Page 42 of My Monster, My Choice

“I know.” And because I can’t help myself, I turn my head slightly and kiss the bare skin of his arm. God, I missed him.

I wish I could give him what he wants.

“Kenny asked me to spend the night. Said we could build a fort.”

If we were a real couple, no one would blink at him staying the night. Staying every night. He used to stay with us six months ago, before Relion and Tera returned home. Relion used to stay with Tera way before they’d mated. Eden was a bit less reserved than the rest of Earth, but we were all catching up now that the President is gone. He’d ruled with an iron fist.

I’m feeling generous and full of baby love, so I whisper, “So are you staying?”

His bicep tenses below my cheek before he rumbles out, “Already have my bags moved in.”

That was what he was doing earlier when I’d locked him out of the house.

I’m a shrew because that tensing of his bicep means he’s waiting for me to spew vitriol.

Instead, I focus on Telilah. “She’s the most beautiful baby ever, isn’t she?”

“She is,” Elex says, and I feel his lips press to the top of my head. “But rumors around Earth say that your legs will get stamped out. That all children are being born with tentacles.”

“I’d heard that,” I say softly.

“It’s what your president was spewing. It raised a lot of concern and scared people. Now we have to visit communities, soothe the fear.”

“Why do we care? It’s not like anyone is chopping off our legs to replace them with tentacles. Our children are being born to adapt. I always wondered why Earth was seventy percent water. We just polluted it. But maybe we might have evolved to swim with tentacles too, had we cherished our oceans.”

“People are afraid of change,” Elex says. “They refuse to just accept that sometimes things are different and it’s okay. Like Kenny. He’s perfect. I wouldn’t have him any other way.”

That makes my heart melt. “Really?”

“Really. The way he giggles right before he teases, letting you know it’s coming. The way he gets so excited he wiggles his hands and fingers.”

I smile at the image his words conjure. “Tera and I had a hard time not laughing constantly when he’d pull his antics. He was angry with me once when I’d first enrolled him in his school. They called us for a meeting. Tera and I showed up, panicked at what he could have possibly done. The principal told me, with a straight face, he refused to remove his hat.”

“His hat?”

I nod, lifting my head from his shoulder. “Except he didn’t wear a hat. I remember looking at Tera so confused. Then the principal opened the door to her office to show Kenny sitting there, wearing a pair of black panties on his head.”

His loud laughter is exactly what I expect, but Telilah looks at him in alarm, and then smiles when he reaches for her and spreads her out to our combined laps.

“And instead of taking Kenny to task, somehow Tera and I ended up arguing over whose panties they were.”

“Whose were they?”

I giggle. He definitely belongs with us. No one else would care, but our crazy little family finds that obnoxious detail important.

“Mine,” I sigh. “He was angry with me, after all. And more mortifying was me asking the principal if they were at least clean.” I squeeze my eyes shut with the memory and after a while, laugh along with Elex’s rolling chuckles.

“Did he go home that day?”

“Oh, yeah. His choice was to take off the hat or go home. He refused. We brought him home and wrested the damn panties from his head, where he cursed us out, calling us names from the food items in the fridge.”

“I thought those were love terms?” He frowns in confusion.

Yes, Tera had used endearments for Relion like Kenny used to.

“They are. He was calling us the stuff he didn’t like. Avocado face. Tuna turnip. Beet butt.” I giggle at the memory. “Rumors were that avocado is good for the face. Can you imagine that food was once so plentiful, women used to waste it on their skin?” I chuckle again.

“He called me eggplant pudding when I left,” Elex says, his voice a little hopeful.

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