Lazarus (The Henchmen MC 7)

My mother said those words years before.

And Lazarus had almost repeated them back to me.

I had never told him that story.

That was mine. My perfect memory of my mother that I simply didn't want to share. I wanted to selfishly hold onto it.

So him saying it?

As if I needed one anyway.

But it was definitely a sign.

It was as sure a sign of his rightness as the fact that he had sat beside me twice a week for two years at meetings, as him telling me I could do it when I got up for the first time and told my story, as him getting down on one knee in the middle of a Henchmen cookout, making a embarrassingly perfect scene in front of all our loved ones, and asked me to give him the rest of my life.

I never even knew a hint of the feelings I felt for him before.

It was new and scary and strange and wonderful and beautiful and the best possible outcome that I could have never seen coming.

"I dunno. I think I liked the green better."

That shocked me out of my thoughts, having been staring out the window of the small bedroom for a long couple of minutes. I did that a lot more than I ever had before- remember, plan for the future.

Before, my past had been full of sadness and pain.

And I had no future.

So much had changed.

"You said the green was too greeny," I sighed, throwing out an arm that I forgot had a paintbrush in it and managed to splatter a streak of blue across his face, making my mouth fall open, ready to laugh.

When he reached up, swiped a bit of it, and looked down at it and declared, "Yeah, but this blue is too bluish," I did- throwing my head back and laughing until my belly hurt.

His arms went around me tight, pulling me against him, smiling down at me.

When I finally got ahold of myself, my paint-smeared hands moved up his arms and went around his neck. "How about a blue-green and we call it a project done already? We've been working on this room for three weeks already."

When Lazarus said 'fixer-upper', bless him, he meant that literally everything inside of it needed to be pulled out and replaced from the floor and the walls to the wiring and heating system. Really, all said and done, it ended up costing as much to fix it as it cost to buy it in the first place.

But our touches were in every single square inch, as well as the touches of those we loved. Reeve was behind the walls where he had carefully replaced our wires. Pagan was in the floorplan because he apparently had a knack at it. Edison, Reign, Wolf, Repo, Cash, Duke, and Renny were all in the new Sheetrock and hardwood floors. The girls club was in all the furniture and curtains and towels and all the house stuff. Except Janie. Her housewarming gift was a sand a speed bag in the basement. Ross Ward was in the fence he had bought and help build, insisting that fences made good neighbors, because Ross Ward was all about his literal and figurative guards.

It was worth every penny and every ounce of 'sweat-equity' we and our friends had put into it.

Because pretty soon, in about seven months, we weren't going to be the only ones living there anymore.

As if sensing my train of thought, his arms slowly slid down to my ass as he lowered himself to his knees in front of me, resting his head against my still-flat belly. "Blue-green is more neutral," he agreed.

We hadn't exactly been trying to get pregnant.

We both agreed we wanted to get the wedding in the works and then we would talk about babies, but both agreeing that we wanted a couple of them.

We had always been careful too- condoms because I couldn't do the hormones of the pill and the other options made me kinda cringe.

And one night, coming home with a brand spanking new box of condoms in a reputable brand and putting it on exactly how he was supposed to and not having it leak... we had still somehow created a baby.

"Maybe it means we're supposed to have a little flower girl or ring bearer at the wedding." His arms folded around me from behind, his chin resting on my shoulder as we both looked down at the stick on the counter that was, essentially saying: ready or not, here I come!

That phrase was so perfectly Lazarus that in the moment, I felt tears sting at my eyes.

Because he just took things as they came- no fighting, no worrying.

And he was always able to see the reason any situation meant something in the bigger picture.Lazarus - 3 years"I still think Cyrus is a great name for a kid," Cyrus said, sitting on the windowsill in the hospital room strumming his guitar and humming quietly which was literally the only thing that stopped my son from crying. We had tried, when Cyrus left the night before, to put some soothing guitar music on my cell to quiet him down for the night so Bethany could get some rest, but it was no use. If it wasn't the real deal, he wasn't having it.