Chapter One
Flynn
My house is built out of concrete and steel, but with the way my twin boys are tearing through it, the damn thing might as well be made out of toothpicks and prayers.
A crash echoes from the kitchen, followed by the unmistakable sound of something clattering to the floor. Then, silence. If you’re a parent, you know that silence, and you know it’s never good.
“What’s going on in there?” I question, pushing off the couch to standing. My beautiful Daisy, curled up beside the spot I just left with some romance book that Cassie Kelly gave her, doesn’t even look up. Part of my role as the man of this house is to handle this kind of shit so she doesn’t have to.
“I don’t even want to know,” she says, and I laugh.
“Trust me, I don’t either.”
She glances up at me with a cheeky grin. “Too bad for you you’re the dad—aka the muscle.”
“You make our parental approach to our kids sound like we’re mob bosses.”
“I see no issues with that.” Daisy just shrugs and puts her focus back to her book, flipping a page with one index finger. “We do what we have to do to survive, and I’ve always loved cannoli.”
“I guess I’ll handle it,” I mutter, and my wife just flashes another grin at me.
“Love you, Flynn.”
“Yeah, yeah, Dais. Love you too,” I call over my shoulder as I make my way to the scene of the crime.
I round the corner and find our seven-year-old twin menaces in the middle of the kitchen.
Ryder is on the floor, groaning dramatically, while Roman stands over him like he just won a WWE title belt. A barstool has tipped over, and there are crumbs from their abandoned bag of potato chips mashed up fucking everywhere on the hardwood floor.
I swear, these two have been nothing but wild chaos since the moment they came into this world, a stark representation of the Jude and Ty Winslow side of my genetics. Lord knows those two fools were downright insane growing up, and if it weren’t for Rem’s and my protective tendencies, they never would have made it through puberty.
One time, Rem and I stopped our two youngest brothers—who were under ten at the time—from making Molotov cocktails on the Fourth of July just before disaster struck. Outside, on our uncle Brad and aunt Paula’s very wooden deck that’s connected to their very wooden lake house in the middle of a fucking forest, they would have turned the whole fucking thing into scorched earth.
No doubt, we all dodged a bullet that day.
But now, I’ve got two crazy fools of my own to keep alive.
“All right, why does it sound like a WWE wrestling match in here when you told your mom you just wanted to ‘chill and eat a snack’?” I cross my arms, giving them the Dad Stare.
Roman straightens up, grinning. “We’re not wrestling, Dad.”
Ryder, still on the ground, his hair visibly tousled, nods. “Yeah. We’re not wrestling.”
Fucking liars. The both of them. I narrow my eyes. “Then what are you doing?”
“Uh…” Roman glances at Ryder briefly before meeting my eyes again with a confident smile like the sarcastic little shit I know him to be. “We’re just…uh…hugging.”
“You were hugging?”
“Yeah,” Roman says with a nonchalant shrug. “Aggressively hugging.”
Aggressively hugging? Give me a fucking break.
I glare at Roman. “You and I both know you’re full of shit.”
“No, he’s not. We’re hugging,” Ryder says, coming to his brother’s defense.
“Yeah. Okay.” I sigh and run a hand down my face. “How about you aggressively hug each other off the floor and clean up this damn mess before your mom sees it?”
Daisy’s voice drifts in from the living room. “I swear, if my kitchen floor is dirty after I just mopped it this morning, I’m signing both of you up for summer camp! And not a good one either! One where they make you churn butter and knit scarves and read Moby Dick !”
Roman snorts, the word dick clearly too much for his semi-developed brain to handle. I flash him a very knowing, very I’m-going-to-kick-your-ass-if-you-don’t-clean-this-up stare, and both he and Ryder scramble to their feet like they’ve just been caught in a high-stakes heist, rushing to grab a broom and start cleaning.
As the two wrestling stooges sweep the floor, my phone buzzes in my pocket. I pull it out to realize I’ve missed a hell of a lot of messages in the ongoing group chat with my brothers and a few of our closest friends.
Thatch: Poker night is at my place tonight, and not a single one of you fucks has RSVP’d.
Jude: RSVP’d? What the fuck are you talking about? Pretty sure we just show up if we can make it…
Thatch: How am I supposed to know how big of a char-coochie board to make if I don’t have a head count?
Ty: You mean charcuterie? Ha. What the hell are you on about, T?
Thatch: No, I mean CHAR-COOCHIE. Fancy meat, cheese, fruit, and veggies, shaped in an ode to my wife’s perfect kitty. ;)
Kline: Dear God.
Thatch: Plus, I have a big surprise planned…
Wes: You making us fucking charcuterie is one thing, T, but you being anywhere in the vicinity of a “surprise” is another. Tell me I’m not going to end up in a Ponzi scheme, police car, strippergram, or porn set with you and your wife’s charcoochie as the star, or I’m not coming.
Kline: I’m with Wes, man. The last time I was involved with a surprise that you planned, Georgia and I ended up with a mariachi band following us around.
Thatch: Fuck you both. You better be there. And you fucking Winslows better be at my place tonight too.
Remy: Relax, man. I’ll be there.
Jude: I’m in too. And I call dibs on Ty’s chips if he ghosts you.
Ty: Nice try, fucker. I’ll be there.
Jude: Then I call dibs on Flynn’s chips. If anyone is going to be MIA, it’s that mysterious bastard.
I chuckle as I start to type out a response, but another loud thud makes me snap my head up.
Ryder is on the ground again.
Roman looks down at him, blinking. “Oops.”
Ryder groans. “You aggressively hugged me too hard, dude.”
“All right, enough,” I say, stepping in and hauling Ryder back up to his feet. “New rule—no more hugging.”
“Whaaaaaaat?” Roman tilts his head. “We can’t hug each other anymore? We’re brothers, Dad. That’s, like, child abuse.”
“Yeah, Dad. What’s next? We can’t hug you or Mom?” Ryder agrees. “People, like, call CDS for that kind of stuff.”
“C P S, dude,” I correct and immediately hold out my cell toward the two smartasses. “And would you like to borrow my phone to call them? I’ll pack your suitcases while they make arrangements for you to live with your new family.”
Roman rolls his eyes just as Daisy is walking in, her arms crossed, her beautiful face pinched up in an expression that’s very much unimpressed. “Cut the bullshit and clean up the mess. I carried both of your big heads in my body for nine months and I’d prefer to not have to give you away to a new family, but I will.”
“Listen to your mom.” I back her up.
Both boys groan, but they do eventually listen. And as Daisy and I make our way back to the living room, I wrap my arm around her waist and kiss the top of her head. “God, we’re in trouble with those two.”
Daisy laughs and stands up on her tippy-toes to press a kiss to my lips. “Oh, babe, we’ve been in trouble since they learned to walk.”
I pull her into my arms and kiss her again. But the warmth and feel of my wife’s beautiful body is like a live wire, and my cock’s response is instantaneous. “You think it’s child abuse if we lock them in their rooms so you can ride my cock?” I whisper against her lips, and she giggles.
“Yes.” She kisses me harder. “But good news is that I already made arrangements for them to have a sleepover at your mom and Howard’s house, so when you get back from Thatch’s tonight, we can definitely make the me riding your cock thing happen.”
Fuck, I love this woman. Maybe I need to make a charcoochie board of my own.