Page 104 of Riff

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.

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