Chapter 49
JAMESON
Late Summer
The hum of the vacuum was my only tether to sanity.
Straight lines. Predictable noise. A small, controllable corner of the universe, which was precisely why I clung to it like a lifeline most mornings—especially now that my home resembled the aftermath of a small carnival explosion on a daily basis.
Trent was on speaker, his voice echoing over the noise. “I’m tellin’ you, man, you need a simpler system. Floors are for walkin’, not worshipping.”
“They’re for both,” I said, nudging the vacuum around a dog toy. “You wouldn’t understand. You let mud into your house on purpose.”
“That’s called earth, Jameson. People touch it. It’s normal.”
I rolled my eyes and kept vacuuming. I’d just finished aligning the throw pillows in the living room as precisely and evenly as any rational person would when the front door banged open and chaos itself came barreling in.
The dogs rose and the kittens sniffed curiously, only the cats themselves remaining aloof.
“Hang on,” I said into the phone. “Sadie’s home. Just—”
“Jameson!” Sadie’s voice came from the foyer, high-pitched and strangely breathless. “Jamie! Where are you?”
I barely had time to switch off the vacuum before Hooch launched himself into the hallway, tail wagging like a metronome gone mad as he lumbered toward them.
The twins’ shrieking giggles followed as soon as they spotted him, a sweet reaction that had begun about a week ago and seemed to have become their default setting when they saw him.
Not only did our girls look exactly like their mother, but they also seemed to have inherited the pure, unadulterated joy that animals brought her. Chuckling as I followed him out, my phone still in my hand, I wondered what all the fuss was about.
Sadie had taken the girls to the doctor with her this morning.
She’d insisted I didn’t have to come and that she was only going to introduce them to the doctor that had taken care of her and them during the pregnancy, but I could practically feel the odd, frantic energy in the air as I approached them.
“Whoa. What’s going on?” I asked as Sadie wrestled a double-stroller roughly the size of a compact car through the foyer.
Her words came in a rapid, unbroken stream. “I’m fine, but just listen… Oh, move, Hooch. Please. Jameson… Hooch! Wait.”
“Sadie. English.” I blinked hard, but I still went over to help her navigate the side table and the horse-sized dog with the giant stroller. “Are you okay? What happened?”
In her panic, she’d also riled up Hooch and all the other dogs that had become part of my personal three-ring circus these days.
All of them were now racing toward us too, sliding on the tiles as they tried to stop.
They were barking and whimpering, some mewling while tails wagged and others cowering.
It was complete insanity and yet my heart had lurched into my throat.
Something was terribly wrong here. Not because of the chaos or even the convergence around the front door when she arrived home.
All of that was part of our daily life, but Sadie herself was giving off vibes that honestly scared me a little bit.
Faced with the wall of animals, she had frozen completely, her vibrant red hair wild, her cheeks flushed, and her eyes bright with something that looked suspiciously like panic. “Okay. Just give me a second.”
Before I could press for clarity, Hailey started fussing, so I scooped her up, bouncing her on my hip, then reached for Briar as she stretched her arms out too.
Two squirming infants, half a dozen barking dogs, and a wife on the verge of emotional collapse—just another Tuesday in the Westwood household.
But still, something was odd about it this time around.
“Sadie,” I said again, gentler now. “What happened?”
Strangely, she broke then, but not into a spiral of panic. Into tears. Big, gulping, full-body sobs that made my heart stop cold.
“Hey, hey,” I said quickly, juggling both girls and stepping toward her. “What’s wrong? Is it the doctor? Are you hurt? Are the girls—”
She shook her head furiously, fumbling through her purse like a woman possessed while her shoulders shook and tears streamed down her face. “No, no, everyone’s fine. It’s just, uh, just… Oh, here.”
She thrust something into my hand and it took me a second to realize what it was. A strip of glossy black-and-white images. For a second, I didn’t understand what I was looking at—and then I did.
I stared down at the images, then up into her watery blue eyes, then back down again. “No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Yes,” she said, teary-eyed but smiling now, almost laughing. “Look at the date. They’re not old images. They were taken today.”
“How did this happen?”
“It’s your fault.”
“My fault?” I sputtered, shifting the twins in my arms as my brain tried to reboot. “How is it my fault?”
“We thought we didn’t need to be careful yet,” she half-laughed, half-cried, dabbing at her cheeks. “Apparently, we really, really did.”
I looked at the ultrasound images again, the grainy images far too familiar, and then at the woman I adored before I glanced at the two little girls staring at us curiously. “Are you telling me…”
She nodded. “Yes. Twins again.”
I blinked rapidly, feeling the tears that were gathering in my own eyes now. “Again. As in… two.”
“Two,” she confirmed, laughter bubbling up through her tears. “It looks like you only fire doubles, mister.”
Suddenly, I couldn’t help laughing with her. We collapsed against one another with that kind of disbelieving, oh fuck laughter that came from the place of shock, sheer exhaustion, and joy colliding head on.
On speakerphone, Trent let out a low whistle. “Well, damn. Y’all don’t waste time.”
I stared at the phone. “Trent, hang up.”
“Nope,” he said cheerfully. “Stayin’ right here. This is better than TV.”
Sadie nodded rapidly, tears pooling, laughter and panic blending in her voice. “I know, I know, it’s crazy—”
“Crazy?” Trent cut in. “Sweetheart, I wrangle horses, bulls, and three dozen ranch hands. Babies can’t be that different.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Trent.”
He kept going. “Just keep ‘em fed, loved, and away from power tools. Easy.”
“We’re insane,” I said when I could finally speak again. “Clinically, certifiably insane.”
“Completely,” she agreed, grinning through her tears. Then she reached over, took the phone from my hands, and hung up on her brother before looking up at me again. “How are we going to do this, Jamie?”
Hooch barked once more, the twins giggled in stereo, and I looked down at the tiny ultrasound photos again. Two more heartbeats, two more miracles we hadn’t planned but that, somehow, already belonged to us.
“Obviously, Hooch is volunteering to babysit,” I said. “Do you think we can teach him to change a diaper?”
Sadie clutched the ultrasound photos when I handed them back to her, looking like she might hyperventilate. The borderline hysteria and laughter had faded fast, the spiral of panic I’d been expecting before she’d burst into tears finally hitting.
“Seriously, Jamie. What are we going to do? We’re only two people and we both work full-time.
We’ll be outnumbered two to one, and the girls are only three months old.
They might not even be walking yet by the time these are born and they’ll fall.
A lot. What if they hurt themselves because we’re too busy with the babies? What if—”
Instinct kicked in for me as she rambled.
That same calm, controlled instinct that chopped up multimillion-dollar companies and ran a calendar scheduled down to the minute.
For the last few months, I’d been applying it to diaper changes, feeding rotations, and emotional triage.
I could expand it to deal with this, too.
To settle the new wave of chaos that was about to overrun our home.
“Okay,” I said finally, my voice more even and steadier than I felt. “First, we breathe. Then we celebrate. Then we panic.”
Sadie blinked up at me, her lower lip trembling. “Jameson, I can’t. What if I can’t do this again?”
I smiled, because God, I loved her. If there was anyone I could do this with, it was her. “Sweetheart, we’ll survive. Probably barely, but we will survive. I’m thrilled. Honestly, but—”
Her tearful eyes jerked up to mine. “But?”
“We’re going to need a farm.”
Another weak, shocked, watery laugh came out of her. “A farm? I’m pretty sure this estate is bigger than a farm.”
“Yeah, but we’ll probably have to do a little bit of building during the pregnancy.
Actually, we’re probably going to have to do a lot of building.
Double the size of the house. And, uh, you might need to cool it not only on the fertility, but also on bringing home stray animals for a while.
Our collection of stray cats seems to be multiplying faster than our offspring. ”
“I can’t help it,” she protested. “They find me.”
“That’s exactly my point,” I said, setting Hailey down in the cot in the living room so I could juggle Briar into the other arm. “You’re on probation from rescuing things for the foreseeable future.”
Sadie sniffed, but the panic had receded from her eyes. As she watched me settle Briar next to her sister, she seemed to be breathing normally again too. “That seems unnecessary.”
“That’s self-preservation,” I countered, turning to slide my hands around her hips and pressing a kiss to her forehead. “One more thing.”
She looked up at me warily. “What’s that?”
“I’m hiring help,” I said firmly. “A nanny. Maybe two. Possibly a team. We can’t do this by ourselves anymore, baby.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “You hate having people in the house.”
“I also hate having mental breakdowns,” I said, entirely matter of fact. “Unless I want to spend the next decade losing my hair and my sanity, I’m going to have to delegate. Obviously, my hair is more important to me than having strangers in my space.”
Sadie giggled, the sound soft and genuine. Her arms looped around my neck and she nestled into me. “I love you.”
“I love you too,” I replied. “I also love our tiny army. Even if we are single-handedly trying to populate a small village.”
She smiled up at me. “You’re not mad?”
“Mad?” I chuckled. “No, I’m not mad. How could I be? I definitely played a part in this. I’m the happiest, most overwhelmed man in America. What we’ve got going on is divine chaos.”
Maybe the old me would’ve seen this as a loss of control. Maybe I would’ve been pissed. I probably would’ve lashed out, but now, surrounded by the wild, beautiful life we were building, I couldn’t be mad. I’d long since surrendered.
Once upon a time, I’d built my life around control. Now, it seemed, I was building it around chaos, and I’d never been happier to have absolutely everything completely out of place.