Page 125 of Other Side Of Never
I also enrolled Jake in the local high school.
Isaiah was fascinated by Jake, his mind spinning all kinds of scenarios as he tried to make sense of how they might be related.
He eventually settled on brothers seeing as they both called me mom.
Jake was taking a bit longer to settle, of course he was.Luckily, Aaron had taken him under his wing and was training him to work in the pool house at The Sage Ridge Resort.
I went from striking out on my own to being a mother of two, a stepmother, and a grandmother-to-be all at once.I had friends who were more like family, and a family that was all mine.
Susie cried when I drove her out to my new house and showed her the kitchen Kian built for me behind the house.
Fishing a tissue out of her purse, she blew her nose.“Tell me, please, you’re quitting the diner.”
I nodded.“I’ll give you time to find someone else.”
She shook her head.“No need.I’m selling it.I was just waiting for you.”
Once Kian gave his family the news of our engagement, he couldn’t hold them off any longer.
The entire family landed in Sage Ridge en masse, booking themselves an entire floor at Harley’s resort for a week where we had nightly bonfires.They embraced Aaron and Nadine as I knew they would.I’d never seen Aaron laugh as much or as hard as he did when surrounded by his motley crew of aunts and uncles.
Especially Finn.
And Kian’s sisters got on like a house on fire with my girls.
Things went back to normal, or as normal as things got in Sage Ridge, when they left.
Me and my girls spent an inordinate amount of time hanging out in my kitchen.With all of us taking turns holding Cami, Harley bounced back to her regular feisty self in no time.
Noelle, however, was ready to burst, and burst she did, going into labor one afternoon in early November while we were making chocolate for the Christmas season.
“Don’t call Hawk yet,” she ordered, giggling over the chocolate she’d just poured into the tray of penis molds she ordered.“I want to see how these turn out.”
“No fucking way,” Harley declared.“I’m not forfeiting my life over a bag of chocolate dicks.”
Hawkley barreled in fifteen minutes later, wrapping Noelle up in her coat, growling as she puttered around saying bye to everybody.
But when the first sharp pain hit, she gasped and doubled over.
“That’s it, Noelle.We’re leaving.Right now,” he demanded, his eyebrows crashing down.“You’re running up a tally it’s going to take a solid year to pay off.”
Noelle shimmied her shoulders, giving a soft cheer, “Woo Hoo!”
Harley pretended to stick her finger down the back of her throat.
Shaking his head, Hawkley steered her toward the door.Twisting around, Noelle looked back over her shoulder, yelling, “Bring my bag of dicks to the hospital, okay?”
“Now, there’s a sentence I never thought I’d hear,” Wren muttered.
Shae laughed, scooping her four-year-old daughter, Dylan, into her arms.
“I have a baggadicks too, Mama?”
Wren cast her eyes to the ceiling.“Oh my God.”
Two weeks later, we were back again, this time with Noelle’s tiny daughter, Christy, in tow.
At the counter, I stood checking my kettles.A surprising number of orders were coming in from the good people of Sage Ridge.Not enough to make a living, but a decent start.
