Chapter Twenty-Five

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Vienna - 3 weeks

"You know, when you dumpster dive, you're supposed to actually do it inside the dumpster," a male voice called, making me yelp and jerk, nearly knocking my head against said dumpster.

My heartbeat hammered against my ribcage and my hand went into my pocket, closing around the weapon Murphy had given me as I turned toward the alley to find a man standing there, his hands tucked into his pockets.

He was tall and fit with dirty blonde hair, classically handsome bone structure, and stormy blue eyes.

"Though, fair warning, we had a wild bachelor party last night. A lot of idiots who don't know their limits. Let's just say the bags are full of a lot of… shit you'd rather not get on your… very fashionable buffalo jacket."

"Bison," I corrected automatically, making his lips curve up, giving me an appealing, boyish grin.

"I stand corrected. So, Red, what are you doing in my dumpster?"

His dumpster.

This was the alley next to The Bog.

I hadn't been to the town's only bar yet. But the guys at the club talked fondly of it. As did Nyx and Delaney, who had both worked there for a time.

If this man owned the dumpster, and therefore The Bog, it was clearly one of the infamous Murphy Brothers.

I knew them only by reputation, mostly thanks to the stories Delaney, their baby sister, and Nyx, their former bartender, told.

There were, apparently, five of them. Cillian, Sean, Rian, Conor, and Eoin. Looks, apparently, were no way to tell them apart, since they were all so similar-looking, outside of subtle changes in eye colors or frames.

But I understood from the girls that Sean and Eoin were more on the quiet and standoffish side. Not, I figured, the kind to joke with a strange girl about dumpster diving.

And Cillian, as the leader of the family, was probably more likely to ask me what I was doing, not make a joke.

Conor was the one with the hot temper.

But Rian? Rian was the lighthearted one of the family. The one who was always up for a good time. And quick with a joke.

There was no fear in me, not even facing a strange man. Who also happened to be a member of the Irish mafia.

Because I knew that the Murphy brothers were as good of men as you could come by, according to the girls. They certainly would never hurt a woman. Save for maybe some heartbreaking.

"Under."

"Hm?" he asked.

"I'm not in your dumpster; I'm under your dumpster."

"I stand corrected. Did you lose something?" he asked, rolling back on his heels, hands in his pockets, looking perfectly at ease.

"I think I saw a kitten," I admitted.

"This time of year?" he asked, dubious.

"They can breed as early as February," I insisted.

"True, but one being away from its mom this time of year? Dunno."

"Well, I have to check. It could freeze to death out here," I insisted, feeling the chill move through me even under my layers and heavy jacket.

"Sure, sure. Carry on," he said, waving toward the dumpster.

"You're just going to watch?" I asked.

"I'm intrigued," he told me.

"You could help," I suggested.

"I could, but I like these pants," he said, waving down at them. "It's a dead-end. I promise to catch it if it runs my way."

"Okay," I agreed, ducking down again, trying not to think about the sick I might be putting my hands in, letting brush against my clothing.

"Psstpsstpsst," I called as I heard rustling near the back corner. "Come on, baby," I called, voice sing song. "I'll get you some warm formula," I added. "Psstpsstpsst."

The sound moved closer, and I reached under the dumpster, feeling my fingers brush something furry.

But I started it out from under the dumpster, making me fall back on my ass and shriek as I saw something that was decidedly not a small, sweet, needy kitten.

"Yeah, I'm not catching that," Rian said as a rat the size of a small cat ran past him, disappearing down the street. "It was a valiant effort," he told me as he walked down the alley, offering me his hand. "I'm sure the rat felt very wanted and loved."

I placed my hand in his as a snorting laugh escaped me.

He pulled me to my feet and gave me that boyish smile again. "I'm Rian, by the way."

"I know," I agreed.

"You do?" he asked, tone curious but with that hint of flirtatiousness. "Does my reputation precede me?" he asked.

"Delaney told me all about the time you got kicked out of school for that smelly prank that made a bunch of people throw up."

"Liquid gas is the epitome of comedy when you're an eleven-year-old boy," he said, eyes bright. "So, you know my sister. Does that mean you are a club girl? And if you are, will you allow me to tell you all the ways I can show you a better time than—"

"Vienna!" Riff's voice called, raised, bordering on panicked.

He'd run in to get us takeout from the diner. I was supposed to be waiting in the car.

"Over here," I called back, watching as Rian watched me.

"Vienna," he said, curious.

"Yep," I agreed.

"It waits for you," he said, referencing the lyrics I was named after, making me smile as Riff moved into the alleyway.

"That's exactly it," I agreed. "It was my mom's favorite song when I was born."

She never really took the advice in the song, though, I guess.

"So, you're with this lucky fuck, huh?" Rian asked as Riff came toward us, posture tight, his gaze hard as he looked at Rian. Protective, sure. But also a bit possessive. Which shouldn't have been as hot as it was. "I was helping Vienna here catch a kitten."

"You were standing there watching me," I shot back.

"There's a kitten?" Riff asked, looking around.

"Your girl was trying to save a giant rat, as it turns out," Rian said, making Riff chuckle, his posture loosening up.

"Valiant effort, darlin'," he said. "Ready to go home?" he asked.

"Yep," I agreed. "Nice to meet you, Rian."

"I have garbages at my house if you ever want to dig around those…" he offered.

"Fuck off, Rian," Riff said, but his tone was light as he led me out of the alley. "So, you met your first Murphy brother," Riff said, passing me the hand sanitizer as we got into the car.

"I did. He seems nice."

"He is," Riff agreed. "You were smiling at him."

"It wasn't like that!" I insisted, eyes widening.

"No, no, V. I didn't mean to insinuate that. I mean… you were cornered by a strange man in an alley, and you were… smiling at him."

"I knew he was a Murphy," I said, shrugging it off even if it did feel like a pretty good step in the right direction.

I wasn't panicking or having PTSD flashbacks.

That was a win in my book.

"Even so," Riff said. "It's good that you're meeting the locals, too. Maybe we should hit up The Bog soon. Let you meet the other Murphys. Watch my idiot brother shamelessly flirt with Detroit's cousin Lula."

I'd been content for my life in Shady Valley to be rather, well, small. Trips to the grocery store, lessons at the studio, then just hanging out with the people in and around the club.

But, for once, the idea of actually getting back out there and socializing sounded intriguing. Fun, even.

Yeah, this day was definitely a win.

You know, aside from the rat.

Riff - 3 months

"There!" Vienna gasped, pointing in the distance where a line of long-legged, pink birds were walking at the edge of the water.

"Told you we would find them," Lark, the wife of Remy, one of the bikers in our sister chapter in Golden Glades, declared, smiling at Vienna's reaction. "They blew in with a hurricane last year, and just… decided to stay. You don't usually get to see flamingos in the wild in Florida."

"They're so majestic," Vienna declared, watching the birds with hearts in her eyes.

"We should really check out one of the wildlife centers. Those ones are tame. They will come right up to you for food."

"Dunno, that might get in the way of V's plans to hit up every single bookstore in Florida," I teased, watching as she twisted her head over her shoulder and shot small eyes at me.

It was Vienna's birthday month, and we'd followed through with our plans to travel from California to Florida and back, hitting up bookstores along the way, and seeing as much wildlife as possible.

We had decided, though, to bring Raff with us. And Coach followed behind us in another junker of a car with hollow walls. Each time we stopped to check out a bookstore, the two of them went off to hit up some gun shows and meet private sellers.

It allowed us to get some work done for the club while also in no way implicating Vienna in any of our activities.

Besides, Coach was excited to spend some time with this crew. He'd paid off his parole officer, packed a bag, and hit the road with us.

He and Raff were back at the Golden Glades clubhouse right now, partying with their ever-growing crew there.

We weren't staying much longer.

We had a pretty tight schedule on the way back, since we needed to be in Shady Valley in time for the big party Morgaine and the girls were planning for Vienna.

And right after her party, she had her first week of yoga teacher certification classes to look forward to.

Morgaine and the girls had tried to urge Vienna to take her time, to settle in, to tell her that there was no rush to starting a new career.

It had been Coach who told her to do what felt right. And what felt right to her was doing something with this newfound love of yoga and meditation.

"I want to help women like me," she'd insisted.

"Then, we gotta get your ass in shape quick," Coach had replied.

And set to doing just that immediately after.

He said he'd never seen someone progress as quickly as Vienna had. Though I figured anyone would get good pretty fast if they were doing hour-long sessions more than once a day, every day.

I'd worried about her at first. She still seemed so small and breakable to me. Even though she'd been steadily putting on healthy and necessary weight since she came to Shady Valley.

But yoga didn't put her in danger, no matter how fucking insane some of those poses were. It made her stronger. It made her more confident in her own skin.

And, well, I didn't mind watching the way her body looked in those tight-ass leggings and tank tops, twisting and inverting her body into interesting angles and positions.

They'd kept up the practice all during the road trip, waking up early to roll out their mats outside and get a start on their day with an hour of intense exercise.

She always came back to our room glowing and very in-touch with her body. And, well, things usually got really fun for me from there.

"We should get going," Vienna said. "I still need to meet the parrot, the tortoise, and all of Remy and Lark's various rescue dogs and cats before we go to bed tonight."

So that was exactly what we did.

And I didn't see any of it.

Because I was watching Vienna instead.

It was the best view by far.

Vienna - 1 year

"Whoa, are you okay?" Everleigh asked, rushing up behind me as I leaned over the trash can after violently losing the little bit of Detroit's breakfast I'd been able to choke down past my nausea.

"This stomach ick really has a hold on me," I said, accepting the paper towels she passed to me, blowing my nose hard.

"Ummm…" Everleigh said, uncomfortably pressing her lips together as she stood there in her matching yoga and sports bra set, her perfect body on glorious display. Detroit was a lucky guy . And she'd been a great student, showing up for every one of my classes for the last four months at the gym. A job she got me because she used to work there and was still friendly with the owner.

"What?" I asked, frowning at her, trying to ignore the way my stomach was still sloshing, despite being empty, and the cold sweat that seemed at odds with how overheated I felt.

"It's just that… no one has a stomach bug, y'know?" she said.

"Maybe one of the kids is carrying something," I suggested. They always did seem to be coming down with something.

"Haven't you been kind of sick for the past, you know, three weeks, though?" she asked.

"Yeah," I agreed, nodding, thinking of all the perfectly amazing meals I'd been missing out on because I could barely choke a few bites down.

"Have you, you know, had your cycle yet?" she asked, her pretty face giving me a suggestive look.

But suggesting what?

My cycle?

What did she… oh.

" Oh ," I said, eyes widening.

"I mean, there's a chance, right?" she asked.

Given that Riff and I still had sex as often as possible, yeah, there was definitely a chance. And while we were, you know, careful, I had to admit that there had been a few times when condoms hadn't been around.

And now that Everleigh mentioned it, I was probably three weeks late at this point. I'd just chalked it up to never being super regular, and the stress of not only doing my classes at the studio, but getting my channel going online, doing my mixture of yoga and ‘guided meditation for releasing trauma' videos. After consulting with Dr. Swift about my scripts.

It had been a lot.

It had taken less in the past to skip an entire cycle.

But in the past, I wasn't having frequent and amazing sex with the love of my life.

"Want to go pee on some sticks?" she asked, making it sound like a fun, normal girly group activity.

"Do you think you're pregnant?" I asked, voice low.

"I mean, not really. But you never know, do you?" she asked, shrugging.

"I think we should," I agreed, looking over toward the studio as a few of the women stood around talking.

I usually liked to stick around after in case someone needed an understanding ear.

But, just this once, I guess I needed to prioritize myself.

So Everleigh and I walked into the grocery store, picked out a few tests, took the self-checkout, then headed back to the gym to go into the women's locker room to take our respective tests.

"Um," Everleigh said, brows scrunched as she looked down at the tests on the counter, sitting on top of their boxes. "I think we mixed ours up," she declared.

"No," I said, shaking my head. "You wanted the one in the pink box, remember?" I asked. I'd opted for the one that would give me digital words instead of lines I would have to decipher. "Why? What's the matter?" I asked.

Everleigh grabbed my test, looking at it, then hers, looking at that, back and forth.

"What is it?" I asked, stomach clenching.

"Um, if these are right… we're both pregnant," she said, eyes wide.

"What?" I asked, snatching my test back, seeing the digital Pregnant on the window. Everleigh's had the lines, but there was no mistaking their answer.

Both unconvinced, we went back to the store, grabbing more tests, then chugging water until we could take more of them.

By the end of the next hour, there was no mistaking it.

We were both very hydrated.

And very pregnant.

Then both had to go home and tell our men the news.

Riff - 2 years

"Well, they do run in your family," Rook said, looking down at the matching pumpkin seats where our babies were nestled in nearly identical masks of peacefulness, thanks to the full bellies they each got before we finally left the hospital.

"Doesn't count in this case," I said, shrugging. "Moms determine twins."

"Yeah, man, I'm not an idiot," Rook said, shaking his head at me. "I meant her family," he said, nodding at Vienna who was seated on the couch, recovering from the pothole-laden trip back from the hospital.

"My family?" Vienna asked, turning her head to look over at Rook. "What do you mean?"

"Well, your grandmother was a twin."

"What?" she asked, straightening. "No."

"Yeah. She had a sister."

"Gertrude, yeah. She died in her teens. Freak drowning accident at a summer camp."

"Yeah. That was her twin."

"How… how do you know that?" Vienna asked.

"Because I did some digging for a surprise I've been working on for you," he said, his tone suggesting he was disappointed that the cat was out of the bag now. "Your grandma Anne and her sister Gertrude were born on October fourth. Four minutes apart."

"How… how did I never know that?" Vienna asked, frowning.

"Did she talk about her sister much?"

"No. I guess… it was a sore spot, it seemed. She didn't ever seem to want to talk about her, and I never pressed."

"Your grandmother's mother was also a twin. In fact, your great-grandmother had three sets of twins plus four regular births. You're a fertile bunch," he declared.

"I guess we should update Dr. Price," Vienna said. Since, at the first ultrasound, when there were two heartbeats, and he asked about twins, she'd been quick to tell him no.

"Do you think they're identical?" Raff asked, hovering over the carseats, gaze sliding from baby to baby.

"I see subtle differences," I said. "Like with us."

"But I know your ways," Vienna said, shooting Raff a small smile. "These guys won't get away with switching classes to take exams for the other."

"You told her our secrets?" Raff asked, offended. "I was going to teach these guys all about our wicked ways when they got old enough."

"I'm sure I've held some of them back," I said, getting small eyes from Vienna. "By accident!" I insisted.

"Alright. Uncle Raff, you watch the boys for a minute while Riff helps me upstairs," she said, holding out her arms for me to pull her back onto her feet.

Vienna had been one of the women who loved being pregnant. I mean, after the whole throwing up all day, every day thing died down three or so months in. From then on, she'd been glowing, floating on cloud nine, so excited for us to start our family.

We'd rushed through the process of finding and buying a house, wanting a place to really put down roots.

But we had gone with Morgaine and Delaney's advice about spending at least the first week or two at the clubhouse where we would have a ton of extra hands to help us when we were overwhelmed or exhausted.

We figured the exhaustion would only be amplified by the fact that we had two babies instead of one. We were all too happy to accept as much help as they could all offer us.

Our room had been adjusted to suit our new needs. The couch was now under the windows, and the matching cribs were in its old position.

We'd squeezed in a changing table and two newborn gliders. And the strollers that went with the carseats were also stashed in there too.

It was feeling a little claustrophobic, but I figured it would be convenient to literally have everything just a few feet away while we were finding our groove with the boys. It wasn't like I could stray far away from Vienna when she was going to be nursing.

"Blankets, please," Vienna said, doing gimmie fingers toward the end of the bed where four of her favorites were folded.

As a whole, she hadn't been as cold since she finally put on a good amount of weight. But with the trauma and blood loss, she was freezing all the time again.

As much as I didn't like that she wasn't feeling one hundred percent, it was oddly nostalgic to see her all cuddled up in her nest again.

I was just sitting down on the edge of the bed when the sound of a baby crying grew nearer before the door opened, and Raff came walking in, holding one of the babies in the crook of his arm.

"I tried to quiet him down," he said, doing some jiggling. "But I don't have the equipment he needs," he said, gesturing toward his flat chest.

"You're good with him," Vienna said, taking our restless son from Raff. "When are you going to have your own?" she teased.

But he caught both of us off-guard when he said, with a little bashful smile, "Maybe sooner than you think."

Vienna - 12 years

"Do not ," I called out the kitchen window into the backyard. Where our three kids were supposed to be getting their crazy out before dinner.

Which was a nice way of saying I needed them out of my hair before I lost my ever-loving mind.

It was summer break.

And not even the fun part of summer break where the kids were sleeping in and enjoying fewer restrictions on their electronics.

Oh, no. This was well past the midway point of summer break. Where the kids had done literally everything they enjoyed a thousand times over and were bored by all of it.

So, yeah, they were bickering a lot and complaining even more than that.

I usually had a better tolerance for it. But I felt like I was on the verge of vomiting every second of the day, and the air conditioning refused to lower to a temperature that was cold enough to stop the miserable sweatiness that had overtaken me. And, well, we weren't even going to talk about my bladder.

I was pregnant again.

And for the last time.

The first two pregnancies had been, morning sickness aside, pretty pleasant. I'd enjoyed every moment of those months.

This pregnancy was… trickier.

I was almost at the end, but the nausea was still plaguing me day in and out. My boobs were huge. I was overheated. There was so much pressure from my giant stomach, and my lower back was constantly killing me.

It was twins again. And, I guess, this time, I was older and less patient with the changes to my body.

Riff had been incredibly patient. I mean, I was sick of myself at this point, but he was as sweet as ever, giving me back and foot massages, pressing cold compresses to my forehead, stocking my ginger candies, and trying to keep the kids busy when he was home.

But the kids always managed to find the wildest, most unhinged activities to engage in when he was gone.

"Hey," I called as the kids all decided in unison to ignore me. "Someone is going to need to go see Dr. Price," I warned.

But I should have known that wasn't any sort of deterrent. Dr. Price was on my list of people to shop for at Christmastime. That was how many times we'd needed to drag that poor, overworked man out of bed to tend to one of our feral children.

If there had ever been a time when I'd been expecting calm, sweet, bookish children, God sure had a laugh at me.

Because these kids were heavy on the Riff/Raff genes and light on mine. At least personality-wise.

Physically, it was a mix.

The twins were a little bit of both of us. The older boy had darker features like his father, while the younger came out with a medium-brown shade of hair that, given the right light, leaned a bit red.

Our daughter looked like a mini version of me, all copper hair and big gray eyes. But she was one hundred percent her Uncle Raff. Extroverted, charming, so endearing that you often didn't know she was buttering you up to get something she wanted.

Which was probably how she got her brothers to agree to lying on the ground while she drove over them with her freaking motorized car.

I watched with my breath caught as my girl, with a wicked squeal of delight, drove up over her brother's bodies, those rugged plastic wheels moving over them with far too little resistance, in my opinion.

The car slid off of the small cliff that was one of the boys, making my girl's body jolt violently in the car, but she managed to stay seated somehow, letting out a howl of joy.

My gaze slid to the boys who were folding up, rubbing their stomachs, but seemed unharmed.

"What are you looking at?" Riff asked, coming up behind me, resting his head on my shoulder, and creating a basket with his hands to lift my belly, releasing some of the pressure for a few moments.

"I'm still not convinced that little hellion of ours wasn't switched with your brother's kid at some point," I said, getting a chuckle out of Riff.

"Except none of his kids are redheaded," Riff reasoned.

"Hey, genes can skip generations," I insisted.

"What'd she do?"

"Drove over her brothers in her car."

Riff let out a snort. "Well, it looks like the battery is dying out at least," he said as it puttered for a bit before dying. "Maybe I will conveniently forget to plug it in tonight," he offered.

"That would be nice," I decided, leaning back into Riff for a moment before the cramp started, sharp and unmistakable.

"Uh oh," Riff said, moving out from behind me, looking me over. "Was that a contraction?"

"What? No. It's early," I insisted.

"The boys were early," he reminded me. "And Dr. Price did say they were pretty big."

Big for twins, at least.

"It could just be Braxton Hicks," I said, waving it off, not mentally ready for delivery, despite having many months to get there.

They always say that you forget the pain. That the forgetting is how you manage to be willing to get pregnant again, because otherwise, there's no way you'd be willing to go through it again.

They were liars.

I didn't forget it.

I remembered every damn contraction, I swear.

The only reason I was pregnant a third time was because my husband and I still couldn't keep our hands off of each other. And we were sometimes forgetful about contraceptives.

"Darlin'…" Riff said, shaking his head at me.

"We can wait a bit to be sure."

"Remember last time?" he asked.

Meaning with our little girl, when I kept pretending it wasn't happening until we were too late to get to the hospital, and Riff had needed to rush me to Dr. Price's office to deliver.

"One hour," I demanded.

"Not a minute more," he said, already springing into action.

I took my butt over to the couch, breathing through the occasional contractions, watching Riff as he rushed around the house, grabbing our hospital bags as well as the luggage we had packed for each of our kids because they were going to need to go spend the next few nights with a set of their aunts and uncles.

"The babies are coming?" our daughter asked, rushing inside to sit next to me, pressing her hand to my belly like she always did, marveling at how her siblings were in there, kicking at her.

"I think they are," I agreed, watching her brothers move into the room, looking a lot less enthusiastic and a lot more horrified.

It wasn't their fault. They'd recently gotten a pretty in-depth explanation of pregnancy and childbirth. They were a little traumatized by the schematics of it.

"I'm gonna be okay, guys," I told them, patting the couch and waiting for them to come sit next to me. "And then you're gonna have two new siblings to play with."

"To boss us around," our older twin said with a head shake as he looked at his little sister.

"Probably," I agreed. "But it will be different since you'll be so much older than them this time," I told him. "It will be more like you guiding them and teaching them stuff," I told him.

I was still explaining to them, for the third time, that we would only be gone for a few days, that they would get to come visit us at the hospital as soon as their siblings were born, when there was the slamming of doors out front.

Not a minute later, the front door was bursting open, and there was Raff.

"Uncle Raff!" the kids cheered, rushing toward him, all worries about me disappearing at the prospect of spending time at their uncle's house.

Let's just say… Raff let them get away with a lot more than we did.

"I've got all the goods for tonight," he told them all. "Two movies. Three different kinds of popcorn. Candy. Ice cream. Soda. Pizza is ordered. Don't tell your mom," he said in a low voice as he shot me a wink.

"Hey, it's your sleepless night," I said, wincing as another contraction started.

"We got company," Raff said, glancing outside as he heard another car door. "Looks like your birth coach is here," he said, pushing the door open to let, well, Coach in.

He'd been there for both of my births so far. Mostly because with our first twins, I'd had such a panic attack about the pain and the invasion of privacy with so many people looking at me unclothed that I'd asked to have Coach to come and help me meditate and calm down.

He'd just offered the next time too.

And now, well, it was a tradition, it seemed.

"I think it's my husband who needs the anxiety relief this time," I said, watching Riff come back out into the living room, then backtrack down the hall three times before he seemed somewhat satisfied that he'd gotten everything he needed.

"You know I have a key to your house, right?" Raff asked, smiling at his brother. "I can pop by and get whatever they need."

"Right. Yeah. Okay. Um, I think I have everything," Riff said, rushing out to our car with all the luggage.

"He forgot the keys, didn't he?" Raff asked, smiling just before Riff came running back in, grabbing the keys, and heading back out.

"You'd think he'd be calmer on the third go around," I said, letting Coach help me back onto my feet.

"I mean, he's not sweating and passing out," Raff said with a chuckle at his brother's expense, "so, I guess it's an improvement."

"He only passed out the one time," I reminded him.

Let's just say that he'd made the mistake of wanting to watch. And immediately regretted it. His club brothers had made fun of him about it ever since. The jokes about needing smelling salts never failed to get a laugh.

"Alright, lady and gents," Raff said, clamping his hands on the boys' shoulders, "go give your mom a hug. We gotta get going."

With that, the kids came with hugs and kisses, the boys looking worried, and our girl demanding she got to hold the babies first.

Raff grabbed the old and somewhat grumpy Vernon, taking him to drop off at the clubhouse for the next few days before bringing the kids to his house.

Then they were gone, and we were on our way to the hospital.

We made it this time.

And Riff and Coach stayed safely up by my head, holding my hands, feeding me ice chips, helping me stay as calm and relaxed as possible.

Though not too calm.

I may or may not have demanded that the doctor force a vasectomy on Riff right there in the room.

But at the end of it, we had two more little boys in our family.

"I was only halfway joking about the vasectomy," I told Riff as he sat in the bed with me while the babies slept peacefully in their incubators.

"You weren't joking at all," he said, shooting me a smile before pressing a kiss to my sweaty temple.

"Look at it this way, if you get snipped, we can have consequence-free sex anytime we want," I said.

"That's some good motivation," he said just as one of the twins started to cry.

Riff - 20 years

"Darlin', it's okay if you want to opt out of this," Riff told me. For about the twentieth time since our older boys came up with this idea for how they wanted to spend their eighteenth birthday.

In a cabin in the woods.

‘Roughing it' they'd said.

What can I say, our boys were very outdoorsy.

Our daughter grew to really like girly things eventually, especially now as a teenager herself. But she was always game for an adventure.

One of the younger boys was wild and feral too.

But that last one, the youngest one, he got his mama's love of all things indoorsy and relaxing. He was the only one of the kids who enjoyed doing yoga with me, who took himself to a time out to do meditation when he was grumpy, and who, yes, loved reading.

In fact, we were standing in a bookstore in a little town in the middle of nowhere, watching him stack his arms full of books from the children's section. From the looks of things, he had two complete series he wanted to bring with him. Even though one of his bags for the trip was already full of books.

Honestly, he'd probably read all of them too.

Sitting outside to get fresh air so his brothers didn't rag on him about it, but he'd be reading for the whole trip.

"I could get you a hotel room right here in town," Riff offered. "You could have a kid-free week all to yourself to read."

Riff had gone into panic mode the second the boys walked away after telling us their plan for their birthday.

"Hey," I said, voice calm, "it's okay. I'm okay," I assured him. "I know I have some… bad memories of the woods," I admitted.

There was no denying that. Years may have eased the pain of that trauma, but it was still a part of me.

It was the part of me that forced our little girl into martial arts class from a young age. That had me making her carry weapons, and wear tracking devices hidden in her shoes, her purse, her backpack, or her jewelry. Because the idea of someone hurting her like I'd been hurt was enough to keep me awake at night.

"But I have some good memories of the woods, too," I told him, leaning into his chest. His arm easily went around my lower back, curling me into him. "You carrying me through them," I reminded him, those memories easily coming back, full of all the hope and relief I'd felt then. "Keeping me warm in the cabin…"

"I can certainly keep you warm in this cabin too," he said, giving me a saucy smirk.

"At least this one will have food and heat," I said, thinking of the pictures the boys had printed out for us to see of the cabin they'd chosen.

"Mom," our little reader called, making me turn to look at him. He looked just like his father. But with my eyes.

"Yeah, bud?"

"The new book in your series is out," he told me, shamelessly holding out the book with a scantily-clad, embracing couple on the front.

"I didn't even know. You're the best," I told him, but took the book from him, so no one thought he was reading that particular book.

"Think that one will have some inspiration for us in it?" Riff asked as we headed to the counter.

We may or may not have found out that we enjoyed reenacting scenes from some of my books sometimes.

"Do you want to traumatize the kids?" I asked. The cabin seemed roomy, but not big enough for loud adult activities.

"We can do it in the woods," he suggested, voice close to my ear. "I promise to do a check for poison ivy, so we don't get it in our unmentionables."

Our son came rushing to the counter then with all his new books and a fresh new bookmark, practically vibrating with his excitement as we got rung up and headed back out to the SUV where the teens were already waiting for us.

We all climbed in.

Then Riff drove us slowly but surely out of town and into the wilderness.

I was going back to the woods.

But this time, by choice.

With my kids.

And the love of my life at my side.

It felt like a full circle moment.

"Love you," Riff said, voice low, as he lifted my hand to kiss the back of it.

I loved him back.

More than I ever thought possible.

There was evil in the world, things outside of the control of everyone minus the ones inflicting that pain.

But I truly believed that the universe sent Riff not only to rescue me, but to show me the good still left in the world.

I saw it every single time I looked at him.

And in the kids we'd created together.

"I love you too."

XX