“You okay?” Cressida asked, startling me out of my daze.
There was empathy in her dappled green and brown eyes, an understanding of the layers of palimpsest that superseded this moment.
I gave her a little grin and leaned into her hand when she reached out to move it down my hair. “Life’s strange, isn’t it?”
“Stranger than fiction,” she quipped. “And I should know, I’m a literature professor.”
We shared a soft laugh that was more about intimacy than humour and then moved together into the house.
The rest of the group was already gathered outside, and I lost my breath again, this time to the sight of my husband trussed up to chop down the perfect Christmas tree.
He was still in his heavy boots and old, dark wash jeans, the hem soaked through from the snow, but he’d shed his black duffel jacket and Hephaestus auto sweatshirt to reveal a skintight black Under Armor shirt that conformed to every single one of his many and magnificent muscles.
My mouth went dry, and moisture pooled between my legs.
Cressida laughed beside me. “Hold it together, girl. We’ve got business to attend to before you jump your man.”
“Can you blame me?” I asked.
Her eyes slid to King who had a black toque pulled lower over his riot of blond waves, his thick sweater pushed up to reveal his corded forearms, and an axe tossed over one shoulder.
“No,” she said slowly, high colour burnishing her cheeks. “No, I most definitely cannot.”
Harleigh Rose appeared in front of us and groaned dramatically. “Seriously, guys, haven’t we talked about this? You perving on my dad and brother in front of me has got to stop.”
Cressida slung an arm around her shoulders and curled her into her chest to place a kiss on her streaky blond head. “Not possible. Sorry, honey. Trust me, one day, you’ll understand what it’s like to have a hot man, and you will absolutely not begrudge us some harmless ogling.”
She snorted and swiped at Cress’s mouth. “You’ve got some drool just there.”
Cress laughed and shoved her away.
“’Nough of that,” Zeus called out, swinging his axe through the air and then catching it by the handle. “We got serious business to attend to. Hey, kid! You ever swung an axe before?”
The little hand in mine tensed slightly, and I looked down to find his eyes wide with eagerness.
Zeus caught it too. “You want me to teach you how to cut down a tree ten times bigger ’an you?”
The boy jerked his head in an eager nod and dislodged my hand to hustle over to Zeus. My man grinned wolfishly at me, triumphant that the kid already liked him more.
“Wait till I make him chilli,” I countered. “Then he’ll like me more.”
“Hey, bitch, that recipe is mine,” Harleigh Rose groused, bumping me with her hip as she moved past and jerked her chin at the kid. “You wanna race me to the treeline? I warn you, I’m fast.”
She took off, hair a streak of gold behind her, long limbs churning as she galloped through the knee-deep snow to the gloom of the forest to the left of the driveway.
The kid watched with his big, unblinking eyes, and then turned to look up at Zeus expectantly.
Z stifled a laugh and put a heavy hand on his small shoulder, squeezing in a show of comradery. “Let’s go chop some wood.”
The Kid.
It didn’t seem real.
A family like the Garros.
They were all so… big.
Men with big bodies, big hands, big personalities that lit up rooms in big ways.
Women with big hair, big styles, big hearts they wore on their sleeves for me to pluck at and keep if I wanted.
I didn’t know what I wanted because until I’d met the Garros, I’d never been asked.
A kid wasn’t meant for nothin’ but growing older so he could be put to work.
That was if he was poor. A solider born by a solider to be a solider.
In my old life, I hadn’t been poor.
I was born royal to be royal.
Only my parents’ kingdom was built on hatred and lies.
Zeus Garro’s kingdom was built on love and faith.
It was a funny thing, the difference ’tween them, because on the surface, they seemed kinda the same.
I was only nine, but I wasn’t dumb.
The Fallen MC was a name I’d heard even in my country. They were a name anyone heard if they knew anything about criminals and crime.
They were the kind of nightmarish bedtime story people like my parents told their kids.
If my parents had ever told me bedtime stories.
Zeus and his brothers were all so big, with hard faces, and rough voices that cussed and yelled easily, but they also smiled a ton, and touched their women and their children in good ways instead of bad.
I watched, and I watched them, all of them, but especially Zeus and Loulou Garro ’cause they were the parents of this family, of a family they seemed to want me to be a part of.