May Contain Wine (SWAT Generation 2.0 5)

“But think of all the fun we’ll have making them.”

Well, he wasn’t lying there.

Making babies was fun, after all.Epilogue

Funpa—like a grandpa, only cooler.

-Calloway to Bennett

Calloway

I got off of the bar stool, wobbled slightly, and then grinned when I didn’t fall on my ass.

Walking to the sink, I threw my cup and bowl into it and then turned to see the dogs prancing excitedly by the back door.

I walked over to it and opened it up, only for the dogs to go straight to a dead bird that was right outside the door.

“No!” I said sternly, clapping my hands.

We’d adopted two brother dogs from the local animal shelter.

One was black with white spots, and the other was white with black spots.

They were the cutest, most destructive little jerks I’d ever met.

But they were so great.

I grinned and talked to them as I walked to the back door.

Over the course of the last eight months, we’d adopted two dogs, worked on our house, and gotten married.

Now, we were only days away from the birth of our first child, and I couldn’t be happier with how my life had turned out.

The dead birds always brought back memories of my life from months ago, but luckily, this time, I knew they were harmless.

Sadly, Julian was now committed to a psych facility for a very long time. There would likely never be a time that he found his way out.

They’d determined him to be a risk to himself and others and had found him a more permanent place in a small town in Kentucky.

As for Julian’s mother? Well, she was serving twenty-eight years with no possibility of parole.

With any luck, she’d die there.

The dogs nudged the bird with their noses.

“Babe!” I cried out.

Nothing.

“Babe!” I yelled once more.

“What?” Louis groaned.

“There’s a dead bird on the back porch,” I said. “And the dogs won’t go pee because they’re too interested in smelling it.”

Silence, then, “So?”

I sighed. “Well, I’m just sayin’, when you have to come clean up all the tinkle off the floor because they didn’t go, then you’ll care.”

Nothing.

“Babe!” I yelled. “This is what you signed up for when you agreed to marry me!”

I heard him sigh from the other room, then he appeared in his game room doorway and stared at me with tired eyes.

I smiled at him.

He’d spent the entire night at a SWAT call and had literally just arrived home twenty minutes before.

“What?” I asked.

He rolled his eyes and walked to the back door, picking up an empty paper towel roll and a butter knife on his way.

“What are you doing with those?” I asked as he passed.

He didn’t answer.

Instead, he walked outside, in only his underwear, and picked up the dead bird with only the paper towel roll and the knife.

He walked it over to the fence that we’d built and chucked it over, away from the dogs’ grasp.

Then, I watched as he tossed not only the bird over the fence but the paper towel roll and the butter knife as well.

My mouth fell open in surprise.

“Louis!” I cried. “I just got those in the mail yesterday! They were from Crate & Barrel! And I spent five hundred bucks on them!”

He rolled his eyes and walked straight into the bedroom.

I grinned and washed up my dishes from breakfast.

I felt a pain rock through my belly, and I grimaced at the contraction.

They were getting stronger and closer together.

And, if I had any luck, they would continue to do so.

But… I did need to tell Louis.

He deserved to know that I was having them, even if he was going to freak out.

We’d spent the entirety of my pregnancy worrying.

First, about my anemia that luckily didn’t rear its ugly head during my pregnancy. Something that I was hoping, crossing my fingers and toes, and praying wouldn’t return. Then about the pre-eclampsia. Followed shortly by the sheer size of the baby growing inside of me, making it to where they’d already assumed I was going to have to have a C-section to deliver him.

Needless to say, not only did Louis no longer want fifteen children, but I was loath to admit anything that might scare him in any way.

There was only so much worrying Louis and I could take.

“Babe!”

He came back into the room fully dressed, making me want to grin.

I didn’t dare.

“You’re going to work?” I pouted.

He rolled his eyes.

“Yes, I’m going to work. There’s a little thing I need ,like money to pay for your five-hundred-dollar Crate & Barrel purchases,” he teased.

I grinned unrepentantly at him. “Oops.”

The thought of telling him I was having contractions waned. I’d tell him if and when they got to the point where I felt like we needed to go to the hospital, and not a second sooner.

He snorted and tugged me gently into his arms. “Bring me lunch?”

I looked up at him and smiled. “Of course.”