Chapter 8 Michael #2
The anger on her face seemed to recede a little, thankfully replaced by what looked like guilt. I was safe. She bought it one hundred percent.
“Look, we fight sometimes. We always have. Don’t get between us. They would never hurt me.”
She winced as she looked down at Mav, still lying on the ground. “Is he okay?”
“Probably,” I muttered, kneeling down for a closer look. Rolling him over, I breathed a sigh of relief when I didn’t see a massive pool of blood underneath him. Thank God for small miracles.
“Fuck,” he muttered. “You didn’t tell me she was psychotic.”
“She’s not. She’s just protective. And she likes windows.”
Holding out my hand, I pulled him to his feet, brushing the glass from his body. There were a few shards here and there, but nothing too life-threatening.
Sighing, I knew what we had to do. “I don’t have anything to clean you up here.”
“So, hospital or your parents,” he muttered.
“Yeah, what’s your preference?”
But he never got the chance to answer because Pop pulled up in his truck, and when Ma got out and saw the destruction, it was already too late to formulate a plan.
“I swear, in all my life, I have never once seen boys as rowdy as all of you,” Ma said as she poured alcohol on Mav’s cheek, not even bothering to be gentle.
“I thought you would have grown out of this nonsense by now. You’re the sheriff,” she chastised Maverick. “You have a standard to uphold.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I glanced at Blake, shaking my head minutely so she didn’t open her mouth and blow it by letting it out of the bag that she was actually the one who broke the window by tackling Mav.
“Boys will be boys,” Pop muttered, eating the fried chicken Ma had made for us.
We were back at my parents’ house, and the food that she intended for us was now off limits until Mav was cleaned up.
And Jeff.
“My jaw really hurts,” he whined.
Ma spun and glared at him. “Do you have glass sticking out of your body?”
“No,” he muttered.
“Then you don’t have anything to complain about.”
Mav glared at me when Ma started to tear off his shirt. No, this was not the way any man wanted to be cleaned up. It should be by his wife, and only his wife. But Mav was practically her son, and right now, there was no getting between her and the man she’d nearly raised.
I smirked, laughing at the way he turned bright red when Ma’s hand started cleaning him up.
“You should really check Blake also,” Mav grinned, dumping my fiancée right in the middle of it.
My anger went lethal.
“What? Why do I need to check on Blake? Was she standing near the window?” Ma asked, suddenly very concerned about my woman.
“Not standing near so much as—”
“Because she’s pregnant,” I cut in, shooting Mav a dangerous look. “And he’s worried the stress is bad for the baby.”
“Well, that and the fact that she tackled me through the window,” Mav smirked.
Pop chuckled where he sat eating his chicken. “So, a woman took you out.” His eyes flicked to mine. “She’s a pistol. I’d sleep with a gun under your pillow.”
Blake rolled her eyes at his words. “I was trying to break up a fight. They were acting like a bunch of neanderthals!”
“So, you shoved me through a window?” Mav grinned, eating up the way this was all going his way.
“I didn’t know we were that close!”
“Didn’t your father ever teach you to act like a lady?”
“No,” Blake retorted. “I grew up with five brothers. They taught me how to fight and how to defend myself. There was no such thing as going easy on anyone when I was growing up.”
“The point is, you shouldn’t have started shit,” Mav snapped.
“I didn’t. Jeff came at me!”
Pop laughed again. “Jeff always did think he could take on anyone.”
“Way to be on my side, Pop,” Jeff muttered.
“Simple facts, son. You’re smaller than the rest of them.”
“Not smaller. Leaner, okay? Leaner! I still have plenty of muscle, and I know how to fight. Just because I don’t look like the Hulk on steroids or lift five hundred pounds with my pinky finger doesn’t mean I’m weak.”
Ma clucked her tongue at me. It was never good when she was quiet. Something bad was always coming down the pipe when she got like this.
“I can’t believe you would take a swing at your brother,” she said quietly.
“Ma—”
“He’s my baby. You know he’s always been weaker than you!”
Jeff groaned, burying his face in his elbow as he slumped on the table.
“Ma, he came at me. He started the fight. I tried to get him to stop.”
“Yeah, and then you kicked me in the chest. Still fucking hurts,” he muttered, rubbing his hand over the very spot where I booted him.
“And poor Blake was dumped in the middle of it!” Ma cried out. “She’s pregnant. The three of you should know better than to start anything around a woman in her condition.”
“Yeah, she’s fragile,” I added on, hoping to win Blake some major brownie points.
Instead, both my mother and my fiancée slowly turned a harsh glare on me. I shrank back immediately, feeling the hounds of hell closing in.
“Fragile?” Blake said quietly. “Did you just call me fragile?”
“Well, shit,” Pop sighed, tossing down his chicken. “Now you’ve done it. Might as well order new windows for everyone.”
“I must have heard him wrong,” Ma said slowly, “because no son of mine would ever call a woman carrying a human life inside her body fragile.”
“Ma—”
She stepped forward, the fire in her eyes growing by the second. “Your fiancée is doing something no man could ever accomplish, and not because his body wasn’t built for it, but because men are a bunch of babies who couldn’t handle the demands on the body for childbirth.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Mav muttered.
Ma turned her glare on the man still sitting on her table. “And just how many babies have you birthed?”
He turned bright red, but somehow kept his cool. “None, but I’ve witnessed the beauty of birth before.”
“Then you should know that no man could ever handle any part of his body stretching that far. Can you imagine if your penis had to fit even a baseball through it?”
Mav winced at the description, but Ma wasn’t finished.
“And through all that pain, your spouse is sitting beside you, sighing at how long the whole process is taking. She’s thinking about catching the baseball game or grabbing a beer with her friends.
Meanwhile, you’ve still got that baseball in your penis, pushing slowly to the tip.
And when it finally gets to the opening, imagine that baseball sprouting arms and legs, getting caught in the most uncomfortable position. ”
The way she described it made me want to gag, but I wisely kept my mouth shut.
“And when you can’t push that baseball out on your own, the doctor has to fit his hand into that tiny hole and turn the baseball to fit through that tiny penis hole. Can you imagine it, Maverick? Can you feel the pain of your hole being stretched that far?”
He looked like he wanted to vomit, but she wasn’t done yet.
“And when it’s all said and done, then you still have to push out the scraps of the baseball that got left behind. Meanwhile, your spouse is complaining about how tired she is, how she’s missing out on sleep! Can you imagine it?”
“I can definitely see a baseball with hands and legs,” Mav muttered.
“I can’t speak to any of you right now. Fix your own damn wounds.”
She tossed her towel on the table and stormed out of the room, snatching Blake’s hand to pull her along behind her.
Mav sighed, buttoning up his shirt. “Well, I’m pretty sure she just ruined baseball and sex for me.”
“At least she’s not your mother,” Jeff muttered. “How the hell am I ever supposed to get it up again without her voice entering my mind?”
“How am I gonna be in the delivery room?” My eyes widened in horror as I imagined a baseball baby coming out of my wife’s vagina. “Do you think they could just knock me out during the delivery?”
Pop chuckled, picking up another piece of chicken. “And that right there is why none of you should ever go up against someone like Clara. You should have seen that one comin’ a mile away.”