West (The Henchmen MC 19)

"Just a couple more days, sweetheart," he reminded me.

"Just?" I shot back, eyes slitting small.

"Yeah, you're right. This has been pure torture," he agreed, giving me a smirk when a low, growling noise erupted from me.

I hadn't been wrong.

I predicted way back when that I would be a pretty miserable pregnant person.

And, indeed, I was.

In fact, I was pretty sure I raised the bar for how unhappy a person could be while creating the gift of life.

To be fair, I'd been torturously sick through the first two trimesters, and the third one had just been full of damn near every unpleasant side-effect of pregnancy that no one ever tells you about. I now understood why no one tells you about it. Because if they did, no one would ever have babies ever.

Even if they would be really cute blonde babies with attitude problems like I was sure ours was going to be.

"So, what do you want for dinner?" he asked, trying to change the subject as I blotted my glow off with a napkin.

"You know what I want for dinner," I reminded him.

"You can't eat that every single night."

"I can," I objected.

"Okay but... I can't watch you eat that every single night."

So, apparently, this baby—the same one who refused to ever be in the right position during an ultrasound so we could see what the sex was—pretty much only liked one evening meal.

Pickle soup.

Yes, that pickle soup.

The pickle soup that had once made me so violently ill.

Now, I couldn't get enough of it.

And the ill one was most likely to be West.

But, well, that was a sacrifice the devil spawn and I were willing to make.

"You'll just have to eat in the other room then," I told him as he got up to toss the rest of our garbage, coming back over toward me, wrapping an arm around my lower back, pressing a kiss to my temple.

He'd been a good sport.

Even through all the mood swings, the body changes, the late night cravings, the seemingly endless doctor appointments.

Without being sick, or having someone kick on his bladder, or having a body that was changing rapidly, he had slipped effortlessly into daddy-mode.

I'd come home one day to find the entire living room scattered with boxes of baby things he was trying to put together like a high-stakes Lego game.

He painted the nursery a gender-neutral gray.

He bought me pregnancy books.

He even watched some intense birth videos online.

West was more prepared than I was for the whole experience.

I figured that they were going to throw a gown on me, stick a needle in my spine, and then it would all just do its own thing.

Then it would all be over and I'd have a cute baby to make up for all the frustrations.

"Fine," I grumbled as we walked up the front path of our brick-front ranch-style home.

"Fine what?"

"Fine, I will have buttered noodles for dinner."

"With ketchup?" he asked.

This man?

He knew me so well.

And he only cringed slightly at my disgusting food combinations.

And for that, I loved him very deeply.West - 12 yearsOur children had clearly been drafted without our knowledge and put through a war.

That was the only possible explanation for the filth and blood covering them.

"Hey, Auggs," I called, leaning back against the kitchen counter, cradling my coffee between my hands.

"God, what did they do now? There better not be any frogs in my kitchen sink again, you hellions," Auggie called as she moved through the house, emerging in the doorway to the kitchen a moment later, her wild hair barely tamed by a braid.

We still never figured out where they'd even found those frogs. We didn't even have any creeks around our house. And our offspring had counter-terrorism-level resistance to interrogation techniques.

"Oh, geez," she grumbled, gaze moving over our three children.

All girls.

Wild, reckless, fearless girls.

Rowan, Piper, and Leighla.

They were the spitting image of their mother, all of them. The same strong jaw, the same emotive eyes, the same stubborn chins, the same crazy hair that defied all attempts to tame it.

As for personality, they were both of us mixed together.

Daring, yet easy-going. Laid-back, but passionate.

Their penchant for being covered in disgusting substances? That was a mystery.

"Whose parents am I going to get a call from now?" Auggie asked, brow raising.

"The Smart brothers kicked a puppy!" Rowan announced, voice high, squeaky, outraged.

"They kicked a puppy?" Auggie asked, jaw getting tight as she turned to storm out of the room.

"Whoa whoa whoa. Where are you going?"

"To go beat the shit out of the Smart mom," she declared, looking for her shoes. "Clearly, she's the reason her children are going to turn into serial killers. I would know. I've seen all the serial killer movies. This is how it starts!"

"Honey," I tried, grabbing her shoulders.

"What?"

"We have three bloody, muddy girls in the kitchen."

"Oh, right," she said, sighing.