EIGHT MONTHS LATER
I watch, from across the street, with a sick satisfaction as my father-in-law pulls up into his driveway from a long day at work. His clothes are strewn all over the lawn, and a very expensive looking television has been thrown in the middle, beat to shit with a hammer.
It’s completely out of character for my mother-in-law, but I can’t help but smile. He steps out of his car and walks over to all of his shit in the middle of the front yard, his hands on his hips as he tips his head to the sky as if to ask—why me.
“Brother, his television?” Torch asks from my side.
“He threatened to practically sell off Cleo, and hired a cop on the hook to put your ass away, giving him permission to have his way with her, what would you do?” I ask with a frown.
“Burn his house to the ground after I killed him,” he shrugs.
I laugh. He would do that, too. I personally don’t like murder. It’s a little too messy, and it means he wouldn’t be living with the consequences for his actions for too long. Like with Graham and Houston, the satisfaction of their deaths were just a little too hollow. “I prefer watching him suffer from afar.”
“How’d you know he was cheating on his wife with his secretaries?” he asks as we walk toward our bikes, which are parked a block away from my father-in-law’s estate.
“Man like that? Man that threatened to do what he tried to do to his own daughter, my woman? He had skeletons for sure. I just had to figure them out. Plus, I walked in on him fucking a secretary not too long ago,” I shrug. “It wasn’t that he was cheating, she probably knew that already.”
“What was it then?” he asks.
“It’s that he was keeping several of them, putting them up in fancy as fuck apartments in the city, spending time with them, taking them on vacations. He was giving them wife privileges.”
He snorts. “Don’t fuck with Soar.”
“Bet your fucking ass,” I grunt.
It only takes us a few minutes to walk to our bikes. Torch waves as he goes in a different direction, and I head toward where I need to be. I’ve been gone for too long, anyway. I need to be back in that room with her. Walking into the building, I hurry to her floor and I stop dead in my tracks at the sight before me.
Imogen is sitting up, her hair unkempt, yet gorgeous, and my son is at her breast. His blond hair is the only thing I can see of him as he’s swaddled in a blue blanket. Genny looks over at me, and I can see just how tired she is; but when her brown eye’s catch mine, she smiles.
“How you feeling, mama?” I ask as I make my way toward my wife and child.
I place my hand on Everett’s head. Everett, a name Imogen chose. She said because we were both so wild, he’s destined to be the same, and that’s what it means. The difference with him and us is that we won’t ever try to tame him the way our families did us. Fuck, yeah. Rett. It’s a perfect name for our little man.
“I’m tired, but he’s hungry,” she murmurs softly.
I lean over to press my lips to hers. She’s my goddamn hero, carrying him and then safely bringing him into this world to share with me—a fucking hero. With my lips still touching hers, I whisper that as soon as he’s finished eating, I’ll change and hold him.
“Thank you,” Imogen sighs.
“Where’d you go?” she asks as soon as he’s finished eating and I take him, throwing a cloth over my shoulder to burp him.
“Had something to do. Nothing for you to worry about, okay, sunshine?”
“Mmm,” she hums. I look over to find that she’s fallen fast asleep.
I smile and take Everett over to the plastic bassinet. Changing his diaper, I’m slow and scared I’m going to hurt him; but he just looks at me the entire time, as if he’s trying to figure out exactly who and what I am. When I’m finished, I wrap him back in his blanket and walk him over to the shitty recliner they leave for us dads.
I lay him against my chest and I pat his back as I talk to my little man.
“You’re going to be a good man, you hear me? You aren’t allowed to do half of the shit your old man has. The other half, I’ll teach you about,” I laugh when he makes a gurgling noise before he sighs. “Never thought I wanted a little man like you. Waited thirty-nine years, and here you are. Aside from your mama, you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, Rett,” I whisper.
A knock on the door interrupts our bonding, and I watch as my little brother walks through the door, my mother and her new husband, Calvin, trailing behind.
“Oh, my god, he’s absolutely gorgeous,” my mother coos, careful not to be too loud.
They all three sit on the sofa. As much as I should probably hand him to my mother, I hand him to my baby brother instead.
I place him in Kip’s arms, “Here, Uncle Kipling, meet Everett.”
“Holy shit, something this perfect came from my dumbfuck brother?” he asks with a laugh.
“Hey, he’s mine, too,” Imogen says, her voice raspy from the bed.
I walk over to her and sit on the edge next to her, taking her hand in mine.
“He’s perfect, Genny,” Kipling says, unable to take his eyes off of my son.
“He is, isn’t he?” she asks in a grin.
“He absolutely is, and so are you,” I murmur as I lean down and press my lips to hers again.
Imogen smiles and she squeezes my hand. “Are you happy?” she asks.
“Have I made up for my years of bullshit, yet?” I ask. It’s a question I’ve asked periodically throughout the past year.
“You’re really, really close,” she grins.
“What else do you need, baby?” I ask as I run my thumb over her bottom lip.
“More of this, all of it.”
I smile widely. “You got it sunshine. A whole fucking lifetime of it.”