Total pages in book: 85
Estimated words: 97275 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 486(@200wpm)___ 389(@250wpm)___ 324(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 97275 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 486(@200wpm)___ 389(@250wpm)___ 324(@300wpm)
“You should have seen Ember when I told her. She was shattered. Utterly shattered. Then I just left her there. I went back to school and left Cheyenne and her mom to pick up the pieces.”
She couldn’t help herself any longer; she threw herself at me, and we both laid there silently. Payton gave up after an hour of me not speaking, and dropped off to a peaceful sleep. It was on the fourth hour of lying there that I felt the baby. Tiny little nudges tapped me in the stomach and euphoria surged through me.
We were lying face to face, her belly touching mine. Our legs wrapped together in a tangle. Over and over again, I felt the tiny little taps. Leaning back, I let my hand slide down over her mounded belly. It fit perfectly in the palm of my hand. The tap, tap, tap continued, and I fell asleep feeling my wife’s steady breathing, and my child’s rhythmic kicking. It was a perfect pick me up to an awful day.
Chapter 13
Normal is an illusion. What is normal for the spider is chaos for the fly.
-Morticia Adams
Payton
“Promise me.” I demanded.
Max sighed and nodded his head without saying it aloud. The man was a stubborn mule. All I wanted was for him to play Bingo with me. That wasn’t too much to ask! Plus, I was wearing a stupid shirt that had ‘Team Alvarez’ on it that my mom insisted that we all wear. The only exception was Max. It didn’t matter how much I argued that I was no longer an Alvarez.
“You will forever be an Alvarez. Just because your last name changed to Tremaine doesn’t mean you lost your identity in the process. Now wear the damn shirt.” She’d huffed as we were walking out the door for dinner the previous week. At least the stupid thing fit.
We were bombarded by the youngest of the family as soon as we opened the door to the hall.
“Payton! Payton!” My youngest cousin, Molly, squealed when I saw her.
Molly belonged to my mom’s youngest sister, Joe. Joe married her husband, Steve, as soon as he’d gotten home from his third tour in Iraq. They’d met when she’d started writing him letters. She’d adopted him, and that was the end of that. They fell in love over letters, and formed a relationship that stood the test of time. He’d been through an eight-month deployment with the marines, and married her as soon as he made it back home. Molly was their first, and at two years old, she’s the most spoiled of all the Alvarez kiddos.
She hit me like a wrecking ball, and I would have landed on my ass if Max hadn’t stopped my backward momentum with the wall of his body.
“Oof,” I exclaimed as I lifted her to my hip. “You weight a ton!”
“You got fat!” She exclaimed.
My brother chose that time to come up behind us and agree with the two-year-old terror. “That would be an affirmative.”
“Who’s dat?” She asked pointing her finger into Max’s face.
I smiled at her. “That is Max. He’s my husband.”
“Oh, yeah,” She said. “That’s my Max.”
Joe came up to us in all her bubbly glory. She was such a barrel of laughs. She was more like a sister than an aunt. She was only five years older than my twenty-four. We had the same age gap between us than my own brother and I had. Joe was a mid-life crisis baby. Even though we didn’t live next to each other when we were growing up, we did speak on the phone. Even now, we never went more than a week without speaking.
“Molly Jane! You were supposed to be in the corner, missy.” She scolded.
She gave Joe the look I liked to call the ‘psycho stare’ and crossed her arms over her chest. The look she was giving was quite comical. She tips her head down and then looks up at you with a glare. It wouldn’t be so bad if she stopped doing it after a while, but you piss her off, and she’d give you that look for the rest of the afternoon.
“What’d she do?” I whispered to Steve who came up beside me.
“Told your mother to fuck off.” Steve deadpanned.
“Damn. Even I can’t get away with that!” I wheezed between laughs.
Steve cracked a smile, but was too busy surveying Max to spare me much more than that. They both were staring at each other non-blinking.
“I did some asking around about you.” He said cryptically.
Max stared at him. Something passed between them, and Steve nodded and left without another word. What the hell was that?
“Come on, we’ve got a table over here.” She said before taking Molly from my arms and grabbing my hand to lead the way. I took Max’s hand in a death grip. The man wasn’t leaving my sight if I had anything to say about it.
My family was a brutal bunch, and with nearly half of them being former military, and another quarter of those being active or retired cops, I felt the need to keep him in my sight to ensure his health and safety. My family was a tight bunch, and they watched out for their own. Seeing as this was his first family reunion, I wanted to be there when he met everyone just in case I needed to run interference. I wanted him there for the birth of my child. Call me funny like that.
“Who’s this hunka hunka burnin’ love?” Aunt Mary asked as we passed by.
I acted as if I didn’t hear her, and Max didn’t protest. He probably was a little overwhelmed. We had a little over one hundred and fifty people in attendance. Hell, I was overwhelmed, and I belonged to them. Kids were running around like the assholes they were while their parents ignored them.
“If our kid runs up and junk punches someone like that, they won’t be able to sit for a fuckin’ week.” Max murmured in my ear as we witnessed the devil reincarnate do that very thing to my mom’s brother Sidney.