Page 1 of Hearts of Fairlake (Men of Fairlake #8)

Warmth. Comfort. Peace.

A crash. A shriek.

With a jerk, I sat up in bed and stared at the opposite wall, blinking slowly, trying to wrap my head around the noises coming from the opposite end of my house. A week of night shifts followed by attempting to crunch in parenthood had left me with a brain filled with fog and confusion as I winced at another shriek. This one, I figured out, was filled with outrage.

“Mine!”

That would be Amber.

“Mommmmyyyyy!”

Colin.

“Waaaahhhh.”

And Brendon.

Which did little to clear the confusion filling my thoughts. Why were they even here? My son and daughter were supposed to be being watched while Colin’s half-brother was cared for by someone other than me. My husband was supposed to be at work, and I was supposed to be catching a few winks of sleep before I dragged myself out of bed to gather my children.

“Alright, you three,” I heard Bri’s sharp voice speak up, echoing down the hallway. I’d left the bedroom door open so I would actually hear any noises because I’d collapsed on the bed after coming in from the night shift. “We’re just here to pick some things up. Colin, you’re not supposed to take… give it back to Amber.”

With a heavy groan, I rubbed my face as I heard Colin give a low whine of protest. At five, he was well past the ‘mine’ stage…in theory. The reality was that since the age of two, if he saw something, he was prone to grabbing it. For whatever reason, five was the year he decided that meant it was his if he got his hands on it.

So, I guess it was still a ‘mine’ stage.

Amber gave another cry, this one unintelligible. She was far less grabby than her brother but was extremely protective of things she considered hers. In all fairness, generally, she had a right to whatever she was protesting over. It was just the delivery of her outrage that typically found a way to the center of my brain and drilled deep.

Sighing, I rolled over and was quickly reminded I’d collapsed on the far edge of the bed to sleep. Gravity was a harsh mistress, and its accomplice, the floor, was no more forgiving. A grunt was ripped out of me as I slammed into the floor noisily, barely keeping my head from bouncing off the hardwood and the nightstand my dear, sweet husband had built a year before as a side project.

Where was Adam? Not shepherding the children, that was for sure, which begged the question of why Bri was here.

“Hello?” Bri’s voice was sharp and demanding, which came from her personality and years as a lawyer. “Adam? ?”

I could only groan as I lay staring under our bed and contemplating my life choices. I had no idea how much sleep I had gotten, but it was nowhere near enough. Then again, I probably needed an entire day of sleep before I’d feel human again. But to even function somewhat, I just required a few more hours.

Bri’s steps were as heavy as ever as they came down the hallway, and I didn’t move, even when they stopped in the doorway. There was a pause, and I was sure she was wondering what I was doing, lying face down on the floor, still wearing my uniform pants, one sock, and my undershirt.

I thought about explaining but instead sighed. “You know, Adam and I really need to remember to clean under things more often. There’s a dust bunny the size of a pit bull under here.”

“Why…are you not at work?” Bri asked, clearly ignoring my state and my words. Ever since she came to my lovely hometown of Fairlake just over five years ago, she’d dealt with me a lot. I doubted there was much I could do to faze her, especially after five years of motherhood on top of it.

“I’ve been working the night shift all week,” I whimpered. “Didn’t Adam tell you?”

“No, he did not,” Bri said, and I could hear the frown in her voice. What was funny was that when I first met Bri, I pretty much convinced myself she was a royal bitch. Not too far off the mark, she could be cutthroat and vicious when necessary, but…she generally wasn’t, only when provoked. “Something he should have mentioned because I would have waited till later to come by. Honestly, he doesn’t think sometimes, which should be your job. But here we are.”

Of course, I first met her after her and Adam’s divorce. My childhood best friend had returned to our hometown, tail between his legs, and looking to start anew, start on a good foot. Of course, that got a little complicated when he found out that I, his gay best friend, had been crazy about him since puberty and then found out he was a little less straight than he thought.

A dream come true for me for a while…until Bri showed up pregnant. In my mind, she had come to take Adam back to Boston with her, ruining the dream come true and turning it into my worst nightmare.

And now she was standing in the hallway of the house my husband and I had bought, her hands probably on her hips, annoyed not with me, but with Adam…in defense of me.

“It’s okay,” I said with a sigh, rolling over to look at her. “Sleep is for people who don’t have kids.”

“Like hell it is,” she said and winced, knowing her voice had echoed.

“Bad word!” Colin proclaimed from down the hallway.

“ Adult word,” Bri corrected with a shake of her head. “It’s an adult word, Colin. Only adults can use it, and Mommy is an adult. You’re not.”

Considering the lack of an answer, Colin was either thinking deeply or had already moved on to something else. In many ways, at least when he wasn’t having a meltdown over possessions or bugs, he was so much like his father it was unnerving. Possessing not only his dark hair and eyes, but a naturally solemn face and demeanor. And yes, despite being only five and having time to work on it before adulthood, he also tended to forget people in a frustrating way that sometimes left a sting.

“I’m awake,” I said, sitting up, only to whack my head on the underside of the nightstand and immediately lay down with a pained groan, hand flying to my head. “Fuck me.”

“Adult word!” Colin yelled down the hallway, clearly excited that he understood the concept. It was a new concept for all of us. I’d been advised to try it to prevent kids from repeating it and not have them chiding random people for using a bad word all the time .

“Yeah, buddy,” I groaned, sitting up carefully this time. “You got it right. Adult word.”

“Papa , okay?” he asked, his voice severe and filled with worry.

“In theory,” I muttered under my breath. “In practice? Not so much.”

“I think you have that backward,” Bri said in an amused voice. “Papa is okay, Colin. He was napping.”

“Papa , it’s too early for a nap!” Colin said in a matter-of-fact tone I knew he’d gotten from his mother. “Wake up!”

“I’m awake,” I repeated, standing up. “So, what are you doing here?”

“Stopping by to grab a few things for the kids that Adam forgot to drop off. Something else for me to get on his ass about,” Bri said, frowning heavily. “I don’t know how you haven’t managed to get that through his thick skull. You’ve had six years.”

“And how many years did you have with him?” I asked with a heavy yawn. “With no success. And if I didn’t get through to him when we were friends, what makes you think I’ll manage as his husband? At this point, I’m stuck with him as he is.”

Which, at face value, sounded incredibly ungrateful and bitchy, though considering my much-needed sleep had been violated, I was probably justified. Adam was a fantastic husband and an amazing father. There were several reasons why teenage me had fallen head over heels for him, and it wasn’t just his good looks and phenomenal body, though that helped.

That didn’t mean he didn’t know how to piss me off sometimes, and most people agreed that was quite a feat.

Bri’s expression softened. “Do you want to be the one to give him hell? ”

“And take the fun from you? Perish the thought,” I said with a grin.

Bri arched a brow. “You’re just saying that because by the time you get around to yelling at him, you’ll have already forgiven him.”

I sighed. “C’mon Bri, he’s just as preoccupied with shit as I am. Between the kids, keeping his business going, and now the orders for the upcoming celebration pouring in. He’s got a lot on his plate.”

“Last I checked, you were doing plenty,” she said, arching her brow further.

“If you keep doing that, your eyebrow is going to meld with your hair, and Ethan will never let you hear the end of it,” I warned.

The brow dropped into a scowl that was meant to warn me. “What is it with you men?”

“What?” I asked, blinking in confusion.

“Do you really think bringing my annoying brother up to annoy me is right when I’m standing here, trying to defend you?”

“What?”

She rolled her eyes to the ceiling and sighed. “?”

“Yes?”

“How much sleep have you had in the past week?”

“Uhh…that’s a tricky question.”

“In seven days, have you had more or less than twenty?”

“Ummm…yes?”

“That wasn’t a…never mind, that answers my question. Let’s try an easier one, what did you do to piss off Trevor?”

At that, I gave her a sheepish grin. “Honestly? Nothing. We all had rotating shifts for the night shift, but it’s been more demanding with the festival, and I ended up…kind of volunteering.”

Fairlake’s one-hundred-fiftieth anniversary was coming up, and the entire town was losing its mind in preparation. It would be the only kind of celebration the neighboring town of Fovel couldn’t match, and not just because their town’s anniversary was a different date, but they still had another decade and a half before they even reached a century.

One hundred and fifty years of history was pretty impressive, and there were families in Fairlake that still had connections to the founders or close to it. Isaiah’s birth family was one of those, though the assholes, for the most part, refused to acknowledge him because of his ‘audacity’ to live his life openly gay. Then again, the Enders weren’t a part of Fairlake anymore, which left only him. Our mayor had apparently privately approached Isaiah to be the family's representative.

It was honestly, in my opinion, a pretty kind offer. It treated Isaiah as a part of the town rather than his entire family and allowed him a chance to snub his family harder than he already had. There was plenty of reluctance on his part for reasons I didn’t fully know or understand, but he still had time to decide. In the meantime, the rest of the town, including myself, were running around like crazy to make the festival greater than any we’d done in the past fifty years.

“I’ll try to pretend like I didn’t hear that you brought this on yourself,” she said, walking away. “Lay back down. I’ll be out of here in a minu?—”

I peered around her, smiling when I saw Amber standing quietly in the hallway, hand resting against her mouth. Over two years ago, I had attended a domestic violence call in the rougher part of Fairlake. The DV had been a homicide by the time I got there, and considering the man’s behavior and the size of his pupils, I guessed that our ‘former’ meth problem wasn’t quite so former.

And there, in that rundown trailer, had been a little girl, barely a year old. From what we’d learned later, Amber had been mistreated, and when she wasn’t being abused, she was being neglected. Months of starvation and being left to sit crying for hours in her own mess had done the kind of harm she would probably struggle with for the rest of her life.

And me? I’d taken one look at that whimpering, pitiful child and watched how her cries stopped when she saw me. I knew what had to be done. It had taken another six months, but with Captain Price’s help and Adam’s support, we added Amber to the household right alongside Colin, and I never regretted it for a moment.

“Hi, sweet girl,” I said softly, immediately crouching and holding out my hands. With the same complete lack of hesitation, she darted toward me and hopped up to wrap her arms around my neck as I stood. “Are you being good to Aunt Bri?”

She held her hand to her mouth still. It was her replacement for sucking her thumb, which had been an on-again, off-again struggle. This at least wouldn’t hurt her teeth, but I also knew it didn’t comfort her quite as much. The result was she was clingier with the people she trusted, me most of all.

Bri snorted. “Well, so much for that. You’re back around her finger.”

“Where I belong,” I said, pulling Amber close. “How’s she been?”

Bri glanced at the little girl in my arms and shrugged. “She’s been doing better. She likes Keith better than me, but from what you told me?—”

I nodded to show I understood but said nothing that might fall on little ears. They might be too young to understand, but they still didn’t need to hear that Amber’s biological father had killed her biological mother in a fit of meth-induced psychosis. Or that it had been her mother who had acted out the abuse while the father had simply tuned her out. People could claim that kids didn’t remember those early months, but she’d been in my house for two years and was still wary and slow to trust most women.

“Papa !” Colin exclaimed when I appeared in the living room, a grin on his face as I saw the child-safe version of Legos he’d pulled out of the bag and dumped in the middle of the floor. “I’m gonna build just like Dad.”

“What was it last week?” I asked Bri.

“He was going to wear suits and yell at bad guys.”

“Hmm, so he went from his mother to his father’s career in a week. You have to give him credit for ambition, lacking in planning and execution, but plenty of drive.”

Bri rolled her eyes. “I love that Adam gets ‘build stuff,’ and my job is simplified to yelling at people.”

“I distinctly remember you saying that yelling at people was the best part of your job,” I said as I retrieved an energy drink from the fridge and cracked it open.

“You get less of it around here,” she admitted.

I peered out the front kitchen window and raised a brow at a familiar truck sitting in the driveway across the road. “Huh, I thought Adam was at the shop.”

Bri leaned forward to follow my gaze, looking across the street to find Adam standing outside talking to his parents. “He mentioned he’d be there all day. Asked me, practically pleaded, if I’d take an extra hour or two to watch all three.”

Technically, Brendon was her and Keith’s son, but considering Colin was his half-brother and Amber was around constantly, he was looped in to make it a trio. Adam and I kept Amber with us, while she and Keith kept Brendon, and Colin looped back and forth smoothly. That didn’t mean there weren’t plenty of times that swapping occurred or someone ended up with three kids, which was precisely why there were enough beds in the kids' rooms to accommodate them .

“He hasn’t noticed your car,” I said, sipping my drink. “I bet.”

“It’s…right there,” Bri said, unbelieving. “I mean, he can be dense, but…oh God, his mom is pointing over here.”

“That she is,” I said as, sure enough, Diane gestured toward our driveway. Only to see Adam’s eyes go wide. “And there’s the love of my life realizing he might have made a mistake.”

I couldn’t help but smile when I saw him wave his mom off quickly, kissing her on the cheek and not even bothering to get into his truck. Instead, he hurried across the road, making for our house rapidly. Even from a distance, I could see the exasperation on Diane’s face as she shook her head. I knew full well she would go in and tell her husband what a fool of a son they raised…fondly, of course.

Adam made it to the path leading to our front door before he stopped and stared at the window. I tilted my head and then glanced down at Amber. “Well, look who it is.”

The hand at her mouth had balled up, but the other raised as she waved with a smile on her chubby face. Adam’s shoulders sagged before he waved back and continued walking into the house. Unsurprisingly, the sight of him brought Colin from his current architectural endeavor and he flew across the room to meet his father in the hall.

“Typical,” Bri said, sounding grumpy.

“He is and probably forever will be a daddy’s boy,” I said with a chuckle.

“Bad enough, it already looks like all I did was carry his DNA for nine months,” she grumbled, but I didn’t take her seriously. She might have originally come to Fairlake to see if she and Adam could work things out and, admittedly, had been pretty pissed when he shot her down. Then again, he had told her that right after she’d given birth. Not the best timing in the world. But in the end, she stayed, finding her place in the town and more than comfortable working with Adam and me to ensure Colin never went without a loving family.

“Hey, buddy,” I heard from the hall, Adam sounding pleased but tired. He emerged from the hallway, Colin on his hip. I was beginning to wonder how much longer before we had to stop picking him up as often. Bri complained endlessly that he grew like a weed and she should have had a kid with a shorter man, and I couldn’t blame her. Buying new clothes for Colin had become a noticeable expense, and he would probably end up as big as his father.

“Well, well, well,” Bri said, hands on her hips. “Did someone forget to mention something to me today?”

“Why are you here?” Adam asked, glancing at me furtively, trying to gauge my mood, which could be summed up as tired.

“Well, along with something else ,” she said, glancing toward me. “You also forgot to include the bathing suits, like I told you. I had one for Colin, but not Amber. So I stopped by to pick some up.”