Layla

Basically, they handed me my ass.

“Silly, there’s no dragon. And Daddy can’t carry a sword,” Meadow chuckled, nudging her sister with her foot. “She’s a silly, Raine.”

They were two and a freakin’ half. At that age, I think I was still trying to master walking and breathing at the same time. I don’t think I had half of the vocabulary they had, and I sure as hell wouldn’t have known a story was a lie because dragons didn’t exist and police officers didn’t carry swords.

Wishing them goodnight, I turned the light down low and moved down the hallway to my bedroom, collapsing face down on the bed.

I loved my kids. Twins were hard work, but it was rewarding most of the time. Sure there was the exception to the rule, but the benefits outweighed them.

The part about Gampy—i.e., Dad—and Papa—i.e., Gramps—catching them had also sadly been true, but that was because my brothers had refused to even come near me when I’d gone into labor. I’d been in the process of being helped up into Dad’s truck to go to the hospital when I’d gotten the urge to push.

He’d screamed about his upholstery, I’d screamed about my vagina, and then out Meadow had come, right into her grandad’s hands, making him scream even louder. Gramps had come over with a towel for him and was passing me another one when Raine decided she was coming, too, and he’d had to catch her.

It’d moved more quickly than we’d expected for a first-time birth. I’d been mentally preparing myself for days of contractions and had made sure they knew I wanted the drugs. Stupid me! With both of our DNA in those kids, that was just a rookie mistake assuming they’d follow protocol.

Fortunately, though, I’d been wearing a loose maxi dress at the time. After my water had broken and I’d had to take my underwear off, those babies came out with the dress covering them, meaning neither Dad nor Gramps had to see anything neither of us wanted them to see.

But Mark had missed it, and to this day, he still apologized for not booking the week off work. He’d wanted to at the time, but because he had the three weeks following it already off for when the doctor had planned to induce me, he’d gone against what his gut was telling him to do.

Rolling onto my back, I smiled happily up at him when he came through the bedroom door half an hour later, already carrying his vest and belt and without his boots on.

“Honey?”

He was just leaning over to kiss me, so his response was a murmur against my lips. “Mmm?”

“Can you book some time off work around November third?”

He lifted up to look down at me properly. “You want to go on vacation?”

Tugging at one of his hands, I picked it up and moved it over my stomach. “No, I was just hoping you’d be there to catch this one.”

His smile was almost blinding, but then he heard the pitter-patter of tiny feet running past our bedroom toward the stairs, followed by the tapping of Zeus’s nails on the flooring as he followed them.

“That fucking baby gate’s meant to be the most secure on the market, but they keep managing to figure it out,” he snapped and disappeared out the door in pursuit of the girls.

Moments later, he walked past the open door to our room, with one girl under each arm, lecturing them on how sleeping at night makes you smarter.

By the time he got back, I’d gotten changed out of my clothes and was pulling one of his t-shirts over my head when I caught him staring at my stomach with a look of trepidation on his face.

“Please tell me there’s just one of them in there this time?”

I couldn’t give him the answer he wanted right then. Regardless of what the ladies who did my ultrasounds and my OB/GYN said about there only being one in there, he didn’t relax until twenty-four hours after our son, Rhodes, came into the world, and he was sure another one wasn’t coming out after him.