FIVE YEARS LATER
I WAS ON MY ASS, skateboard rolling in the opposite direction, being pointed and laughed at. Not for the first time, I wondered how I’d gotten into this position. Then a hand reached for me, helping me off the ground, checking me over for breaks, and I remembered.
Helen.
“Are you broken?” She tried to hold back her laugh, but Luciana was egging her on, snorting out little giggles, so it was no good. Helen burst out laughing again. “How can a person be so incredibly athletic and have no sense of balance?”
I threw my arms out. “Baby, I think I’m done trying to be a skater for you. It’s hopeless.”
She tucked herself against me, petting my chest. “I think you’re right. I don’t want you broken. You’ll be no good to me then. I need you at full power.”
“Gross.” Luciana covered her ears and started humming at top volume. “I can’t hear you. I’m going inside to barf.”
She ran up our long driveway and into the house we’d bought and moved into a year ago, slamming the door on us. Helen and I weren’t her parents, but we were close enough to that role that when we kissed, we grossed her out and she always left the room. At this point, we sometimes did it to drive her crazy. Other times, because we couldn’t help ourselves.
The truth was, Luc was seventeen and still as sweet as she was when I met her at twelve. I was pretty proud to say the worst part of her life was having to witness her sister and brother-in-law kissing every once in a while.
I picked up my skateboard and touched my lips to Helen’s forehead. “Are you disappointed I’m putting this thing into retirement?”
“Nope.” We started up the drive, our arms around each other. “Truthfully, I’d be jealous of you skating while I’m sitting on the bench for the next few months.”
I patted her side and the swell of her belly. “You’ll be the one teaching her to skate. You and Luc. I’ll teach her to ride a bike.”
She gently elbowed my ribs. “You can ride a bike? You don’t fall?”
Tossing the skateboard into the garage, I rounded on my wife and took her in my arms, nuzzling her neck until she was giggling. That’s right. I made Helen Ortega fucking giggle. I did it on the regular too. We’d built the kind of life together that made it easy to relax, breathe, and enjoy every second.
“I seem to remember balancing you on my face last night and no one fell.”
She cupped my jaw and brought my mouth down to hers, giving me a long, slow kiss, her tongue sliding and mingling with mine. Her little belly, round with our daughter, pressed into me. It was a new feeling, but Christ, it was so sexy and sweet at the same time, I found myself constantly taking her into my arms so I could have more of it.
“That was me doing the balancing, Theodore,” she murmured. “Don’t try to take credit for that. I’ve got a baby on board and I managed to take a ride.”
“Really, baby? Trash talk after all the times I made you come?”
She melted into me, head on my shoulder. “Fine. You’re very good at a lot of things, you’re just terrible at skateboarding.”
I ran my nose along her crown and grinned to myself. “I’ll take it.”
After a minute or two, we walked around the side of the house to the back patio, collapsing onto one of our double loungers beside our pool.
Helen and I had gotten married when I graduated from Savage U, but it only took me a year after our showdown with Andrew to get her to agree to wear my ring. Gabe had been pissed Helen and I were engaged before he’d locked down Penelope, but he made it happen, then eventually forgave me and stood beside me as my best man at my wedding.
Helen graduated from Savage U a year early, just like she had planned, got a job as a nurse, and entered her master’s program. Now, she worked as a labor and delivery nurse and she absolutely loved it. I didn’t know a lot of people who were eager to go to work, but Helen was one of them. The hours were long, and she was on her feet sometimes her whole shift, but there was never a time she dragged ass out the door.
She didn’t have to work. Honestly, neither of us did. Madeline McGarvey had left Helen a lot of money. Hells called it “fuck-you money.” In other words, my baby was a millionaire. But she didn’t take having that kind of change for granted. For her, it was room to breathe, and it had made it easy for us to take permanent custody of Luciana as soon as Hells had the money in the bank.
Helen wove her legs with mine and rested her hand on my stomach, sighing. “Tell me again what we have to do.”
I covered her hand with mine, moving her wedding band back and forth with my thumb. “You know what we have to do. You made the list.”
“I know, but I need you to tell me out loud so I’m not overwhelmed by all the words in my notes app. If you tell me in your lovely voice, it won’t sound like so damn much work.”
“Baby,” I chuckled, “remember volunteering our backyard for Asher and Bex’s wedding shower? That was all you. If it’s too much, we’ll figure—”
She covered my mouth with her hand. “Don’t you dare. It’s not too much. It’s the perfectly right amount. We bought this house to hold parties, so we’re going to hold parties, dammit.”
I laughed behind her hand, then I licked it. She snatched it back and tried to snarl, but I kissed it off her.
“We have had parties, and we’ll have more parties, but this one—”
“Shut it, Theodore.” She knocked her head against my shoulder and gave me one of my favorite red-lipped smiles. “I still have four more months of this pregnancy. You can’t treat me like an invalid.”
“But, baby,” bending forward, I lifted her shirt to kiss her belly, “you’re a hot invalid.”
She shoved my forehead. “Stop it and help me plan this party.”
“I thought Grace was planning it.”
“She is, obviously, but it’s at our house, so I have to do things. Plus, you know, she’s busy with Bash and the baby.”
For the first two years of our marriage and a year before that, we’d lived in a rental house halfway between campus and Luciana’s school. We’d been hunting for something perfect, something comfortable, private, roomy, but not a mansion. When we found this place, we knew. It was the first big purchase Helen made with her inheritance—and it’d been a-fucking-lot—but we were both pretty certain we’d be living in this house forever.
Our backyard was what had sold me on the place. It was like an oasis away from everything, with a covered patio, pool with attached hot tub, and a wide, but not overly big, expanse of grass, all surrounded by trees to give us privacy. I wasn’t any kind of landscaper or anything, but I liked to be outdoors, and within a couple days of living here, this patio with my girl snug in my arms had become my favorite place on earth.
We’d had a lot of parties back here. First a housewarming, then birthdays, Grace’s baby shower, our anniversary, and now Asher and Bex’s coed wedding shower. Her friends—who had become mine over the years—were really her family. There wasn’t a lot she wouldn’t do for the people she loved, because that was my little tiger—fierce and protective, with a massive heart.
Luc stuck her head out the patio door. “There’s a party a bunch of people I know are going to tonight. Can I go?”
Helen raised a brow. “Where is it?”
Luc checked her phone. “This guy’s house. His name is Javi? I don’t know him, but I heard his kickbacks are really—”
Helen threw her flip-flop in Luc’s direction. “No, ma’am. I went to Javi’s parties when I was your age. I know exactly what happens at Javi’s parties. There is no way in hell you’re going to a party at Javi’s.”
Luc glanced at me, but I shook my head. I’d been to one Javi party, and that was enough for me to know our girl was not going there unless she walked over our dead bodies. And even then, Helen would probably reanimate just to stop her.
Luciana groaned, but she didn’t stomp off or curse us out. “Jeez, fine. I didn’t really want to go anyway. I’m going to see if some of the girls want to come over and practice makeup tonight. I just got that new palette and I’ve barely used it.” She walked away, typing messages on her phone.
Helen’s eyes were wide, then she poked her belly. “Okay, we got lucky with one kid. This one is going to be a hell-raiser, I know it.”
Madeline. Helen was surprisingly superstitious, so she didn’t like to refer to the baby by her name, but we both knew she’d be Madeline the second we found out we were having a girl.
“I hope she is. She’ll be just like her mom, and I happen to like her mom a whole lot.” Lifting her shirt, I traced the faint dark line that ran up the center of her. Before Helen got pregnant, I’d never looked twice at another pregnant woman, but her…God, I felt like a teenager again, walking around with a perpetual hard-on. My tiger was sexy always, but the added curves and knowing she was carrying our child sent my attraction to her into overdrive. She even smelled different, and I was constantly sniffing her.
Helen palmed the bulge in my shorts. “Maybe we should let her go to the party so we can have the house to ourselves tonight.”
I moved her hand away. I knew this wasn’t going anywhere. Not until later, when I could get her alone.
“Wow, you’re hard up, aren’t you? Willing to sacrifice your sister for some action?”
Helen nodded enthusiastically. “She’ll be fine at Javi’s.”
“Okay,” I started to get up, “I’ll go tell her.”
“No you won’t!”
Helen tugged on the back of my shirt until I flopped down and rolled her on top of me. She shifted so her belly wasn’t pressed against me, then snuggled under my chin.
We didn’t have a lot of this, just sitting and doing nothing, or reading to each other in our favorite chair. We made time to be together—pretty sure it was impossible for us to be apart for longer than one of Helen’s shifts—but we were busy. With the house, friends, Luc, her job, and mine…
Working with Lock in maintenance at Savage U had opened up an unexpected career avenue for me. I got back into my love of fixing cars, and it took on a life of its own from there. One of the mechanics there knew a guy who owned a custom shop in Savage River. I started apprenticing there my junior year of college, learning everything there was to know about making cars run. When I graduated with a business degree, I stayed on at Savage Customs as an assistant manager. Two years ago, I’d used most of my savings to buy in as a co-owner.
Andrew hated it, but he wasn’t a big part of my life anymore, so his opinions were background noise. A few years ago, Miranda basically gave him an ultimatum: get with it or get out. He didn’t pull his head out of his ass, so she divorced him, but she didn’t walk away from Helen and me. She became the steady support system I’d never had, and she actually got a kick out of me going my own way and not following Andrew’s path. She wholeheartedly approved, in fact.
It was strange, really. I never thought I’d have that, even when I was bending over backward to seek it out from Andrew. I didn’t need Miranda’s approval, but it felt really good to have it.
Helen and I spent a little more time relaxing and talking about the things we had to do to the house to prepare for the party next weekend. Then it was time to go inside to make dinner.
Luciana liked to help Helen cook. Sometimes, they let me chop. Other times, I was relegated to being their fan club. Tonight was the latter. I sat on one of the stools at the island in the center of our kitchen, going over some paperwork for Savage Customs while they prepared fish tacos and fresh pico de gallo.
Helen and Luciana kept bumping into each other, then they gave each other little shoves, laughing every time. I put my phone down to watch. Luciana didn’t see the way her sister looked at her, but I did. Helen loved her like she was her kid, and it was there, written all over the way she watched Luciana cut tomatoes, in the soft curve of her lips, the warmth in her eyes at the small, everyday acts they did together.
I used to think I had to tell Helen to be soft. That was before I really got it. Helen didn’t need to be told to be soft. She had always been that way. Not for a jackass kid in his stepmom’s luxury car who’d told her he didn’t want to be responsible for her feelings. No, the kid I used to be hadn’t deserved Helen’s kind of soft. The man I was now got to see it and revel in it every day. I didn’t have to ask. That was just who she was when she was well loved and she loved well.
Helen was a rolling storm. She was the spark in the air, the scent of rain right before it fell. Helen was lightning touching down in an open field and the gentle breeze that carried the clouds. She was the steady mist that fell on thirsty ground and made it thrive.
Helen Ortega-Whitlock was soft.
Soft like thunder.
