Page 130 of Unbound

It was pretty dramatic and ended with me begging him not to hurt Zack. Tommy was furious, thought Zack was playing me.

“Pop took Jimmy from me. Don’t you take Zack.” was the line that got Tommy to lower his gun.

“Does Zack mean something to you?” Tommy demanded.

“I don’t know. He might. He could.”

“Get inside,” my bossy brother ordered.

I overheard his short chat with Zack.

Zack said, “Is that what I gotta do to get us through this? Be like Lex with Holly? Marry your sister?”

“Motherfucker, don’t think you get off easy. You decide to make me your brother-in-law you’ll be in my sights for the rest of your fuckin’ life.”

“You told me I needed to give you a good reason not to end our relationship.”

Zack was obviously joking.

“You fucking with my sister’s feelings?” Tommy was clearly not joking.

“No, man. Not at all. She impresses the fuck outta me. I wanna get to know her better. See if there’s something.”

“You got at least ten years on her, Zack.”

Zack chuckled and I’m sure he was giving Tommy the ‘you’re a hypocrite’ look because there are ten years between Tommy and Tia.

“All right, all right. Get the fuck outta here. I got my eye on you.”

I love my big brothers. Both of them. They are bad asses who wouldn’t hesitate to pull a gun on someone to protect us.

But their hearts are in the right places.

2 Years Later

We spent almost a year trying to get pregnant. It was hard on us, especially her. I started to wonder if it was a punishment for all I’d done wrong. My penance would be that I wouldn’t be able to give her kids. Maybe the baby Debbie aborted hadn’t been mine. Maybe I couldn’t even father a child.

The doctor said it was my wife that had medical challenges, not me, and that although it wasn’t out of the question, it would be difficult to get pregnant.

I was not relieved. She felt like a failure. It was so rough on her that I wished it’d been me that was the problem, because the way she beat herself up over it was hard to watch. If it were my fertility that was the problem, she’d have adapted. It was who she was; always trying to be what I needed.

After several months of trying, a pattern began where she’d be happy a couple weeks a month and then she’d get anxious, try to hide it, and then be in the dumps when she got her period. Month after month waiting to do pregnancy tests, getting her period despite fucking like jackrabbits.

And then she wanted to talk adoption, surrogacy, being foster parents, something. She had all this love to give and wanted to shower it on children. Our nieces and nephews adoredher. She really was finding herself again. Laughing, living, giving me love in a way that I knew I’d never want anyone but her. She spent a lot of time with our nieces and nephews to get her fix, especially Tommy and Tia’s little Carina, who absolutely lit up every time she saw her Auntie Angel. We were the resident babysitters, after Sarah of course.

I wanted to give it more time. I wasn’t against raising kids that weren’t mine biologically or against having our baby carried by someone else, so long as we knew they were healthy and responsible, but we were still young; there wasn’t a ticking timer yet.

I was okay with waiting a couple years to see if we got our own baby the normal way first. I encouraged her to maybe go back to teaching, spending her day with kids, while we waited it out. We got along great. Life was beautiful with just the two of us for now.

She didn’t wanna wait, told me that if we couldn’t get pregnant, there were kids who needed parents now, and I gotta say, it thrilled me to no end when she put her foot down and got in my face about starting right away.

The sass was coming out more and more. More and more I got my sassy cowgirl from that bull riding video. My Angel still had fire outside the bedroom, and she felt safe enough to show it to me when it really counted for her.

Of course, I relented, bursting into laughter after her fit, which got her upset and made her throw a bigger fit. It was a good sign about her state of mind. She practically melted when I explained that my glee wasn’t over her frustration, rather her ability to let that show. She felt safe with me, safe to be herself. And she was everything I wanted.

Her face was red. “I don’t know what the fuck is so funny about this!”

I’d grabbed her and pinned her on the bed and she didn’t even show a shred of fear.

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