Total pages in book: 66
Estimated words: 60848 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 304(@200wpm)___ 243(@250wpm)___ 203(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 60848 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 304(@200wpm)___ 243(@250wpm)___ 203(@300wpm)
I settled more comfortably on the floor -- or rather, as comfortably as possible with cracked ribs, and prepared myself. Zelda approached first, draping a length of silver tinsel around my shoulders like a scarf. She stepped back, head tilted critically to the side, then adjusted it slightly.
“Your beard needs decorating too,” she decided, picking up a handful of smaller tinsel strands. With surprising gentleness, she began to weave them through my braided beard, her tongue poked between her lips in concentration. Meanwhile, Kira had circled behind me, carefully wrapping a string of colored lights around my upper arms.
“Is this okay?” she asked softly, her eyes serious as she checked my face for any sign of discomfort.
“It’s perfect,” I assured her, and was rewarded with a smile that lit up her whole face.
I sensed rather than saw our audience forming. A few chuckles reached my ears, followed by the distinctive click of phone cameras. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Knight with his phone raised, a shit-eating grin on his face that told me these photos would be circulating among the club members for years to come.
“The great James ‘Tiny’ Reeves, brought to his knees by two fierce young women armed with tinsel, lights, and beads.” Griffin teased, passing behind Knight.
“I’m sending this to my sister, Susie. Her husband, Stunner, will sympathize.” Gunnar stood at the edge of the crowd, snapping pictures.
“Perfect timing,” Hannah, Gunnar’s twin and Knuckles’ wife laughed as she looked at her phone.
She turned it to Gunnar who snorted cider out his nose, coughed several times, and wiped his nose on the back of his sleeve before collapsing into a nearby chair because he was laughing so hard. “I swear to God, that never gets old.”
“What never gets old?” Zelda asked, turning from her task to walk over to Hannah. To my consternation, every kid in the place came over and got a hand in this whole human Christmas tree project like someone had thrown up an emergency flare.
Zelda squealed, snagged Hannah’s phone and ran to Caleb. And I got a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. Especially when Gunnar snorted another drink out his nose. This time, he just let the drink drip into his short beard while he outright guffawed.
When Zelda and Caleb returned, Caleb was wearing the biggest shit-eating grin I’d ever seen. Zelda was carrying a bucket as she hurried over.
Again, like some kind of invisible signal went up, the kids abandoned me to gather around the bucket and Zelda. Meanwhile, Caleb went to stand with the others, watching with varying degrees of amusement.
“Ah, hell,” I said under my breath. “I got a bad feelin’ about this.”
The feeling intensified when Zelda held up a can of hair spray. Before I could really appreciate what was about to happen, the group of them descended on me with… something. I couldn’t really see, but they used the hairspray on my beard. They used… a lot of hairspray. On my beard.
Ten minutes later, there were pictures being taken by every fucking brother in the club. The kids were laughing and squealing and my ribs hurt like a motherfucker, but I stayed still, growling occasionally just to get the kids to giggle. Which they did. Continuously. I knew the pictures were going to be epic and I’d never live them down, but I wouldn’t trade this moment for anything in the world. Not when it put such joy on the faces of all my girls.
“Perfect,” Zelda declared, standing back to admire her work.
A strand of tinsel slipped down, tickling my nose, and I couldn’t suppress the laugh that rumbled up from my chest. The pain in my ribs was worth it for the delight on the girls’ faces.
“Will someone at least give me a mirror so I can see how fu -- er, friggin’ jolly I look?”
More laughter and this time I was pretty sure Gunnar was gonna manage to drown on the amount of cider he aspirated. Hannah stepped over to her brother and whacked him on the back several times while wiping tears from her own eyes as she laughed herself.
Through the growing crowd, I caught sight of Penny. She stood a few feet away, one hand pressed to her mouth, the other clutched tightly at her chest. Even from this distance, I could see the sheen of tears in her eyes, but they weren’t tears of sadness. The smile that broke through as our eyes met was pure joy -- unexpected and overwhelming in its intensity.
I held her gaze, trying to communicate everything I couldn’t say aloud in that moment. I love you. I love them. I would endure far worse than decorated dignity for the sound of their laughter. She seemed to understand, nodding slightly as she wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand, her smile so fucking beautiful I knew there would never be a time in my life when I didn’t miss her smile any time I couldn’t see her lovely face.