Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 76381 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 382(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76381 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 382(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
“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.