that incident. That moment in her life. If you would never have met her and she never lost the baby, she might never have gotten clean. Plus, she’s told me what you’ve done for her. How you saved her on more than one occasion. And I don’t hate you, son. I far from hate you. Andrea and I spoke a lot while she was back home. She’s a strong girl and she’s capable of making her own choices. She chose you for a reason. I’m not saying there is an excuse for what she’s done in the past. I don’t even think being an addict is really a proper term to describe her.”
“What word would you use?” I asked, because I’d often thought the same thing.
Mr. Capulet smiled. “Human.”
“Still. She’s given me so much. I haven’t given her shit.”
“I wouldn’t say that, son. You’ve given her more than you know.”
“Oh yeah? Like what?”
“You said she knows all of it, right? Everything?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I answered. “She does.”
“Well then you’ve given her you. There isn’t much more to give her than that.”
“Sometimes I wonder what good am I?”
“To her? You’re priceless.”
I looked back over to my wife. Who was going to live and I finally felt like some of the weight bearing down on my soul was starting to lift.
“You’ve also given her something I never could,” he added.
I spun around. “Yeah? What’s that?”
His eyes gleamed with unshed tears. “Happiness, son. Happiness.” He pinched his nose and wiped his eyes, changing the subject. “You know, you should write your story down someday. Write your memoirs. You’ve got some interesting stuff there.”
I scoffed at the idea. “Yeah, and what would I call it? Alive Preppy, Dead Preppy?”
He set his hand on my shoulder. “I have a good title.”
It would never happen. My life was too all over the place. It couldn’t be contained inside of a book, but even I had to admit, the name he suggested had a certain ring to it.
The Life and Death of Samuel Clearwater.
Dre
A nurse woke me up at one point while Preppy was sleeping to draw some blood and she confirmed that despite my injuries, the baby growing inside of me was still there. Safe and sound.
I drifted off and when I woke again I was not met with just one, but two smiling faces.
One little. One big.
Both mine.
I have to tell you something, Bo signed to me.
“Bo, we can all talk later. You don’t have to tell her now,” Preppy started.
“No, it’s okay,” I said. “What do you want to tell me, Bo?”
He surprised me by crawling onto the bed and wrapping his arms around my neck in a tight hug, his head on my non-injured shoulder. I looked at Preppy and smiled, happy to be with my boys again. “A hug is definitely telling me something my beautiful boy,” I said, kissing his temple.
Bo shook his head against me.
“No? That’s not it?” I asked. I released my hold on him so he could sit up to sign to me, but he only snuggled into me further. “Bo, what is it you wanted to...” I started, but I didn’t finish because the most beautiful little voice interrupted me when it began to whisper in my ear.
“I love you, Mommy.”
My soul and heart leapt together and high-fived. I have something to tell you too,” I said. I looked right at Preppy when I whispered to Bo. “Mommy’s going to have a baby.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Three months later...
Dre
“Bo’s counselor is coming over in an hour,” I told Preppy who was leaning against the counter with his shirt hanging open, ogling me like I was naked instead of covered in flour from head to toe. A side effect from baking Mirna’s famous chocolate chip cookies combined with an unfortunate mixer malfunction. “Ray’s going to drop him off after she picks him and Sammy up from school.”
“Good,” Preppy said, his eyes on the swell of my breasts. “He finished his work this morning so that works.”
“Are you ever going to tell me what exactly you have him doing back there?” I asked, taking a damp rag to the counter.
“I told you. He’s working on his punishment,” Preppy answered, coming to stand behind me with his hands on my hips.
“Yes, I know. But what KIND of punishment. Like cleaning his room? Or like hard labor?” I asked, leaning back into his touch while I continued to clean. “I mean, how do you punish a kid for something like that?”
“I’ve got it handled, Doc,” Preppy whispered against my ear, his hands resting on the burgeoning bump of my belly.
After Bo took an axe to Eric’s head it didn’t take us long to put two and two together since his biological mom was also found with an axe to her head. “I still can’t believe that our boy, our little kind soul, killed two people.”
“He’s still a good kid. We just have to handle him right to make sure he knows right and wrong, but doesn’t feel too much guilt about it. I told you. I’ve been there. I’ve got this,” Preppy assured me.
I spun in his arms. “I trust you. You know I do. But can you please tell me what you have him doing in his room for an hour every day?”
Preppy grabbed my hand and led me down the hall. “You know how back in the day the teachers would make the kids copy a sentence a thousand times as their punishment? Like I WILL NOT PULL LITTLE GIRL’S HAIR?” Preppy pushed open the door to Bo’s room. “Well, that’s what he’s been doing and what he will be doing for the rest of the school year. I haven’t erased today’s punishment just yet.”
“Holy shit,” I said, as I stared at the words written over and over again on the chalk-paint wall I’d made for him.
I will not kill anyone with an axe without permission.
“Without permission?” I asked.
Preppy leaned against the doorframe. “I mean, I didn’t want to rule it out entirely. It kind of saved our asses that last time.”
That was true, but it didn’t change the fact that I couldn’t tear my eyes from the words on the wall.
Preppy pulled me into his chest and kissed my hair. “Listen Doc, if anyone knows this, it’s me. There’s no black and white. Right or wrong. What Bo did is in the grey-ish area. Together we’re going to teach him how to be a good man, which means knowing how to be loyal to those who matter. When to sacrifice where it counts. And how to keep his promises. I want to show him what he did was wrong so he doesn’t think he can go around offing anyone who pisses him off but I don’t want to make him feel too guilty for something I really want to pat him on the back and buy him a pony for.”
“We can do this,” I said, letting Preppy’s words sink in.
‘Together. Okay?” he asked, rubbing his hands down my arms.
“Okay,” I agreed. Preppy was right. Together we could teach Bo what was really important. That his past won’t dictate his future. That the things you do don’t define who you are.
That family runs thicker than blood.
Blood you’d spill for them, even if it’s your own.
Bo came sprinting into the room and threw his arms around us, making our hug of two into a family affair.
I glanced from Preppy to Bo who were both resting a hand over my belly. We’d teach him that family was everything.
And we had it all.
Preppy
Dre is a fucking miracle worker. After she recovered from her injuries she followed through with the purchase of the house she wanted to renovate with the help of a realtor who didn’t want to murder her or our family. She was five months pregnant and on her hands and knees in the house, tacking some of the broken baseboards back into place.
“You need to stop working so hard,” I said picking her up off the floor. “Why isn’t Kevin helping?”
“He is. He’s been here all day,” she said. Kevin was still living at our house and was giving Dre a hand when he wasn’t working for me. “He just ran t
o the hardware store.”
“Good. I don’t like the idea of you here alone,” I said.
“It’s almost done,” Dre beamed, looking around at the new paint on the walls, the freshly sanded floors, and the brand new windows with the stickers still on them.
“It looks fantastic.” I dropped my gaze to her tits, which I couldn’t get enough of normally, but now that they were swollen it was like they were calling to me all hours of the day and night.
Preppy come play with us
Preppy come fuck us
“The realtor has someone interested already and it’s not even done, can you believe it?” she asked happily, her tits shaking as she bounced excitedly from foot to foot.
“I can believe it,” I said, tipping her chin to me. “Because I believe in you.”
“So are you going to tell me? Or what?” Dre asked, knowing I’d just came from a hearing at the county. I was officially the first licensed medical marijuana grower in the state. King, Bear, and I were going legit...ish.
“We got it,” I told her, not able to hide my smile.
“Holy shit!” She leapt into my arms and wrapped her legs around me, sending a jolt of awareness down to my cock when her heat brushed up against me.
Her eyes darkened and she bit her lip. I backed her up against the wall. “What do you say we start a new tradition?”
“What’s that?” she asked as I ground my hard cock against her softness.
“I think this house needs to be christened.” I gripped her ass tighter, making her very aware of my intentions.
Her moan was the only response I needed. Within seconds I’d stripped her of her shorts and had her lying against the stairs while I drove into her tight pussy over and over again until our screams echoed throughout the empty house.
I fell to the side of her and rested my head on her tits. I traced my fingers over her little belly.
“I still can’t believe I’m actually pregnant,” she said, watching me.
I scoffed. “I can’t believe you underestimated the power I was packing.”
“Hmmmmm. I think I’m still underestimating it.” I glanced up at her. “Do you think you can show me this power you speak of again?”
My cock jumped to attention almost as fast as I did.
“Fuck yeah I can.” I slide back into my wife, feeling love, happiness, and never more alive. I’d continue to make sure she’d feel every ounce of love I had for her. I made her promises that I’d keep or die trying.
Until Not even death do us part.
EPILOGUE
One Month Later...
Preppy
“Shit,” I swore. Jumping when pancakes shoved his cold nose against the back of my pant leg. I’d almost dropped the box I’d been carrying, my shoulder still weak from the gunshot wound, but overall it was healing nicely. I pointed at Pancakes. “Dude, it’s frowned upon to come at someone from behind without proper warning, trust me, I know these things,” I scolded.
King appeared in the doorway. “He’s always doing that. It’s kind of his thing,” he said. The coyote darted out the door and disappeared. “Guess he doesn’t like being told what to do either.”
“Guess not,” I agreed.
King followed me over to my car.
“So tell me this Boss-Man. Did Bear think he’s such a big biker badass that he couldn’t just go get a regular dog at the pound like a normal person?” I asked. “I mean he could have gotten a lab or a poodle, or even one of those ones that mixes the two, a labradoodle or some shit. No. The motherfucker had to go get himself a goddamned coyote.”
King snickered. “This coming from the guy with a giant pig?”
“Oscar’s the shit man. Seriously, though. I’m getting Bear a goldiepoo or some shit for Christmas.”
“You settled down and now you’re an expert on the perfect family dog?”
“Once you’re married you’ll understand,” I said sarcastically.
“Oh that? We got tired of putting it off, so we just went and did the thing,” King said like it was no big deal. I noticed a tattoo on his hand I’d never noticed before with Ray and the kid’s names linked together around his ring finger.
“Oh yeah, that...Wait, what! You did what?” I asked. “And I wasn’t invited?”
“Nobody was. It was the day we stuck you with the kids. I was getting tired of having her not be my wife and she told me she didn’t want the shindig so we just did it. Now she’s Mrs. Brantley King and I’m an old married man just like you.”
“Wow, congrats, man,” I said. “Do you think when Bear gets married he’s gonna have the full out biker wedding with brawls and revving engines during the ceremony?”
“Probably,” King agreed.
“I wonder if he’ll wear a shirt...”
“So you finally came to get the rest of your shit?” King asked, pointing to the box in my arms.
I set it down in my trunk and slammed it shut, brushing the dust off my hands by clapping them together. “Yeah, figured it didn’t do you any good to have it lying around here taking up space when I’m not living here anymore.”
King and I both leaned up against my trunk. He lit a cigarette and passed me his lighter so I could do the same.
“I know I’ve been gone for a bit and I still come over pretty much all the time,” I said, looking up at the house that had been my home for ten years, minus several months in Narnia. “And it feels weird to say this, but I’m gonna miss this place. I think leaving some of my shit here made it feel like I hadn’t really moved out, not all the way. Now? Now it all feels really fucking real.”
“What are you going to miss about it the most? The parties? Girls? All the bad fucking decisions we made?” King asked with a smile. He took a long drag of his cigarette, ashing it onto the gravel.
“Hey, I’ll have you know that some of my favorite memories started with those bad decisions,” I pointed out. “I feel the need to defend all of the ridiculous fun we had here.”
“You remember the day we moved in?” King asked, looking up at the house.
“Like it was yesterday.”
“It was a good day,” King said.
I scratched my nose and waved the smoke from my eye. “It was the BEST fucking day ever, Boss-Man,” I agreed. “The BEST.”
King nodded and we both just stood there, staring at the house as if we were waiting for it to chime in with an opinion. The day we moved in really was a great day. Neither one of us owned much so when we moved from the roach infested apartment we’d been renting previously it only took one trip. And then it was just the two of us in an empty house with an old boom box. We took turns choosing songs to play while swigging from the bottle of whiskey and snorting lines off the kitchen counter.
“We were just a couple of stupid kids back then,” I said. “It was so run down then.” I pointed to the fresh paint and new siding. “I like what you’ve done with the place. How you and Ray have fixed it all up. It looks more adult and less ‘hey lots of illegal shit going down inside.’”
King snickered. “It was a great house then and it’s a great house now. It’s just a different kind of great.” He cocked his head to the side. “You know that you can build out the rest of the garage if you guys want to stay here with the fam. There could be room for everyone. I mean, shit, you can build all the way to the seawall if you want. It’s your house too you know. Always has been.” King lowered his voice. “You don’t gotta live anywhere else.”
I put a hand on King’s shoulder. “I think that’s the most consecutive sentences I’ve ever heard you speak at one time,” I deadpanned.