Rhett — 14
I heard Simon, but we’d been expecting Sean. If they were both here, it was possible they’d planned on joining us for dinner, which was more than okay with me. I needed my brother just now. Actually, I really needed Papa, but they weren’t due back until tomorrow afternoon. Although, Dad had more experience with twins at a young age since Papa didn’t come into the picture until much later.
Either way, I needed my dads, and I had every intention of calling them later and asking if they’d come over as soon as they were settled and rested. Until then, I was going to lean on my husband and enjoy some time with my brother and his husband.
When I turned away from Boone and the twins, I was greeted by Simon, who was playfully reaching for a baby with grabby hands.
“Which one do you want?” Boone asked his cousin.
“Don’t care. Either works for me,” Simon told him, and in the end, he took Abi from Boone’s arms. I smiled at the look of pure bliss on Simon’s face as he held Abi. I knew my brother-in-law wanted kids, and I was happy that Sean was finally at the same place as he was. They would both be amazing dads.
“Hey, you two should have had triplets, that way I could hold one, too. Hey, squirt. How you doing? You holding up okay?” Sean asked as he wrapped an arm around my shoulders and patted my arm with his other hand.
“I’m…okay. Well, I will be. It’s…an adjustment, and one that’s more difficult than expected, honestly,” I told him. Sean squeezed my shoulders and laid his head down on top of mine.
“I know you’ll be fine. It’s only been a week, and it’ll take more time than that, but we’re all here for you if you ever need any of us, okay?” Sean told me as I stared at Boone, who gave me a wink.
“Thanks, Sean. That means a lot to both of us. I think the lack of sleep is the most difficult,” I told my brother as I looked up at him. He gave me a smile that let me know he was genuine in his offer. I needed to remember that simply because we asked for help didn’t mean we couldn’t do it. It meant that we needed help, that was all.
“Sean, why don’t you take Ash here and go cuddle him for a bit. I need to take a peace offering home to the girls who are mad they’re not allowed to visit yet,” Boone said, and Sean was at his side before I could blink. I laughed at my brother but smiled when I watched him coo at my sleeping son.
I didn’t even hear Logan walk up behind me—damn stealthy man—but I melted against him when he wrapped his arms around me. “Pizza smells good. We should say bye to Boone though,” he whispered in my ear.
After one last quick look, I turned and walked into the kitchen with Logan by my side. I smiled at Boone and didn’t stop until I wrapped my arms around his waist. He seemed a little surprised at first but returned the hug quick enough.
“I’m really sorry about earlier, Boone,” I said as my face was squished into his chest, but I knew he heard me because he rocked me back and forth.
“There’s nothing to apologize for. Trust me when I say that I’ve been where you are, in terms of new-parent lack of sleep. Logan can tell you, neither of my girls slept for the first year, and because Kait breastfed them, only she could do that.”
“I might have heard stories about that a time or two,” I told him as I pulled away. “Listen, Boone, about what I said.”
“Don’t, Rhett. Nobody in this family thinks anything of you except that you’re perfect for my grouch of a brother. We all love you and know the hell you went through. Look at you now. You’re such a strong person, even if you don’t always realize it,” Boone told me. I buried my face in his chest and gave him one last tight hug before I pulled away.
I was not going to cry in front of him, I wasn’t. I tried to be busy and got a container out of the cabinet for the cake. I knew Kait would love it just as much as the girls would, and I missed my chats with her.
I cut the cake in half and carefully put one half in a container, and after securing the lid, I handed it to Boone. Dividing the cake had given me time to get my emotions more under control and I was no longer in immediate danger of bursting into tears. Not that everyone couldn’t already tell I’d been crying. I knew my nose was red and my face was probably splotchy. It always was.
“Thanks, Rhett. I know my girls will love this. All three of them,” Boone said as he held up the container of chocolatey goodness.
“You’re welcome. Give them kisses from us?”
“I will. You two enjoy your evening, and happy anniversary. I hope you’ll find time for the two of you this evening.”
“We will,” Logan told his brother as he walked him to the door. Once Boone was gone, I got plates down for pizza. I left the cake out, knowing it was going to be dessert and would be gone by the time Simon and Sean left. Logan smiled at me before he walked to the living room. When he came back, my brother and his cousin were right behind him.
“Hey, you ready to eat? We’re just sort of crashing your anniversary, sorry,” Simon told us.
“Naw, it’s all good. We didn’t have any plans, which is why Sean brought pizza. It’s not like we were going to go out with newborns,” I told him.
“True,” Sean chimed in. “Rhett will agree, and Simon can tell you, I’m boring and going out on New Year’s Eve has never been something I’ve enjoyed.”
“Well, then you really are perfect for my cousin because he’s always been boring,” Logan joked. I tried. I really did, but I lost it the same time Simon did and we all ended up laughing.
I needed this. I needed to be around family. I’d missed them the past week. Sure, we’d rarely been alone in the past week, but everyone had been by to either see the twins or to help out with them. Nobody had yet been by to just say hi to me and Logan. And judging by the way my husband was laughing and joking with Simon and Sean, Logan needed this as well.
“Okay, pizza is good, but we need drinks, and not water. I don’t know how you can drink water with everything, Rhett,” Sean said as he got up and walked over to the fridge. I laughed because he was in for a surprise. “All right, top shelf is obviously reserved for the twins, and I don’t think any of us want formula. Although…” Sean looked at us and busted out laughing when he was met with three “what the fuck” looks. “I was joking! That stuff even smells bad. I was simply implying that they seem to like it.”
“Yeah, that’s because they don’t know any better,” I told him as I walked over to the fridge and grabbed a pair of Diet Cokes for me and Logan. Caffeine was our friend right about now, and Diet Coke had it. I wasn’t in the mood for coffee, but it was there as well.
“When did he start drinking Diet Coke?” Sean asked as he, too, came over with a pair of them.
“About the time he moved in with me if not earlier,” Logan told Sean as he popped the can open.
“It was a little earlier. There’s only so much coffee you can drink before you need something else, and when I owned the bakery, I needed caffeine.”
“Wow. I feel terrible because I never realized,” Sean said. Simon, though, simply looked lost.
“I don’t get it. What am I missing?” Simon gave in and asked.
“Nothing really. I just never cared for soda growing up. And it’s still weird to hear you guys call it pop,” I told Simon, but I looked at both him and Logan.
“Hell, down in Texas they call it all Coke. Now that’s confusing,” Logan told me. We’d yet to go visit down there, and now it looked like we wouldn’t get there if Fiona and Joe were moving back to Wyoming. We all dug back into our pizza, enjoying the quiet of the meal instead of the loud, wonderful chaos of the last one we’d had together.
“Sean?”
“Hmm? Everything okay?” Sean had a concerned look on his face, and of course, that wasn’t what I wanted. I simply wanted to ask his opinion on something.
“I think so. Do you think Dad and Papa are happy to be moving here? I mean, they’ve lived in California for about twenty years. Why would they want to move now?”
“I wouldn’t worry about them, Rhett. They wouldn’t move if they didn’t want to. I think that maybe, on some level, they hoped we would all end up back in California. When that didn’t happen and we all ended up here, they decided that maybe it was time to move.”
“Yeah, but they sold Stealth Securities. That was Papa’s baby.”
“It might have been in the beginning, but when Dad joined him, they ran it together and I think that, recently, it’s become more of an excuse to keep them there instead of coming here. We’ve all been here for over two years now. They knew we weren’t coming back.”
I thought about what Sean said, and he was right. But he often was. He thought about things differently, so that was expected.
After we devoured the two large pizzas Sean had picked up for us, Simon seemed antsy.
“What’s wrong?” Logan asked.
“I was just wondering if the cake was off-limits.”
I laughed at my brother-in-law and shook my head. “No, I was going to cut what was left into four slices and share. I thought chocolate cake would go well after pizza.”
“You figured correctly, and I haven’t had any sweets since Christmas Eve, so I’m due,” Simon said as he got up and went to the cabinet and retrieved the dessert plates.
“Why would you not have sweets?” I asked, confused.
“Because your brother wanted us to cut back on sweets this year,” Simon said as he glared at his husband. Now it was my turn to be confused. Sean had one of the biggest sweet tooths I knew.
“Nothing’s wrong. But working in town not far from the bakery had become way too easy to just grab cakes and pastries whenever. We were eating them way too often.”
I looked at Simon, who was nodding, but I still didn’t see the problem. “Okay, cut back, but don’t cut out.”
“We are. Sean hasn’t officially gone back to work yet; he was only in the office today to send in some supply forms. So, until today, he hasn’t been in town near the bakery. We agreed on sweets once or twice a week. That’s cutting back since we were having them almost every day.”
I looked down at the slices of cake I’d plated and then over to my husband, who shook his head at me. “Nope. Give it. You’ve already reduced me to getting my scones only once a month. I haven’t had anything to eat that you haven’t since Christmas Eve either. Which hasn’t been much of anything, really.”
“You had scones just the other day!”
“You’re right, I did. But I still want the cake,” Logan said as he took a plate from me. He passed it to Sean though, and I handed the other one to Simon. After I’d retrieved the last two pieces, we sat down with coffee and cake. At least I knew they were enjoying it because they were all moaning as they ate it. But really, chocolate fudge cake—who wouldn’t in this family?
“So, are you two excited about next week?” I asked, curious.
“A little. I can’t believe Isaac kept the fact that he and Jacob were having another baby secret,” Simon said, somewhat clueless. When Sean gently slapped his shoulder, Simon finally looked up from his half-eaten cake. “What? After the whole Jasper and Liam being married for months before telling anyone thing, I expect that shit from your side of the family. What? Don’t give me that look,” Simon told both me and Sean.
“It wasn’t our intention to keep it a secret for so long,” Logan told his cousin.
“It wasn’t their intention either. But these Welsh boys, you have to know by now they’re good at secrets. Every last one of them has a poker face for days.”
That got a laugh out of all of us. We weren’t quite finished with our coffee and cake when the first sounds of Abi waking up sounded from the living room. Logan and I both laughed as Sean rushed to her and immediately picked her up. After he had her changed, I handed him a warmed bottle as Simon was changing Ash. Logan and I cleaned up in the kitchen as they fed the twins.
“You doing okay, munchkin?” Logan asked as I poured food into Scarlett’s bowl. She was sitting, waiting patiently for her own dinner. Forget the fact that she’d already eaten several pizza crusts.
“Yeah, I’m doing good. We need to be sure to call and let people know to come and visit,” I said, thinking that it was good to visit and at the same time our family got to spend time with the twins. That I could do. I couldn’t feel as if I was a failure to them though. I smiled as Logan wrapped his arms around me, and we watched as Simon and Sean sat as close as possible while feeding the twins. Yes, they would be great daddies.