Page 100 of A Little Bit Reckless
There was no point in running a tally. All our children were badasses, and they took after their moms. They were all here too of course: Greer, Knight’s wife, Brielle, and December. They were Ramses’s and Royal’s wives respectively, and, of course, my Cleo was here beside me. Between all us parents and kids we nearly took up an entire row of Pembroke University’s Memorial Stadium. Well, not quite, but we did take up a lot of fucking seats.
“Yeah, go D!” Wells yelled. He even stood up on his seat like the joker he was. Like father like son. He cupped his mouth. “You earned that shit, bro!”
A healthy part of the crowd heard him and laughed. Dorian heard him too and shook his head before receiving his diploma. My son almost fell off his chair in all his excitement. He would have if not for his boyfriend, Bru. The guy grabbed him down, which was a feat with their girlfriend between them. Bow Reed, Knight’s daughter, flushed with all the attention they had garnered from my crazy kid. I assumed that was why she’d flushed, anyway. She tended to do that a lot.
After all the excitement (and my son returned to the floor), Wells put his arm around Bow. She had a bandage on her forehead, and Wells checked it before kissing her forehead. I liked to say I was surprised to see them together, but I wasn’t. Wells had always been fond of Bow, even if he hadn’t acted like it. He clearly had feelings for her, considering how protective he’d always been of her. That went double when they both were kids.
Iwassurprised when the three of them got together. The trio thing was different, but I had no problem with it. I just wanted to be sure Knight’s daughter was taken care of, but I didn’t have to think about that long when I saw the three of them together. The boys loved Bow, and I knew they were good guys, good men. The boys had bent over backward to be there for her after her accident.
Yeah, her accident.
All us parents had been terrified. Thankfully, Bow and Sloane were okay. Of course, right away Knight went into protector mode. He wanted vengeance for whatever fucker decided to almost hit two of our children, then run.
All us parents felt the same way. We all wanted justice, but, even with Knight’s tech skills, no one knew who had driven that green SUV. There was no camera footage, and no one even caught a plate it’d all happened so fast.
I knew Knight was still at war with that. He might be hunting that ghost for the rest of our lives, and, though my friends and I would help him look, karma was a bitch, and that shit always caught up. That’d given me some peace, and I hope Knight got some, too. That and the fact that our kids were happy, healthy.
Cleo nudged me when our kids all returned to their seats, and I noticed a small smile tug at Knight’s lips. I tapped his shoulder in acknowledgement of him accepting his daughter’srelationships; I knew he struggled with his daughter having two boyfriends.
But he saw our children sitting together,happy.Wells still had his arm around Bow, and around Bru. He had a hand gripping Bru’s neck while Bru’s hand had Bow’s in the center. The three of them had found serenity, and, in the end, that was all I wanted for our children. That was all I wanted formykid.
I was proud of him too.
“Come in.”
I opened the door and came in to see my son fiddling with a tie. With as many events as I made my kid go to, he still couldn’t manage it. It was undone, and he had a suit jacket on his bed. It matched his dark pants that had a similar check pattern.
He was getting dressed rather formally for a graduation after-party, but I wouldn’t question it. Any time I could get my kid in something that didn’t have a barbecue stain on it, I celebrated the fact. He grew up around the food service industry since I owned a bunch of fast-food chains. Needless to say, he was always getting into something.
Laughing at him and his tie issues, I closed the door of his childhood bedroom. “Here. Let me help.”
“Thank God,” Wells breathed out.
This wasn’t what he’d worn to Ares, Dorian, and Sloane’s semi-formal graduation party.
I mentioned that to Wells as I fixed his tie, and he froze.
“Just want to look nice, Dad,” he said. The story was that he and the other kids were going to a club. They wanted to celebrate Ares, Dorian, and Sloane after the party their parents threw earlier.
I wasn’t sure about that, and, if I knew any of our kids, they were up to something. I think the general consensus in my group chat with my friends was the same. We, their parents, weren’t idiots, but we also knew they were adults. If they were getting into something, we could trust them… I guess.
“Make good choices,” I said, sounding like a fuckingdad. I hadn’t really grown up with one and cringed every time I sounded like one.
I still loved my dad, though. We’d gotten really close over the years, and I respected him. Even still, I didn’t want tosoundlike him. He was really fucking serious, and I prided myself on never sounding too serious.
I think Wells got that from me, and he laughed until I pushed that tie right up to his neck. I wasn’t joking about making good choices.
“Don’t I always?” he stated before loosening the tie a little from his neck. I wasn’t sure about that either, but I did know he’d changed so much over the last few months. For starters, he’d actually be graduating next year as long as he continued to do the work. He’d managed to get his grades up, and I knew a lot of that had to do with Bow. Between her and Bru, who was also brilliant, my son had managed to make a great turnaround.
Because of that, I pulled something out of my pocket.
“What’s this?” Wells asked, opening it. His dark brows jumped. “Are you serious?”
I nodded. I pointed at him. “You still have to put in the work though. Graduate.”
His hustle really showed me what he could do. I wasn’t going to cut him off, and I also was going to give him the thing he wanted. I knew he really didn’t want to follow in my footsteps with the family business. I was a businessman through and through, and, though Wells had gotten some of that, he had more creative pursuits. I respected it.
“You’re paying for my culinary school… Full ride?” He stared in awe at the check made out to the school I knew he wanted to go to. He had pamphlets of the place everywhere and always talked about it. He smiled. “Thanks, Dad.”
