Chapter 54 Noah
fifty-four
Noah
Iwake up with a faint headache and the smell of coffee tickling my senses. Opening my gritty eyes, I see my wife leaning over me. “Rise and shine, handsome,” she says. Why is she placing a coffee mug on my nightstand? Did I oversleep?
She pulls her sweater above her head, revealing her full breasts.
“Happy birthday,” she purrs, kicking her leggings off and sliding under the covers.
Her mouth closes on my dick—the most alive part of my anatomy right now.
I rest my hands on her head, not needing to guide her but just enjoying the feel of her silky hair.
My woman knows exactly how to please me.
I hold myself for her and sit up, sliding my hand between her thighs. “You’re soaked. Come here.” With how wet she is, she’ll come in under two minutes.
Not that I’m in a hurry or anything.
She resists my pull, groaning against my dick. The vibration almost makes me come in her mouth. “Babe, I’m close.”
She lets go of me with a pop and locks her gaze on mine. “And I said, happy birthday,” she orders before going back down on me.
Ah fuck. Bossy Willow will be the death of me. “It’s my birthday,” I groan.
“Mm-hm.”
I hiss, trying to contain myself. “I’d like to come with my wife’s tits in my face.”
She pauses, looks up at me, my precum pearling on her full lips. “You will,” she whispers. “Later.” With a smile, she goes back down on me.
Much later, after she keeps her promise to me, we’re lying in bed. I’m filling in on the serene and powerful after-sex energy that Willow never fails to give me. It’s late, but who cares? The shop can wait.
“Griff is leaving tomorrow,” Willow says, running her hand on my chest in that way that I absolutely love, “so I thought we could make it just the five of us for your birthday. That’s okay, right? I thought you’d want some quality time. It’s so rare to have him.”
The way she gets me is absolute perfection. “Couldn’t have wished for anything else.” I kiss her head, bringing her close to me.
She sighs deeply and adds, “I just need to take Mom shopping. She insisted.”
I kiss her forehead, smiling inwardly. I insisted that Marcy find an excuse to get Willow outside of Emerald Creek for an hour or two. “That’s fine. I have stuff to do at the shop, and then we can all hang out when you come back.”
“Then let’s get our yoga session in now,” she exclaims like that’s the best idea ever. “With all the tension from the past few days, we need it.”
I want to counter that I just had two orgasms, but I don’t.
Thirty minutes later we’re in the parlor on our brightly colored mats, and I’m working up more of a sweat than during this morning’s sex.
“Downward facing dog,” the woman on YouTube calls out. Her dog moves across the camera and settles with a grunt next to her. Calla echoes the sigh while the puppies lick my face, wondering what’s wrong with me.
I glance at my wife, looking graceful in her upside-down V figure. The puppies aren’t worried about her, and that should be my sign. But she roped me into agreeing to thirty days of daily yoga, and dammit, I’m gonna keep my word.
“Try to extend your legs if you can,” Willow says.
The puppies yap and jump. They’re big now, and their puppy enthusiasm matched with their Saint Bernard size make them a lot to handle. “Almost there, babe. Almost there,” I croak, ignoring the pups.
I struggle for a few more beats, until finally the instructor calls for Child’s pose and I collapse to the floor. “That’s my favorite,” I mumble. Willow needs to believe I’m getting something out of this. She did put up quite a fight to convince me. Her tenacity should be rewarded.
The pups crawl on top of me, lick my neck, climb up the slope of my back, all the way to my protruding bum. Willow says it’s okay that I look nothing like her when doing the positions. Something about men’s hips.
Finally the end-of-session music sounds, and Willow switches the soundtracks from the instructor’s parting words to Phish’s latest live upload while we rest on our backs—a position named after a dude called Sebastian.
More puppy paws, more licking.
“Maple, leave Daddy alone,” Willow laughs.
“What the fuck?” Beck snorts, barging in on us. “Dude, I thought yoga was supposed to be hard.”
I haul myself up on one elbow. “Wait ’til you try it.”
“Not gonna happen. You need help getting up, old fart?” He extends his hand, but I’m not falling for that trap again.
I roll onto my knees and stand up, feeling—I hate to admit—marginally better each day. “I’ll be right there,” I say.
Griff is waiting for us outside, and we don’t have far to go. Everything is ready on the store’s loading dock. We just need to make sure Willow won’t walk in on us, so we sit outside on the dock, sipping coffee and eating fresh apple cider doughnuts delivered by Kiara an hour ago.
“Good shit,” Griff comments, raising his cup of coffee.
“Willow’s idea,” I say proudly.
“You don’t say,” he teases.
“Fuck off,” I answer with a chuckle.
“Dude, what if she doesn’t like it?” Beck asks.
“Shut up,” I say. “She’s gonna love it.” Right?
“Yeah, she’ll get used to it,” Griff says.
I chuckle. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?” I can’t believe my brothers are throwing this shit at me now, but at the same time, I’ve missed that kind of ribbing.
Though to be honest, did we really ever have that?
A comfortable silence stretches between us, one that I want to commit to memory. The fact that they’re here for me right now means so much to me, and I need to tell them. “I need to put this out there,” I say. They both look at me. “I’ve been sort of a dick to you guys, more often than not.”
Griff shrugs and takes a sip of coffee, looking in the distance.
“Dude, come on,” Beck says uneasily.
I turn to my youngest brother and don’t see the troubled kid who kept me up at night.
I don’t see the shouting matches or the shameful trips to the police station.
I don’t see his face bloodied by some fight he decided to pick at The Growler.
Instead I see a man who fought his pain the only way he knew.
“I should have been more understanding. Yelling at you didn’t help.”
Griff huffs. “Course it did. The little shit would have ended up in jail for more than one night if you hadn’t done anything. It’s not like Dad cared.”
“Dad cared,” I snap at Griff. I want to tell him he doesn’t know how much pain our father was in—he didn’t see it.
I want to tell him it was the second time Dad lost a wife, but I don’t want to lord over him that I was there the first time and he wasn’t, or that the second time he was too young to understand.
I’m trying to get us to the other side of that.
I need to break the caretaker role.
I need them to be my brothers.
“He cared,” I repeat, softer. “He… he was just too messed up for the day-to-day.” And that’s why I had to step in. “That’s all it ever was.”
Griff sniffs and Beck clears his throat, but neither say anything.
“I took my role as the oldest too seriously, and…” I take a deep breath.
Why is it so hard to say the simplest things?
“It came between us. And no one is sorrier than I am. Griff, I’m sorry you no longer felt like you had a place here in Emerald Creek.
And Beck, I’m sorry you feel like you always need to run things by me. You don’t. We’re equals.”
Beck slaps my back. “Yeah, you’re the only one who still thinks I need to run things by you, Noah. Glad you’re seeing the light.”
I shove him playfully. I’ve reached the limit of what Beck can handle in terms of an emotional moment, and I get it. “I’ll get a call in with Tamberly to talk about restructuring all this. Legally. So nobody feels they need to ask for my permission.”
After a few beats of silence settle between us, Griff rubs his beard. “Speaking of, we talked to—what’s the shithead’s name again?”
My stomach bottoms. If Griff and Beck bonded over something, it has to do with Lane.
“Jake,” Beck growls. “He’s who got her pregnant.”
Fuck. I’d noticed him next to Gail at the meeting. “He used her to get to us.” Bitterness fills my mouth. “Gonna be hard to forgive that, but we’ll have to—”
“The fucker doesn’t want anything to do with her,” Griff interrupts. “He’ll be signing away his parental rights once the baby is born.”
“Say what?” A part of me is relieved, another part is downright outraged.
Beck kicks a pebble off the loading dock. “Said it right to our faces last night.”
My heart goes to my sister. “It never ends, does it? Shit way for her to start her adult life.”
“She’s better off without him,” Beck says.
“She just wants peace,” Griff adds.
“Then we’ll make sure that’s what she gets,” I say. I’ll start by keeping today gentle—no questions, no plans. Just family. Turning to Beck, I add, “How did you manage not to punch him?”
Beck smiles. “Who said I didn’t?”
I have to chuckle at that. For the first time in my life, a part of me hopes he did.
We finish the last dregs of our coffees in silence, then Dean pokes his head outside. “Just saw Willow and Marcy drive away!”
No time for second thoughts. We grab the ladders, the large slab of wood, the toolbox, and get to work.
After an hour, we’re done measuring and pre-drilling.
Lane joins us with a large swath of fabric and the disposition of a field commander.
If what happened last night between Griff, Beck, and that asshole Jake affected her, she’s not showing it.
But I still give her a quick hug before we tackle the fine-tuning of our project.
“A little more to the left!” she cries out. “Now to the right! This right! Beckettttt! To here!” she yells, pointing up. “Not so much!”
Griff grunts under the effort.
“Lanie! Are you sure?” I ask, my shoulders tensing under the effort.
Lane walks to me and shows me the last picture she took.
“Beck, up two inches,” I confirm.
“Perfect!” she cries out.
“Fucking building is totally out of whack,” Griff says.
“Yup.”
We finish our drilling and fastening, get down our respective ladders, and cross the street to admire the handiwork.
“She’s gonna love it,” Lane states, and I breathe easier. “Now you guys need to go back up there and help me with the draping.”
“Holy fuck, seriously?” Beck growls.
“Is that really necessary?” Griff adds.
“D’you want a surprise or not?” she asks me.
I glance at my brothers, seeing the exasperation in their gazes. But this is Willow we’re talking about. My wife. If this is the last time I’m going to be a pain in my brothers’ neck, I’m gonna make it count.
“It’s non-negotiable,” I say, repressing a smile. “Sorry, guys.”