where to go so they came into town. We just had to be vigilant and get the dude out to set traps and shit. Plus, I loved the house we had. I even loved the patched up holes in the walls from where Rex had lost his shit with the laser.
Pulling into the drive, Garrett cut the engine and turned to look at both of us. “You,” he pointed at me, “next time don’t put your hand in a fucking bush when you hear something rattling. Especially not when there have been reports of snakes. And you,” he turned around to look at Rose in the back, “I love you to pieces, but you need to learn what to do in the face of a crisis. You’ve got kids, one’s going to get sick. You have an advantage over the rest of us in that you know how to treat things, so use it.”
“I also know how far to stick things up asses,” she hissed, not realizing how bad that sounded. “So far, in fact, it would take the best surgeons three days to retrieve them. Don’t make me show you how that feels.”
And with that, she got out, blew a fart noise over her shoulder at the car, and stormed into the house.
When I went to tell him to take it a bit easier on her, especially seeing as how it wasn’t a ‘normal’ situation, he held a hand up in my face. “I don’t even want to know. What y’all get up to within the privacy of your bedroom is nothing to do with me. In fact, have a word with her and tell her I’d like it to continue being nothing to do with me, so if she could keep that shit to herself and her coven, I’d be grateful.”
Groaning, I covered my face with my hands. “Nothing like that happens to my ass, man. And what I was going to say was to take it easier on her. She had a fright and it was a whacked situation, everyone loses their shit at some point.”
Grunting, he watched as Zuri came out of the house, glaring over at the car. “Yeah, I meant to say it in a better way but my mind’s on other things right now.”
“She talking to you yet?”
“Fuck if I know, bro. Fuck if I know.”
* * *
Sixteen hours later…
It had started off with us just taking a bath together - something that we’d started doing after the babies were born and we wanted us time at night - but it had quickly ended up with her riding me until we were both panting and had a mess to clean up on the floor.
Afterward, as she lay back with her head on my stomach and my legs either side of her, I thought about how scared she’d looked last night. Twisting my hand so that I could connect our fingers, I watched as the light made the diamond in her ring twinkle. “I’m sorry for scaring you, sweetheart. I just figured it was one of those pranks that sounded like a rattler.”
Lifting the hand that had a waterproof dressing on it up to give it a kiss, she nodded slowly. “I know, just don’t do it again.”
“What were you guys up to when I burst in and dropped that bombshell on y’all?”
After spendi
ng three years together and having watched her reactions for a total of four years, my curiosity was piqued when she sat up and reached for a towel. “Nothing.”
Pulling her back to me and ignoring the tidal wave of water that joined the stuff that was already on the floor, I murmured in her ear, “Tell me, baby. What were y’all doing?”
Wincing, she twisted around to face me. “I had a surprise for you. It’s not important now, though.”
I had a brief moment of panic when I thought about what today’s date was and then released the breath I was holding again when I realized it wasn’t our anniversary. It also wasn’t her birthday or my birthday, and the twins didn’t turn two for another six months.
“What surprise? If you had one for me, it has to be special, right?”
Muttering under her breath, she closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath. When she opened them, she pasted a smile on her face. “We’re having babies,” she announced, then lifted her hands in the air. “Yay!” The tone she said them in didn’t match the words, that’s for sure.
The smile that had been on my face dropped, and I pushed the heel of my hands into my eyeballs. “Please tell me you’re kidding.”
I loved my kids more than life, but they were a handful. We’d had sleepless nights with colic, acid reflux, tonsillitis, ear infections, them learning to walk… it was standard parenting things that every parent went through, but when it was me on my own because Rose was at work? Freaked me out every fucking time.
“Oh, no, honey, not us,” she chuckled, and I dropped my hands in relief. “No, Ranger and Riley are having puppies, the vet confirmed it today.”
Classy AF: Cheap Thrills Series Book 3 Page 20
