I caught Tyler nodding his head, and I turned to see him talking.
“…she was okay after, but it scarred us for life. I just had no clue that Henley was actually being serious about not having her own. Or that she was going to start having them the moment that she got married.”
I flipped my head to Rhys to see him laughing.
I paused there, my eyes lit on his face, and felt a sliver of peace surge through me like a lightning bolt.
Was this what happiness felt like?
I was sick as a dog, could barely hold myself aloft on the bar stool, but I was so freakin’ happy I could cry.
My brother was here. My husband was here.
We had babies on the way.
Babies. On. The. Way.
Holy shit.
“We’re going to have to move!” I blurted out. “We can’t stay here!”
Rhys tilted his head and looked at me oddly. “You don’t want to stay near your sister and niece?”
I paused.
I did want that…but I knew that with four kids possibly on the way, a two-bedroom duplex wasn’t going to cut it. No way, no how.
“I do,” I said, momentarily wondering if I was talking too loud when Rhys’ eyebrows rose. “But I also want to have room for our kids. I don’t want to have to move when they’re infants, either.”
Rhys nodded his head, and Tyler touched my shoulder, getting my attention.
“You should ask Mom if you can move into the farm,” Tyler said the moment I was facing him.
My eyes widened. “But that’s y’all’s place.”
He scowled then. “That’s our family place, and Mom doesn’t want to live there anymore. She tells me all the time that she hates it, and that she wishes she had something smaller. You should let her move in here, and then y’all take over the farm.”
The farm was a four-bedroom, three-bath monstrosity of a house on eighty acres. My mom didn’t want to live there anymore because it took quite a bit of upkeep to keep the place looking pretty.
Tyler looked at Rhys as if he was talking, and I turned to see Rhys say, “…can ask her if you want. I wouldn’t mind buying it from her, and the last time I was there, it was beautiful. The house is a little outdated, but that’s an easy fix. Something we can do before we move in. Just have your mom come stay in our spare bedroom until we get it all to our liking.”
I held up my finger. “Can you go get me my transmitter?”
Rhys didn’t hesitate. He moved out of the room and beyond into the bedroom, coming out moments later with it in his hands. He didn’t let me put it on, though. Instead, he hooked me up himself, and then tucked my hair back into place once he was finished.
I smiled at him as he turned it on.
Then the world came into sudden alertness. “Thank you,” I said to him.
He winked. “Anytime, baby.”
Then he was back in his spot where he was leaning against the front of the counter, across the bar from us.
“Instead of tearing that house down…I think we should leave it. I think it might make more sense for us to just build a house out there rather than move into there. Plus, Alana and Autumn could just move in with Mom like they’ve been saying they’re going to do for a while,” I explained.
Tyler grunted, reaching for me as if he was going to tap my shoulder, then remembered that I could now hear. “Why hasn’t Alana done that yet?”
I shrugged. “I think that has more to do with her false hope that her ex-husband is going to get his head out of his ass than anything else.”
Tyler snorted. “That asshole isn’t going to come back. He’s fucking a night nurse that I heard he knocked up.”
“Where did you hear that from?” I questioned.
Tyler’s mouth turned down in a frown.
“Rome also said that he saw that douchebag there. Said he came out of a linen closet with his nurse, and the nurse was much more rumpled than she’d been when she’d left Rome’s room,” he explained.
Rhys snorted. “Sounds like she got a winner, Alana did.”
Tyler leveled Rhys with a look that clearly said he didn’t think very highly of him. “Let’s just say if me and that douche nozzle ever got into a dark alley and he couldn’t point a finger at me, I’d turn him into a eunuch for what he did to my sister.”
That was the truth.
I’d often thought the same thing.
“Anyway.” Tyler pushed up out of his seat. “I have a few things I need to do tonight in town, and then I have to go back home. I have the early shift tomorrow morning, and I wanted to get a good night’s sleep. Dealing with that town’s hatred of cops is sometimes nearly too hard to bare.”