Chapter 22
FORD
On our one-month anniversary, I sat with my wife on the resort’s secluded stretch of beach. The moon was high and bright, the ocean calm as the waves lapped at the shore, and a bonfire crackled in front of us.
It might’ve been romantic, if not for the death glare Quinn was shooting me.
Or the constant bickering of my siblings as they, as well as Everly and Luna, sat next to us following an intense game of charades.
An intense game wherein Quinn and I fought to the death on opposing teams, and Addison nearly beat Levi over the head with a stray rock because he wouldn’t correctly guess her clues.
“I still can’t believe I got paired with someone who couldn’t guess a teapot,” Addison grumbled to no one in particular.
“Jesus Christ, Addison.” Levi dropped his head back and groaned to the sky. “This again?”
“Yes, this again! This forever . I’m never going to let you live this down. A five-year-old could’ve guessed that. I even acted out the short and stout!”
“That means fuck all. If you don’t tip the teapot over and pour it out, how am I supposed to know what you’re doing? You are short, so it was just you bouncing around like you OD’d on speed. I stand by the fact that a dancing gnome was a good guess.”
“Well, I stand by the fact that you’re an idiot.”
Yeah… We were all a little too competitive to have anything remotely resembling a friendly game night.
Unless friendly simply meant that no blood was shed, in which case we were golden.
But when we reminded our baby sister of that fact, she wasn’t hearing any of it.
Said it would be good for everyone to get together. Good for Quinn and me to practice .
Which would’ve been fine and great, except for the fact that Beck and I had beat Quinn and Everly by a score of 3–2, and my wife was just as competitive as the rest of us. Hell, when it came to me, she was even more so. And now, she was giving me the cold shoulder.
I’d never been in a relationship long enough to experience this particular milestone, but I…didn’t hate it. Especially when it was Quinn on the other end of that glare. I didn’t know if it was our history or if it was just her, but her attitude got my dick hard every fucking time.
“Maybe next time we should all participate in a group meditation first to calm everyone down,” Luna said from where she sat draped sideways across Brady’s lap.
“Unless that meditation includes a fuck-ton of weed,” Levi said with a shake of his head, “I don’t think it’s gonna do much.”
Aiden hummed his agreement. “Gotta go with Levi on this one. This is how we’ve always been.”
“Is that true, Quinn?” Everly shifted next to Beck, glancing around my twin from where he had her tucked tight against his side.
“I’m actually not sure…” Quinn shrugged. “I didn’t spend a whole lot of time around them when we were growing up.”
Quinn had always kept to herself. People in school thought she was snobby, but I knew it was just because she was focused.
She didn’t allow herself to relax often.
Or at all. Which meant if she wasn’t striving for a goal, she wasn’t interested.
Through high school, that had kept her busy and hadn’t allowed her the social life I’d had.
I’d always thought that was just who she was, but after learning more about her parents, hearing how her mother spoke to her, I wondered if it wasn’t a product of her upbringing instead.
What she felt she had to do to try to earn her parents’ respect and approval.
Something I now knew they’d never given her.
But I also knew that wasn’t something she’d share freely, so I steered the conversation back to our history.
“She saved all her energy just for me. She was basically obsessed.”
Quinn rolled her eyes. “That’s a gross misrepresentation of our history.”
“Kitten, you don’t have to pretend around them. They already know you liked me well enough to marry me.”
“Speaking of… What’s happening here?” Addison asked, bouncing her finger between Quinn and me.
“That’s not how married people sit. Look at those four disgustingly in love fools.
” She gestured to our coupled-up siblings.
“They’re not married, but Luna’s moved all her crystals and shit straight into Brady’s house, and Beck and Everly are officially at the emergency contact stage of their relationship, so you two have to kick it up a notch. ”
I snapped my gaze in Beck’s direction. “Wait, what? I’m not your emergency contact anymore? When the hell did that happen?”
Beck shrugged. “Couple weeks ago.”
“A couple— What the fuck, man?”
“What?”
“They’re living together,” Aiden said. “What did you expect?”
What did I expect? I expected my twin would tell me when he was booting me out of the top spot in his life at the very fucking least.
There were six of us siblings, yes, but it had always been me and Beck. The two of us against the world. From day one, we’d been each other’s person, and I wasn’t quite sure I was ready to let that go.
Worse, this feeling felt a lot like…jealousy.
And I hated it. I wasn’t a jealous person by nature.
And I didn’t begrudge Beck his relationship with Everly.
If anyone deserved to be happy, it was him.
As I stared at the two of them whispering quietly to each other, I realized this jealousy wasn’t over the fact that Everly had a part of him I no longer did.
It was that I didn’t have what they did.
Which was quite the mindfuck since it was something I never thought I wanted, but now I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d ever find it.
Was anyone ever going to want that with me, considering everyone saw me as the good-time guy?
Just a playboy only good enough to warm someone’s bed?
I was the guy girls dated before they found someone to take home.
Like Chelsea said, I wasn’t the one they kept .
Except, I was someone’s husband now. Whether real or fake, in whatever circumstances it had come about, I wore Quinn’s ring. Maybe I wasn’t kept forever, but I was kept for now.
I glanced over at her, studying her features in the firelight.
In the month we’d been doing this, we’d finally hit our stride.
I knew when she had bad days, knew when she needed to blow off steam, when she needed to be left alone, when she needed a distraction.
Likewise, she could tell from a glance if I’d had a challenging shift at the fire station, if Addison had me spinning my wheels with projects for the resort, if I needed a drink or a cupcake or a fuck.
She’d started to read me as well as—in some cases better than—my twin could.
“ Hello ?” Addison snapped her fingers to get our attention. “Back to the issue at hand—you two aren’t even touching. How do you expect this to pass as real if you act like this?”
Quinn made a show of looking around at the otherwise deserted beach. “I think that’s a little overkill, don’t you? There’s no one here we have to perform for.”
“And that’s exactly the reason you should be performing. Get in some practice. Honestly, you guys need to get your heads in the game. We’ve got a lot on the line here—”
“We?” I asked, brow raised.
“Yes, we . I already told you I’m bringing every one of you idiots with me to my next doctor’s appointment if I have to book it with Dicknose.
If I have to suffer through, so do you. Now, focus!
You’ve got Chelsea’s wedding coming up, and you’ve got to be on point for that, so snuggle up.
Pretend like you like each other enough that you just committed your lives to each other. ”
Well, I sure as hell wasn’t going to say no to that.
Bracing myself back on one of my hands, I widened my legs and patted the space between. “She’s got a point, wife. Time to snuggle up.”
Quinn shot me an impassive look, but I simply grinned back at her. It was time for her to get over this little grudge. It wasn’t my fault Aiden called the tie game for Beck and me rather than her and Everly.
With a long-suffering sigh, she stood and walked over, settling into the space between my legs. She relaxed back into me by degrees until she was soft and pliant against me, her hands resting on my thighs.
“See,” Addison said. “Is that so hard?”
“Yeah, is that so hard, kitten?” I murmured against Quinn’s ear before pressing a kiss there, knowing damn well she could feel exactly how much I loved having her this close.
It’d been two weeks since the Blueberry Fest and thus since beginning to fuck my wife on a consistent basis, but my dick still reacted to the scent of her shampoo like he was a starving man at his first feast. Like he hadn’t just been inside her two hours ago, our impromptu not-so-quickie making us late to this little family night.
Quinn slid a glance at me out of the corner of her eye, her lips pursed to the side, proving just how unimpressed she was. But even through the flickering light of the bonfire, I could see the flush of her cheeks and the tight peaks of her nipples against the front of her T-shirt.
Yeah, my wife could pretend to be irritated all she wanted, but she loved knowing just how much she turned me on, and I was all too willing to remind her.