Chapter 7
Four years ago
Badlands National Park
Ash Riley
“I’m so tired, Dad,” Hallie complained. “That was the longest hike ever.”
I came to a stop before I opened the door to the visitor center. “Okay, jump up.” I had Lily strapped to my front; I could handle a nine-year-old on my back.
Ten. She’s fucking ten now.
Unbelievable. Time flew.
“We can skip the next one if you’d like,” Nate offered.
“Um, no!” Hallie suddenly looked horrified, not that it stopped her from jumping up to piggyback ride me. “I wanna see the prairie dogs so much.”
As she’d reminded us approximately two hundred times since we’d left Virginia.
Maybe Nate was right. Maybe we shouldn’t buy an RV. We’d rented one this time, and…
I don’t know, man.
To me, it did make sense—because we loved our road trips, we didn’t have to worry about hotels, it was way more comfortable, and I loved having everyone close.
But we were…so close. It’d taken us four days to drive to South Dakota, during which we’d survived two family wars and what would now be known as The Forgotten Diaper Incident of 2016.
Yup, I was the dumbass who’d forgotten one of Lily’s used diapers in the RV while we had spent half a day at an indoor waterpark.
Turned out you didn’t need blistering summer heat for a shitty diaper to stink up an RV good and proper. It worked in April too.
“Dylan, can you grab Micah’s hand, please?” Nate requested. “It’s packed in here.”
Uh, yeah, that was one way of putting it. Was everyone out camping with their family this weekend?
First things first. The whole family went to hunt down the spot where we could put a stamp in our National Parks Passport, a tradition we’d started a few years ago when we’d taken Dylan and Hallie to Shenandoah.
“Daddy…” Micah withdrew from Dylan and plastered himself to Nate’s thigh. No wonder. He didn’t do well with crowds unless he could be carried.
Hallie slid down my back, wanting to check out souvenirs, so I told her to stay where we could see her.
“I can go with her,” Dylan said.
“Thanks, buddy.” I ruffled his hair, and it made Lily bounce and babble, while pointing to Dylan’s head.
I chuckled and kissed what little hair she had. “I swear, you’re gonna grow up and become a hairdresser, princess.”
She was obsessed.
Sometimes, it hurt a fuckload. The girl could grab a fistful of hair and yank for all she was worth.
“Hell no!” Dylan widened his eyes and escaped Lily’s clutches.
I grinned and rejoined Nathan and Mikey. They’d found the rubber stamp station.
But then when you got to the camping ground, set up your grill, the sun had set, and everyone was doing their own thing, I couldn’t imagine anything better than owning an RV to travel the country.
While Nate manned the grill to make his specialty—sliced hamburger patty in a hot dog bun—Hallie and I prepared the foldable table and chairs. Dylan was showing Mikey some beetle on the ground, and Lily was cooing to herself in the stroller.
“It builds its home in bison crap,” Dylan said.
Mikey scrunched his nose and looked up at his brother. “In poop?”
I smiled to myself and headed into the RV to grab condiments and paper plates.
This was the fucking life.
Once the table was set, I walked over to Nate and kissed his shoulder.
“You know we’re buying an RV, right?”
He smirked and shook his head. “You said the same thing last night—until Dylan and Micah pissed off Hallie with a farting competition.”
I made a face. “So, we’ll crack a window and buy earplugs.”
He laughed and leaned in, and I gave him a smooch.
“We can discuss possibly saving up for a down payment,” he decided.
I hummed, well aware we had the money already.
But we were supposed to save it for the day we sold our house and found a better and bigger one.
At some point, Lily was going to need more than a nook upstairs, and Dylan would want his own room in a couple of years.
He didn’t mind sharing with Mikey for now—and Mikey sure loved it—but the big brother of the house had reached the preteen stage.
Before I could plant the seed of us taking out a loan for the entire RV—which Nate would reject because he was responsible—my phone buzzed with a message.
I inched back and pulled it out of my jeans, seeing it was a message from Colt.
I did the dumb thing. I signed up to join you in that 5K run for the LGBTQ shelter. Once Greer did it, I couldn’t stand there looking bad.
I laughed out loud and responded.
“Who was that?” Nate wondered.
“Colt,” I chuckled.
That’s a good Texan! Greer and I will drag you along if you fall too far behind. Btw, please tell Reese you joined and, last but not least, it’s 10K, not 5.
“He actually signed up to do the charity run,” I said, briefly looking over at the kids. All good. “Reese owes me twenty bucks.” When I glanced at Nate again, he was smiling. “What?”
“Nothing. I’m just happy you’ve grown close with them. You seem to have fun with a few of them, at least.”
Well yeah, Reese, Greer, and Colt were a riot. I liked Lucian and River too, but they were more reserved. Penny, though. She might be my favorite. Her sense of humor was even darker than mine.
Macklin was… Eh, he and I didn’t always get along, but I suspected it was circumstantial.
We were both fairly straightforward, at the same time as we had some issues in the kink world.
I had shit to get over and work past, and he was trying and failing miserably at recovering from a breakup with Walker, so we could be touchy and butt heads.
Most recently, I’d accidentally pissed off Macklin when he found out I was the one who’d recommended a kink community in Boston to Walker.
Colt responded to my text, and it cracked me up again.
10 fucking K? I might as well be back on base. This is some bullshit.
“Daddy?”
Mikey ran over to me and held up his arms, so I pocketed my phone and picked him up.
“There’s my cuddlebug.” I smooched his cheek. “What’s up?”
He smiled goofily and fidgeted with the neckline of my Henley. “When are you and Dylan running tomorrow?”
“Oh, we head out early—when you’re busy watching cartoons in your jammies.”
He nodded slowly. “I wanna run also sometime.”
“Well, how about you and I do that after lunch tomorrow?” I bumped my forehead to his, and he beamed and nodded. “It’s settled. You and me—we’ll race.”
“Yeah!”
He was still a bit too young to understand that we wanted alone time with each of our kids, so it was best to come up with separate plans for a while longer. Rather than explaining to him. Mikey was a sensitive li’l boy too, and we didn’t want him to feel rejected.
Those moments when Nate and I spent time with the children one-on-one, we learned so much more about them.
It was easy to get lost in the everyday hustle and bustle, not to mention we loved our dynamic.
Everyone got along, aside from regular sibling shit.
They could fight and scream at each other, but that was normal.
Even so, it was important we got those extra moments with them when they weren’t distracted by the rest of the family.
Mikey wanted down again, so he returned to Dylan.
The latter one was going through a lot. Hormones, advancing in school, making friends, losing friends, picking sports, figuring out who he was, and, lately, discovering girls.
It was horrible.
Nate and I had chaperoned the last school dance, and it was like watching him grow up overnight before our eyes.
It was one of the reasons I loved taking off with him some mornings, usually on the weekends and on vacations. Nate went swimming with him instead. And we always came home with stories to share.
A couple of months later
Arlington
Nathan Riley
While Hallie and Micah oohed and aahed over the new additions to Ash’s tattoos, which I supposed would be considered a full sleeve at this point, I couldn’t shake the niggling worry growing in the back of my mind.
I placed the salmon in the oven before I glanced at Ash at the table.
Maybe I was overreacting or… Maybe I was out of my fucking mind?
To even think it could be a bad thing that he was so into family.
Most people would dream about someone like that, right?
And I did too—I loved that he was such a great husband and father.
It was just… What about the rest of him?
How could a person admit that a certain kink was part of his very core and then not explore it at all?
“That’s my birthday, right there!” Micah grinned and pointed to his date of birth on Ash’s forearm.
“That’s right—the day and year you were born.” Ash smiled and traced our boy’s finger to the next date. “And there’s Lily. Hallie…and…over here, we have Dylan.”
He had more than important dates inked on his arm. He had memories on full display. A couple of Legos, the river we’d hiked along in the Shenandoah, quotes from our wedding vows, lyrics from songs that meant something to us, baby bottles…
He was very subtle about his nods to kink.
He claimed the forest background near his shoulder was for his love of primal takedowns, but it could very well be from one of our road trips with the kids.
He had a bundle of rope with a wedding band for me.
A set of throwing knives—to represent a kink he hadn’t engaged in since long before we’d left Boston.
He’d hosted demos about knife play. He’d taken part in takedown events—even if they’d been nonsexual for the most part. He’d chased brats around with their Owners.