I gave her a kiss, making sure to pay extra attention to her tongue when I did and caused her to laugh. “You’re incorrigible.”
I was.
I was also horny as hell and hadn’t had my wife in my bed for over four days.
Tomorrow was the last day of our busy time, and then it’d be smooth sailing for another three weeks until we were once again on this crazy schedule.
Piper still worked the night shift, and my shifts changed as they’ve always done. This week I was on opposite shifts as her, but next week I’d be on the same shifts, though opposite times seeing as she’d be on during the night, and I’d be on during the day.
Though we worked the same three days next week, that also meant that we’d have the same four days off together.
Which worked for us.
We weren’t the type of people that had to see the other to be comfortable in our relationship.
Even more, we loved each other now as much as we loved each other when we first started our relationship.
It’d stood the test of time. The test of two very demanding jobs. And three children—soon to be four.
“They’re like lions on the hunt,” she shook her head. “You better go before they come out here.”
I sighed and dropped one more kiss onto her lips before touching her nose with the tip of one finger.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
And by ‘okay’ I meant was she throwing up non-stop since she’d woken up.
She understood immediately what I was asking, and shook her head. “I’m fine. I actually managed to eat something before I left today.”
That was good news.
“Good,” I sighed when an ear-piercing ‘Dadddddddyyyyyyyyy’ rent the air.
“Shit,” I laughed. “I’ll see you in a bit.”
After getting one last kiss, I headed inside and was unsurprised to find three pairs of small arms tackling my lower legs.
“Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!” my youngest by three whole minutes, Blakesley, cried out, attaching herself to my left leg. “I wissed you!”
I grinned and jerked my chin up at my father-in-law.
“Pick me up, pick me up!” Cayley, my middle, pleaded.
“Daddy,” Halsey, crowed. “You’re wate!”
I was late. By two minutes.
Their gymnastics hadn’t even started yet.
“Bad shift?” Hoax asked.
I grumbled a ‘fuck yeah’ under my breath and dropped down, picking up my three triplets in both arms, and hugged them closely to my chest.
And I really had a bad day.
Each and every person I’d pulled over today gave me shit. And I’d worked two accidents, both of which had taken both my lunch break and my rescheduled lunch break.
I hadn’t eaten since Piper had brought me donuts this morning on the way home from her shift.
“Love you, Daddy,” Halsey whispered.
I pressed a kiss to her forehead and gave each of the other girls kisses, too.
“Ready to go, ladies?” I asked when the instructor called their class to order.
“Yes!” all three cried at once.
Placing them gently on the ground, I watched as each tore out of the waiting area and practically sprinted toward their instructor.
And, like always, the young man that was teaching the class grinned and dropped to one knee.
“Swear to God,” Sam said. “I don’t think those girls have met a stranger.”
No joke.
I wasn’t sure how they got to be the way they were, but meeting a stranger definitely wasn’t something they experienced very often.
“Not to mention they can make each and every person they encounter fall in love with them,” Cheyenne interjected her two cents.
I snorted. “Those girls are only bad for us.”
From the very beginning, they’d been angels when it came to anybody watching them but Piper or me. But the moment they were with us, it was as if they felt comfortable enough to be themselves. Their really bad selves.
Though I had to admit, we’d lucked out with our three girls.
From the moment they were born they were pretty good babies. They slept through the night by six weeks. They went at least four hours in between feedings. They took naps. They were quiet in the car.
Which likely meant that our next baby was going to be an absolute horror.
“Y’all deserve it,” Sam muttered as he watched the girls do their stretching routine.
I snorted. “Whatever.”
Sam grinned at me. “You got the whole world, you know that, right?”
I looked at my girls.
“Yeah, I know,” I said. “I had no clue, before Piper, what I was missing. I just knew that something was. Something vital that stuck with me, day in and day out. Then she came along, and for the longest time, I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me. Then, when she had the girls? I realized rather quickly what it was. It was that feeling. That feeling that whatever I was missing was gone, and she’d taken it away.”
I remembered back to the day that she gave me my three girls. That night, as we sat in the hospital after delivering each one vaginally, I’d thought she was a superhero. Most women only have to go through that once, and if they go through it multiple times, years separate them. But my woman? She went through it three times. All three times without any medications to end her suffering.