Chapter Twenty-one
Bellefonte, Pennsylvania
The next day
Briley sat in her sunny, teal living room, her lips set, for once studiously ignoring the incredible view. Today was the day that she was finally going to bulldoze through the goddamn stack of paperwork that had to be filled out for her maternity leave. She’d dragged her feet and dawdled and dithered – but she might end up on bedrest any day now, and she’d better have her ducks in a row if that happened.
She sighed, took a disconsolate sip of decaf with low-fat milk, then jumped a bit as a volley of kicks happened in her abdomen. It felt like both of them were tap-dancing in there, and she knew that as long as they were, she’d feel like she was in a tumble dryer, so she set down her pen and stared at her stomach. Sure enough, there were little feet marks pushing out, and she smiled. OK, it wasn’t super comfortable – especially at night – but she loved seeing her skin rise and fall, and she wanted nothing more than to kiss those busy little feet.
Well. She also wanted their fathers there with her.
“We’re going to be OK,” she said aloud, partly to the twins, mostly to herself. “We got this, and we’re going to be a team, and Daddy and Daddy will be here for us as much as they can. It’s not perfect, I know and I’m sorry… but it’s still pretty damn good. Your fathers are great men, you’ll see.”
There was light tap at the door, and she startled a bit; right away, the twins jumped too. She’d heard that babies could sense and react to their mothers’ feelings, but she’d always dismissed it as bullshit. She believed it now, though, as her son and daughter seemed to mirror every thought and emotion that she had.
“OK, OK,” she muttered to them. “Calm down in there. I ordered a few onesies off Amazon for you guys, so I bet that’s why someone is at my door at nine a.m. on a Saturday.”
Briley pulled herself up off the sofa with a groan, lumbered ungracefully across the room. She opened the door a bit, kept the chain on as an automatic precaution, and peered out. What she saw almost knocked her backwards off her swollen feet, onto her getting-curvier-by-the-day ass.
Dux and Drake were standing on her front porch. The morning sun was shining on them from behind, almost making them glow with some angelic light… except that no angels would ever have such sinfully sexy and delicious grins on their gorgeous faces.
“Ummm,” she managed, wishing that she’d brushed her hair and put on lipstick and was wearing something besides an oversized t-shirt and track pants; the babies gave her a bunch of exasperated kicks in agreement.“Uh – hi?”
“Hey, babe,” Dux drawled at her. “Wanna open the door?”
“Oh!” she blurted. “Uh… yes! One sec.”
She shut the door, slid the chain, opened it again. She half-expected them to not still be standing there, like they’d been some weird hormone-induced mirage created by her wishful thinking… but there they were. Tall and broad and so, so handsome, the most amazing men that she’d ever known.
“Hi,” she repeated, feeling stupid and slow, like her head was filled up with cotton wool, but she didn’t really have much else to go with at the moment. “Please come –”
Without any warning, the world was suddenly spinning. Briley gave a small gasp and grabbed the doorjamb, but of course she needn’t have bothered: two strong sets of hands grasped her under the elbows, around her waist. They caught her as she swayed forward, caught her as she almost tumbled down. And as she stood there, supported and held up and wrapped in their embrace, it came to her that they had always caught her, right from the very beginning.
“Hey,” Drake’s worried voice rumbled against her cheek, and she knew the exact expression that he’d be wearing. At this point, she knew their faces like she knew her own, and she idly wondered how much the babies would share their fathers’ looks. “Those dizzy spells haven’t gotten better?”
“I thought the doctor said your levels were all normal.” Dux’s words came from behind her, and she smiled a bit, knowing that he was the twin curled around her back. “You need more tests?”
“I’m OK,” she murmured, loving being nestled between them, not caring if the neighbors might see them like this. “I really am. I think it was just the shock.”
“Have you had breakfast?” Drake asked her and in response, the babies kicked against her stomach, hard, in a flurry. He felt it against his own rock-hard abdomen, and he laughed. “The kids say no.”
“Briley,” Dux admonished her. “What’d we say about eating regular meals?”
“I have been!” she said with some indignation, and right away, the babies let her have it for telling such a bald-faced lie. “I mean – I’ve been better about it!”
“Jesus, woman.” She heard the smile in Dux’s words, even as he attempted to sound stern. “Let’s get you inside and feed the three of you.”
“Well,” she said as they each took a hand and led her back in the house. “Maybe we can talk first? Like maybe you can tell me why the hell you’ve taken a page out of my book, and shown up at my front door with no warning at all?” A terrible thought seized her, and she stopped dead in her tracks. “Wait – is something wrong back in Denver? Is – has anything else happened to anyone else?”
“Nah, darlin’,” Drake said gently, deposited her on the sofa. “Everything’s good.”
“Really?”
“One hundred percent.” Dux sat next to her. “We swear.”
“OK, so…” She made a circle in the air with one hand. “…what’s with the surprise visit? Surely you’re not just making sure that I had breakfast today?”
“Well, not only ,” Drake said. “But it’s clear that we’ll need to step up a bit with the cooking part of things from now on, and we need to get furniture assembled and go shopping for baby supplies.”
“Yeah,” Dux chimed in and gestured at the stack of paperwork on the coffee table in front of them. “ And we need to get your maternity stuff filled out, like today . This should all have been done weeks ago, babe. We’ll do this and drop it off at Rose Terraces for you first thing on Monday morning.”
“Uh.” She stared at them now, feeling like they were all having a conversation in which she’d missed a really crucial piece of preliminary information. “Why are you two talking like you’ll be here for a while? And if you’ve come for a long visit, why didn’t you give me a heads-up?”
“Because this isn’t a visit,” Dux told her. “Not at all.”
“It’s more permanent than that,” his brother added. “Way, way more.”
“What?” Briley whispered, wondering if she was hearing what she thought she was. “What are you two even talking about?”
“We’ve left The Road Devils,” Drake said simply. “We’re moving here , to Bellefonte.”
“But –” Briley sputtered in shock. “But how? How did you leave? Like – you guys escaped the MC?”
“We asked Wolf and he gave us his blessing,” Dux said. “It’s unusual, to be sure, but he said that these are unusual circumstances, and he wants us here with you, and not just for quick visits. Like, all the time. For good.”
“If you’ll have us,” Drake hastened to add. “I mean… we’re looking for a job in a garage, and we have a few interviews this coming week, and Dux found a pretty great two-bedroom apartment about a ten-minute drive from here. Or we can live here with you, if that’s what you want, but that part’s completely up to you.”
“Up to me ?” she echoed. “I – I get the final say?”
“Babe,” Dux said. “You’ve always had the final say. We’ll do whatever you ask, and whatever you want, we’ll make happen. For you, for our kids.”
“This is your choice, Briley,” Drake said. “All yours.”
She stared at them some more, feeling like her whole world had just started spinning backwards. She’d gone from wishing that they’d be with her a bit more often, to suddenly being able to have them with her all the time . In her own home, in her own bed – well, it would be their home and bed, surely – and her whole life.
Our lives. Life. All five of us, together .
They could be there for the last couple of months of what was becoming a challenging pregnancy, and they could be at the births of their son and daughter, and they could be there for every night feed and change. First smiles, first words, first steps…every little miracle that these babies performed, their fathers could be there.
They would be there.
All she had to do was say yes to these men. Say yes to everything that they were offering to give. Say yes to them being full-time Dads and full-on partners.
“So.” Drake smoothed her unruly hair off her forehead, gave her one of those heart-stopping smiles. “What do you want to do, darlin’?”
And of course Briley knew.