Kenergy
SLADE
Apair of hands land on my shoulders. One side gently, the other side with bone-crushing force.
Only someone in my family would know to be careful with me that way, mindful of the shoulder injury.
I turn and Tanner grins back at me.
“Look. At. You,” he declares. “That’s some motherfucking Kenergy right there, my brother.”
He’s dressed as a vampire. He sweeps his cape behind his shoulder and bows to Lila. “Only a queen could get Slade Rhodes to wear that. Happy birthday, sis.”
She laughs. “Thank you.”
Walker and Sadie come up to us too. Sadie hands Lila a glass of rosé champagne before hugging her and wishing her happy birthday. “Lila, I was dying to tell you about the party, but your husband swore us to secrecy.”
Walker says, “We need a picture. This shit’s going on the picture wall at Rosemont. I want all our great-great grandkids looking at that photo and wondering about their crazy ancestors.”
I hand my phone to Lila’s coworker Sarah to get the photo. She gives us about thirty variations of it before handing it back to me for the group of us to look over.
Tanner shakes his head. “Look at this. Walker is smiling. And Slade too? That’s some powerful Halloween magic at work there. Wives are sorceresses.”
Walker kisses Sadie’s hand. “Happy wife, happy life.”
His eyes meet mine, a silent challenge in them. A silent, how’s that fake marriage going, asshole?
I’m making my wife very happy, I want to snarl at him. Maybe not in every way I want to, but we made a deal. And I’m going to honor the fucking deal. Even if it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and that’s coming from a man who played a Stanley Cup final on a broken ankle.
Sadie taps Lila on the shoulder. “C’mon, I wanted to get your opinion on what to do with Jonah’s room while we’re here. He wants a bunk bed but…”
Walker and I watch our wives walk away, heads bent together, already fast friends. Tanner studies them for just a second, eyes flickering back and forth from them to Walker and me.
Something crosses Tanner’s face. Brief and painful, gone before I can name it. Then he takes a drink and the grin comes back, fake vampire teeth flashing. “Where are my nieces and nephew at, anyway?” he asks.
“Bedtime,” Walker answers. “Dad dropped everyone off with the sitter at our house.”
“And he’s gonna come home to find his house full of drunk people and loud music,” Tanner says. “It’s just like high school.”
“Yeah, except this time he can’t ground us for it,” I say.
Not that I planned the parties, but I didn’t rat out my brothers when they did, so I was complicit, and therefore was punished along with my guilty brothers. Justice has always been swift and sweeping in our family.
I continue off-handedly, “Dad practically jumped for joy when I told him I wanted to have a surprise party for Lila.”
As soon as both pairs of their green eyes zero in on me instantly, I realize my mistake. Drawing attention to myself: classic self-inflicted wound in the Rhodes household.
“How’s married life treating you?” Tanner asks, eyes glittering.
“Yeah,” Walker says. “Do tell.”
“Fine,” I say.
Tanner waits. Walker waits. I take a drink of my beer.
“That’s it?” Tanner says. “Fine?”
“What do you want me to say?”
“I don’t know, man. You’ve been living like a monk all these years and now you’re a newlywed. Something’s gotta be different. Or are you too busy spending all your time consummating the marriage over and over again?”
“It’s not like that,” I say. “This is still just a legal arrangement. Lila is my friend.”
Walker and Tanner stare at me.
“You’re still not sleeping together?” Tanner blurts.
I think about my hands on her ass. Kneading her soft flesh, my own cock shamefully rock-hard as I acted like it was all just for her benefit. Like I wasn’t leering at her body because I love looking at it, like I wasn’t touching her soft skin just as much for my pleasure as her comfort.
I glare at him. “None of this is any of your business.”
“Slade,” Walker says. “I think it’s great you and your wife are friends. That’s the way it should be. But wives want a little more than friendship from their husbands, you get what I’m saying? You got marital duties to fulfill, man.”
Tanner wraps an arm around my shoulders. “Let me tell you a little story about the birds and the bees. Remember when we were kids and it was breeding season for the horses? Now, when a stallion loves a mare very much—”
“Do not compare my wife to a horse,” I growl.
Tanner and Walker study me, then give each other a look, some silent communication passing between them. Two matching smug smiles appear on their faces.
I narrow my eyes.
“All right,” Tanner says, sipping his drink. “So you’re too chickenshit to sleep with your own wife. It would almost be sweet if it weren’t so pathetic. How’s everything else going?”
In rare moments, between all the insults, my brothers do occasionally demand a moment of genuine connection.
Reluctantly, I offer, “She’s easy to live with. We talk. Watch TV together. Normal stuff.”
“You being a good husband?” Walker interjects. “After letting her ankle get fucked up like that?” He takes a drink, green eyes gleaming.
Nobody can provoke a reaction out of someone like Walker. He’s a born firebrand. I can’t fall into his trap.
But I suspect I do anyway when I find myself saying, defensively, “Yes, I’m taking care of her. I’ve been wrapping her ankle for her every morning. Doing calf massages for circulation.”
They exchange a look. Tanner presses his lips together, eyes dancing. “For circulation. Of course.”
“And whenever she falls asleep on the couch”—her head on my shoulder, though I omit that part—“I carry her to bed so she doesn’t have to put weight on her ankle.”
Tanner’s drink pauses halfway to his mouth. “You carry your… friend to bed.”
“Her ankle. She can’t—”
“Right, right. The ankle,” Walker interjects, nodding very seriously now. “What else?”
“She doesn’t eat breakfast,” I say. “Never did before, at least. So I’ve started leaving a plate for her. Veggie omelette, protein oatmeal, nothing complicated. She needs to eat something or she’ll be running on coffee until noon.”
Tanner puts a hand over his mouth, like he’s trying to hide a shit-eating grin.
“What?” I snap.
“Nothing,” he says, voice slightly strangled. “Nothing.” His voice drops. “But what I mean is, how is it living with a woman?”
Fucking amazing.
The house smells like her now. Her fancy candles, her baking, traces of her perfume caught in the throw blanket on the couch.
It just feels cozy to come home to someone.
When I get back in the evening, stripping off my dirty work clothes and boots, she’s at the kitchen island with her laptop and her paperwork spread everywhere, a glass of wine or cup of tea at her side.
Or she’s on the sofa with her feet tucked up under her, wrapped in that fuzzy cardigan she wears when she’s cold, completely absorbed as she pages through a design book or sketches something out.
When I come home, it’s not to a cold, empty, dark house anymore. I’m coming home to warm golden light, to music and the fireplace going, to a dog happily wagging her tail and demanding to be petted.
Best of all, I’m coming home to my wife. She greets me with her beautiful smile and her soft warm body pressed against me in a hug, and a “how was your day, honey?”
The truth is, seeing her is the highlight of my day, every day.
It’s so simple, and yet… it’s everything to me.
Just her, in my house, living her life, her softness and soothing energy radiating through everything she touches.
And she looks happier than when I first met her, less stressed.
It makes me feel like I’m doing a good job providing a softer life for her.
Nothing has ever given me so much satisfaction.
“It’s good,” I say. “She bakes a lot. Stress baking, I think. She’s been stuck inside with the ankle. Cookies, brownies, this cinnamon muffin thing last week. I don’t know. I eat whatever she puts in front of me.”
Dead silence.
“You eat it,” Tanner says carefully. “You. Who has had the same meal prep routine since you were nineteen years old and counts out your macros every day to the milligram. You eat her… muffin.”
“It would be rude not to.”
Both my brothers lose it.
I stand there and let them laugh. I have indeed been eating her muffins, not to mention her cookies, her cinnamon bread, her chocolate espresso mousse, and I haven’t once thought about my macros.
I have thought a lot about eating her pussy, though.