Loving Her (6 page)

Once again I went to bed rock-hard, knowing that when I woke my balls would be aching.

Miranda didn’t wake me up when she climbed out of bed the next morning. I could hear the boys running around on the hardwood floor, so I rolled over to check the time on my phone. It was six, and the sun had probably just come up. I rolled over on my back and rubbed the sleep out of my eyes. It wasn’t like I didn’t have to get up early every morning. Conner and I were usually at it before the sun came up, but when I had a chance to sleep in, I took advantage of it. Everyone has a breaking point, where their bodies needed to rest to catch up. The past month had taken so much out of me. All I wanted was to be able to relax for a couple days and not have to worry about work or anything else.

Izzy came in
to the room. She looked to be half asleep, so I pulled down the covers and she climbed in the spot beside me. “What’s wrong, Iz? You feeling alright?”

She shrugged and let me cuddle with her. “I’m tired and those dummies jumped on the bed until I got up.”

I laughed, closed my eyes and felt content with her there. “Go back to sleep. daddy’s got your back.”

There was going to be a time when Iz didn’t want to cuddle with her
daddy. I had to enjoy every minute with her, knowing she was growing up way too fast.

I must have been holding her too tight, because she began to wiggle out. “I’m hot.”

I let go of her and she turned, giving me a weird look. “What? You said you were hot.”

Iz leaned up on her elbow and looked right at me. “You have pretty eyes. I like brown eyes better than blue.”

“You have your mother’s eyes, Iz. They’re beautiful and so are you. I love how much you look like your mom.”

“Yeah, but Jake and Jax look like you.”

“They’re boys, Iz. Be glad you don’t look like them. You need to be able to say you’re not related if they do something terrible in public. If you looked alike, you’d never be able to pull that off.” I winked at her and she smiled. Sure, if she were my daughter biologically, she’d probably have gotten my brown eyes, but it isn’t a given. There are plenty of kids that look different and share the same parents.

“You have a point.”

I tickled her, making her laugh before I backed off.

Of course, I hadn’t considered that we’d make enough noise for the boys to hear us. Jake came barging in
. He didn’t stop until he was on the bed, standing over us like he was going to attack us. “Get up, butt faces!”

Izzy pulled the covers over her head and started screaming. “Get him away from me
!”

I grabbed one of his legs and took him down. He fell at my feet, but I didn’t let go of him.
Instead, I dragged him up towards us. He kicked and screamed until I saw his brother coming in out of the corner of my eye. With Jake kicking me, I kept focused on him. Izzy started kicking him back. Jax jumped up and began hitting her while she hid under the covers. I grabbed him by the underwear and yanked him toward me. Due to the instant wedgie I’d given him, he screamed out.

A loud whistle made the four of us freeze in place. Miranda stood in the doorway with a spatula in her hand. “What’s goin’ on in here? Do I need to bust some asses?”

“Bust Dad!” Jake yelled.

Jax laughed while Izzy peeked out from under the covers. Miranda crossed her arms and shook her head. “I saw them naked last night.” I knew my wife was mortified. Her eyes went from accusing to humongous.

“You did not. You must have been dreaming.”

He looked puzzled. “
Jake,” I said while winking at Miranda. “Did you see me and Mom naked last night?”

He shook his head.

“I came in to get you to look under the bed.”

“You had to have been dreaming.” Thankfully, I knew his brother wouldn’t have remembered me being in there. We’d woke
n him up at night and given him his medicine when he was sick and he never remembered.

“I swear, I saw you and Mommy in this bed all naked and touching each other. You were kissing on her privates
and said she had ticks.” He pointed to his own crotch.

Miranda covered her mouth and I almost burst into laughter. “Hey, that never happened. Now get your mind out of the gutter and go change into something else. It’s chilly out and super hero pajamas are not allowed,”
Changing the subject was going to be the only way to make him stop thinking about seeing us.

Truth be told, when I was their age, I knew a lot more than I should have, or at least thought I did. The two of them together were worse than me, so I probably wasn’t fooling anyone.

Jax was confused about what he perceived as reality, not that I cared. As long as he thought he was dreaming, it didn’t matter what he was thinking about in that little head of his. For now, Miranda was in the clear. They’d all seen her naked before. The woman never had a second to herself. She couldn’t even go to the bathroom without them coming in needing something from her.

Izzy finally pushed the covers all the way down once the boys retreated to go get dressed. “
Daddy, can you take me to Noah’s after breakfast?”

“Sure can, as long as you go put some clothes on and brush those nasty yellow teeth. What if he h
as a cute friend over? Those funky things would send him running in the opposite direction.”

She giggled. “I don’t like boys. They have B.O. and say curse words.”

Miranda walked over and sat on the bed, laughing her head off. “That’s right. Boys stink!”

“Except for Dad.” She looked up at me with a smile and I kissed the top of her head.

Miranda smirked. “Your dad was one of those boys, when we were kids.”

“Eww. He was?” I liked that Izzy only thought of me as being awesome. She was eleven, an age where she wanted to feel lik
e she was grown up, but had so much to learn before that could happen. Miranda and I always tried to be straight with her if she had questions, no matter how absurd they might have been.

I still had to deny ever having body odor. “I’ll have you know that I never stunk. You
r mother is full of bologna.”

Izzy giggled and climbed out of the bed. “I like the way he smells.”

I nudged Miranda and she gave me her annoyed look. “Yeah, well, he didn’t always smell so wonderful. He was a stinky boy, who said stinky things for attention.”

“D
id you think he was cute?” Izzy was laughing, but intrigued that we knew each other as kids.

It wasn’t like we were close. I’d see her in the summer when I visited. We called each other cousins back then
, and I never would have considered her someone to date. “We were kissing cousins,” I joked.

“You were not.” Izzy couldn’t stop laughing and neither could I.

I continued telling my fake story, while chuckling through it. “She used to chase me around, trying to kiss all over me. You should have seen her.”

Miranda slapped my side. “That is not true. You
r dad was annoyin’. I never would have liked him back then. He stared at older ladies boobs too much.”

She’d called me out, in front of my precious girl. I had to defend my honor to all pubescent men. “In my defense, boobs were an amazing discovery for a boy. It was only natural to want a peek.”

They both cringed.

“You’re gross. I’m gettin’ dressed now.” Izzy jumped off the bed, leaving me there with my agitated wife.

Did I mention that she was holding a metal spatula?

It came across my leg hard. “I can’t believe you said that to her. She’s goin’ to tell all her friends that you’re obsessed with breasts now.”

I pulled her into my arms. “It’s no secret.”

She wriggled out of my
hold and stood in front of me. After shaking her head, being at a loss for words, she walked out of the room, leaving me in bed all alone.

Twenty minutes later, after a shower, shave and a clean pair of clothes, I felt awake enough to join the chaos at the breakfast table. Miranda had made eggs and creamed chipped beef. I sat there staring at the boys, ripping apart bread and creat
ing a tower on their plates. Knowing that they barely ate that much, it was obvious it would get wasted. “I think you both have enough bread.”

They looked at me and kept ripping more pieces anyway.

Miranda handed me a cup of coffee and noticed their plates. “Seriously? Cut it out you two. It’s too early for you to not listen. We’re here to visit, not to cause anyone grief. Do you understand? I will let Uncle Colt put you over his knee.”

They looked at each other and laughed at her.

“Hey, listen to your mother, or I’m going to put you over my knee after Colt’s done with ya. Got it?”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Iz sitting quietly, eating her food, as if nothing crazy was going on around her. She smiled and I winked back at her, being thankful that one of the kids could act right at the table.

“Jax farted!”

Sometimes
, though, it was hard not to laugh, especially considering that every meal consisted of some sort of conversation about poop or farts. “Do you want to not eat?”

“Jax, please go in the other room if you need to do that. This is the ki
nd of thing that we don’t do in other people’s homes.” Miranda was constantly giving them life lessons, not that they paid her any mind. I wondered if they were even listening to her, because all of the sudden an extremely loud passing of gas noise filled the room. The boys were falling over in laughter. Even Izzy was laughing. I tried to keep composure, for as long as I could hold my breath, but finally it was too difficult.

As soon as I started laughing, Miranda left the room. I didn’t mean to contradict her correcting them, but they were a riot
, and it wasn’t like I hadn’t done the same thing. They were just being boys.

Once she’d left, and they realized how mad they’d made her, they ate in silence. I sat there with them eating and enjoying the quiet.

Miranda came in when she was done eating her food and started rinsing off the plate. I got up and wrapped my arms around her as the boys went running outside. “Sorry I ruined your breakfast. I guess I’m cut off again.”

She turned, but refused to kiss me. “Do you understand that everyone probably thinks we’re the worst parents on the planet?”

I disagreed. “That’s not true. We love our kids and take good care of them. Sure we get a little crazy, but we aren’t bad parents.”

“We’re not like Van and Colt. Look at how
well-behaved their kids act.”

“Miranda, we have twin boys. Nobody expects them to be little angels.”

“It’s embarrassin’!” she argued. “While you’re workin’, I have to drag their asses in public. Do you know the things they do in grocery stores? Jax took a banana and put it between his legs, making it look like a cock while running up and down the aisles the last time we went. I can’t push a cart if I need to have a hand on both of their ears, Ty. The older they get, the more out of control it is. They stress me out and I want to scream. Being away from them this past month made them even worse. It’s like they were attention deprived and are lashing out, and you aren’t even payin’ attention.”

I think she was blowing it a little out of proportion, but I wasn’t about to admit that out loud. “My mom will keep the boys when you need a break. She loves it.”

“She does not. They wreck her house and exhaust her.”

“Baby, calm down.” I rubbed her shoulders. “They’re being boys. They’ll grow out of it.”

She raised her eyebrow. “Like you did?”

Okay, in my defense, I did know how to be
gentlemen, if I needed to be. “That was mean.”

“Help me more with them, or
you will seriously be cut off, Ty. I’m not kiddin’.”

With threats of not being able to touch my wife on the line, I knew I had to get serious.

She had me by the balls and there was no way out of it. I would comply, for the sanity of my wife and the livelihood of my family jewels.

Chapter 8

Miranda

I was on edge, as if I still hadn’t been able to relax since Bella got home. In the back of my mind I feared that something was going to fail again with her health. What if the doctors missed something and she was in danger with none of us suspecting anything? Maybe I was in some kind of self-defense mode, preparing for the possibility that something horrible could still happen to my precious little girl.

At any rate, I was being an all
-around bitch, letting my emotions go crazy and taking them out on my family. The problem was that I didn’t know how to relax.

Being in Kentucky made things a little easier, perhaps that’s why Ty suggested we
visited. He knew that being around my mom and the rest of the family would be something good for all of us.

After cleaning up breakfast
with the help of Bella, I got changed and we all climbed into the spare golf cart. I assume that Colt had charged it, because it was working at top speed. Usually they forgot and we barely made it to his house before it died.