…It was perfection.
However I was nervous…the longer our peace lasted, the harder it would be if something happened and something was always happening with this family.
NEAL
I was married to the most beautiful workaholic in world.
After peeking in on our kids, she all but ran back to our room and plopped down on the couch, her dress puffing up around her. She typed away on her laptop, with three different smartphones beside her. Over the years, I noticed she had a few habits. The first was her pink lips; whenever was excited or nervous, but trying to calm herself down, she would bite down on the corner of them. The second was her black hair, which she always tucked behind her ears when she wasn’t sure what do or say. The third was when she played with her engagement ring. Whenever she rolled the oval shaped diamond around her ring finger, she was trying to make herself confident. Like somehow that ring gave her the power to make it through everything.
Contrary to popular belief Mina was a lot gentler than she seemed. It was easy to forget sometimes when she stood next to Melody, because of how tall she stood, especially at 5 foot 6. She directed and pushed Melody all of the time, not at all like…like Olivia. Olivia did it out of jealously. She’d wanted to be Melody. Instead, Mina wanted something as close to perfection out of everyone around her.
I did my best not to compare Mina and Olivia; they were like the sun and the moon. If someone asked me to make a list of their differences, it would take hours for me to explain. The most obvious difference was that Olivia was a blonde-haired blue-eyed Irish girl and Mina was of Korean decent. Even the sides of the beds they slept on were different. But the most important difference, the only one that mattered…was how happy I was now. When I was with Olivia, I thought I was happy. I thought our marriage was fine…it was only after meeting Mina did I realize that being fine was as good as being comatose. You’re alive, but there is no way it can be seen as living.
Liam and Melody.
Declan and Coraline.
Neither of their marriages were ever fine. The loved each other with a passion that was sometime so intense, I had to look away. Nothing else in the world mattered to them more than each other. Declan was ready to give up on our family, he begged my father, just so he could be with her. When she got cancer, I’d never seen a man so ready to be devastated. He stayed at her side, picked her off the ground every time she fell with a smile on his face because he was happy she was alive to at least fall.
Liam….he was so whipped around Mel’s finger, I was sure he was permanently bent. He was the living breathing definition of the term crazy in love. He had to be crazy, what other kind of man would allow his wife to make a habit of shooting him and still comfortably hold onto her. He went to and stayed in jail in the hopes that she would come back for him. He went to war for her.
Now I was the one completely taken over.
If she were sick, I too would fight with her.
If Mina stabbed me in the heart right now, I too would still hold onto her.
I moved over to the couch and she still didn’t notice until I shut the laptop down. Her head snapped at up me, her dark brown eyes on mine when a pout formed on her lips.
“Five more minutes?” she begged.
“Nope,
” I said offering her my hand.
She sighed and I pulled her up and spun her into my arms.
“Hello.” She smiled.
“Oh now you notice me? I’ve been staring at you for at least ten minutes.”
“What? You should have said something?”
“I’m saying something now,” I replied, my hands slowly pulling down the zipper of her dress. When it dropped to the ground and she stood before me in only a lacy baby blue bra set that had bowties on the mounds of her breasts, she blushed. When we first made love, she was so shy. Over the years, she’s gotten bolder but I still loved how she turned pink for me.
“We have to get up early in the morning,” she reminded me.
“Or we could just never go to bed,” I said. I lifted her off her feet and threw her over my shoulder.
“NEAL!”
Smacking her ass, I laughed and took her to the bed.
“Yes?” I asked when I dropped her in the center and she sat up on her elbows.
“If I fall asleep in church in front of all you clans men, the amount of rumors—”
Leaning over, I kissed her quickly on the lips. “Let them talk. No matter what they say, it doesn’t change the fact that you are my side, you, Mina, are a Callahan.”