Chapter 20 #2
“Tiddies?” I countered, more than a bit incredulous.
“Did you just call my pecs tiddies?” I didn’t like to think of myself as a particularly vain person, but I was proud of my barrel chest and the broad expanse of it.
Being a bear, I tended to put muscle on quite easily, but landscaping definitely enhanced that particular feature.
“That’s what they are! Big ol’ man tiddies!”
I stared at her, then the absurdity of it all had me bursting into laughter.
Yeah, the sexual tension was kind of gone, but it was replaced with so much dopamine that I didn’t mind.
No one had ever used that word to refer to my physique, but coming out of Jeannie’s mouth, it seemed like a compliment.
“I really am no better than man, aren’t I?” Jeannie continued as I tried to recover from the entire situation. Maybe next time, I should try flexing my biceps at her instead. “But hey, at least I didn’t call them mommy milkers.”
I nearly choked on my wine. “Mommy milkers!”
She shot me a somewhat innocent expression.
I’d thought we spoke quite frankly with each other even when our kids were around, but now I realized we’d both been editing ourselves.
Like any good parent should, of course! Strange, to not notice such a thing until directly confronted with it. “What? You’ve never heard of that?”
“Can’t say that I have.”
“I guess you’re not as chronically online as I am.
Editing requires me to be pretty well-versed in pop culture.
But it’s basically a term for, ya know…” She gestured to her own chest like I needed any encouragement to take in the wonderful fullness of her figure.
Like I didn’t have to pointedly ignore that sometimes.
“Tiddies?” I offered, waggling my eyebrows at her.
That had the desired effect, and she let out a loud laugh. It was one of the happiest sounds I’d heard in a really long time, and gave me a real sense of accomplishment. It was probably silly, but I wasn’t going to waste time and energy trying to convince myself of that.
“You know, sometimes I feel so old, but then something like slang for tits or farts gets me going.”
“I’d like to think there are some things we never get past.”
I was sure that the more stressed we became, the more hectic life got, and the bigger our wounds were, the funnier simple things were. So yeah, I could understand why toilet humor still got so many people’s goats.
“Fair enough, fair enough. Now, how about another glass of wine?”
“You sure you want another one of those before we walk back?” I knew alcohol could make humans feel a lot warmer, but it was actually an illusion.
Something about blood being closer to the surface of their skin?
Addy had explained it to me a long time ago, but I didn’t really remember because it wasn’t relevant to our lives then.
Jeannie looked at me like my head had just duplicated itself and was now presenting her with a profound riddle. “Walk back? What are you talking about?”
I frowned at her, wondering if she was setting me up for some sort of punch line. “We’ve gotta get back to camp, right?”
“Yeah, we do,” she said with a stern nod that told me she wasn’t joking. “But that’s not happening tonight, and I’m pretty sure Ana and the kids planned it like that.”
I blinked at her like an idiot as my brain caught up. Did she really think our children had set us up for a sleepover? That seemed awfully assumptive, even for kids. “Are you sure?”
“Remy, babe, I don’t mean to shake you or anything, but look out the windows.
It’s pitch black outside. Now, with some kids, I would think they hadn’t thought ahead about the consequences.
But there’s no way Addy would want you to hike in the dark while saddled with someone who doesn’t know the area.
” She took a confident bite of her chicken, regarding me as she chewed and swallowed.
“I betcha if we look in the back half of the cabin behind that partition, there’s gonna be sleeping arrangements all set up for us, complete with sleeping bags or fresh bedding. ”
I… I hadn’t considered that.
“But leaving our kids on their own overnight?”
“They’re not on their own. They’re with Ana. That’s probably why they got her involved in the first place. They knew we would never stay here if we thought they were unsupervised. Hell, we never would have kept hiking if Ana hadn’t volunteered to take them back.”
I whistled. When I first saw the lights and realized we’d been set up, I had been a bit taken aback.
I’d also been relieved that I hadn’t lost all my natural survival skills as an alpha.
The food and Jeannie’s wonderful company had been quite the distraction.
Now, however, I was beginning to circle back around to the fact that both or one of my daughters might be masterminds.
Was the deception spy-level shit? Of course not. But it was impressive that our kids had come up with the plan and roped another adult in.
Of course, there was the whole crux of the matter that my mind was hopping around. Which was… why did they want us alone in the first place?
If we were going by The Parent Trap logic, it would mean that they were trying to come up with a way to put Jeannie and me in a situation where we could bond.
Or maybe, a situation where we could be romantic.
That was a lot. A whole lot. I didn’t blame them for oversimplifying things because they were kids, but I needed to make sure I wasn’t overcomplicating things because I was an adult.
I cleared my throat. “Shall we check out what exactly our kids thought would be appropriate sleeping arrangements?”
“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were asking me to bed,” Jeannie teased, her chin back in her palm as she batted her eyes at me. Remembering how she’d reacted the first time, I decided to call her bluff.
Leaning forward, I mirrored her posture, so both of us were nearly halfway across the table, our faces much closer than what would be considered polite.
“And if I was?” I asked, dropping my voice down low.
Jeannie had a choice. She could either shut down whatever was happening by changing the topic, or she could press into the impromptu game of chicken we were playing.
I didn’t know what was going on with me—it wasn’t like I had made any grand decisions in the past twenty-four hours—but here, it was like we were separated from the world.
Within the walls of this cabin, there was no baggage, no old wounds.
We were just two people who thoroughly enjoyed each other’s presence.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d even had the compunction to flirt with anyone.
Well, that was a lie. That last time I’d flirted with anyone was burned into my mind.
It had been a week before Zara had drawn her last breath.
I’d brought her a big bouquet of flowers as well as her favorite foods even though we both knew her appetite was nonexistent.
She’d lain in our marital bed, looking every bit as beautiful as the day I met her, and I asked her if she would be my date.
That was when she’d made me promise that I would grieve her however I needed, but that I wouldn’t let myself wallow and rot away. She’d made me promise that I wouldn’t forget the joy in life.
Thinking of that gave me pause. Was this what she’d meant?
The way I had internalized it, she had been asking me to carry on the brightness that she often put into the world, to not be another source of negativity in it.
But what if I had misinterpreted it? What if she’d meant it in an entirely different way?
“Remy? Are you okay?”
Huh. It seemed that there was a third option, which was that I was going to be the one to put the brakes on the moment.
“Just thinkin’,” I said quickly, not wanting to make it awkward. Although, I feared that window might have already passed. “Maybe just having a personal revelation or two.”
Jeannie’s face softened, and she reached across the table, her palm so incredibly soft as it slid over my hand. “Anything you’d like to share?”
I shook my head. “They’re not fully cooked yet, so I’d like to keep them to myself if that’s all right.”
I didn’t know why I was so nervous. It wasn’t the first time I had expressed a new idea to Jeannie, a sort of half-baked philosophy that I hadn’t really had time to sit on yet.
But for some reason, I was a little too vulnerable.
Like I was about to fall into something I hadn’t thought enough about yet.
“That’s okay,” she said, eyes so kind as she patted the top of my hand. “I’m here if you ever want to share.”
“Thank you.”
Normally, that would be the moment when someone withdrew their hand and the conversation moved on. Except Jeannie didn’t withdraw her hand, and neither of us said anything.
It wasn’t an uncomfortable silence, but tension bubbled up my spine and spread throughout my brain, in anticipation for something to happen even if neither of us were sure exactly what that something was yet.
“So, the sleeping arrangements?” I said eventually, when it felt like the tension was coiling so tightly that it would explode at any moment.
“Right, right. To see if our kids expected us to spend the night or not.”
“Yeah, that’s why.”
We walked to the partition that separated the two halves of the cabin, and sure enough, it had been made up for people to spend the night. Looked like Jeannie was right, which didn’t surprise me in the least.
A small table stood in front of one of the windows, with books and a vase of flowers arranged on it. Next to it was a tall, wing-backed chair and a threadbare couch with a thick comforter thrown over it to make it a little less worn. And finally…
…a bed.
WELP.
Suddenly everything was way too much, way too quickly. Because not only was I surprised that my kids and my sister-in-law would pull such a ballsy move, but I was also surprised that I was tempted to go with it.
What the fuck?