Page 121 of Reaper and Ruin
I just kept listening for the kids to call out.
I was convinced they were having nightmares with me covered in blood and wielding a knife at the center of them. I got up at least a dozen times and poked my head into their room, but each time was the same, both of them completely dead to the world, snuggled up and cozy, their expressions gentle and soft in the dim glow of the night-light.
X and Levi slept in the living room, X sprawled out on the couch, one arm dangling down to the floor. Levi in a recliner.They opened their eyes every time I tiptoed around them, and their fingertips reached for me each time I passed by.
By the time the sun rose, the kids seemed to be the only ones well-rested. Whatever hesitations they’d had the night before had disappeared, and they played together noisily, dragging X into every game and using Levi as target practice for a Nerf gun war.
I was pretty sure it was X who caught Levi with a dart right between his eyebrows, but X swore blindly it was Ari with a hella accurate aim.
Trigger, Ace, and Torch came to the door midmorning, and Whip, Levi, and I stepped outside to talk to them while X moderated the Nerf gun war that raged inside.
Trig folded his arms across his broad chest. “We just wanted to check in and make sure you were all okay.”
Whip put his arm around my shoulders. “We are. Thanks for last night.”
Trig nodded. “Don’t mention it.”
Will’s happy shout of surprise as X or Ari caught him echoed out from inside.
Trig turned toward the sound then back to us. “We went through the entire house. Found these.” He pulled some folded papers from the back pocket of his jeans and handed them to me.
I unfolded them gingerly and stared down at them. “The kids’ birth certificates.”
“They really were the biological kids of those two assholes in that house. Gray’s friend got back to him, and he asked us to let you know that they’ve had no record of foster kids living in that house in the last decade. They removed their license.”
My fingers shook as I gripped the paper. “And yet they did nothing about the two biological children the two of them had. Unbelievable.”
“So, what do we do now?” Levi asked. “There’s two kids in there who witnessed Violet kill a man last night.”
And yet this morning Ari had woken up and shyly walked up to me and hugged my legs. It hadn’t lasted long, but it was clear to me that her watching me kill Travis hadn’t made her fear me.
It had made her love me.
It was a trauma bond, no doubt. I’d killed a man who’d hurt her. Taken her out of a house where she and her brother had been neglected. Forming a real relationship with her would be hard and filled with ups and downs, but in my mind, I had already decided what we were doing with those two kids inside that house.
“We keep them,” Whip and I said in almost perfect unison.
A smile spread across his lips that was so contagious I could feel it on mine as well.
We both looked to Levi.
My heart pounded; I was scared he was going to say no. That pregnancy test I’d taken felt like a fever dream, but it was wrapped up in tissues in my purse. We had written each other ridiculous letters for over a year, letters where we’d confessed every hope and dream we had for the future. We’d talked about kids being a part of it.
But neither of us had considered a ready-made family falling in our laps.
Or finding out I was pregnant the very same day.
I needed him to respond well. Needed him to tell me it would all be okay because I was spiraling on the inside. Sure of what I wanted, no doubt, but terrified he or X wouldn’t want what Whip and I so clearly did.
The front door swung open, and Will barreled out of it, Nerf gun in hand, bellowing out a war cry. Ari and X followed a moment later, Nerf darts shooting in every direction, the three of them chasing each other around the yard.
A slow smile spread across Levi’s face as he caught a dart to the shoulder and clutched it dramatically. “I’m shot! I’m going down!”
His knees hit the dirt, and the kids ran over, laughing hysterically, attacking him with more rounds until he lifted his hands zombie-style to tickle their bellies.
He winked at me when they ran off laughing and he rolled to his feet to chase them. His lips landed on my cheek, just below my ear as he said, “Of course they’re ours.”
X spun around. “What? Who? Who’s ours? Are we keeping them? Do Harold and Reginald have a big brother and sister?”
