Page 122 of Reaper and Ruin

He said it so loudly the kids both stopped and stared at me too.

My gaze caught X’s. A moment of silence passed between us, where words didn’t need to be said, because the connection between us was already there.

I needed him to confirm it before I said anything to the kids. There were four of us in this relationship. We all needed to agree.

But God, my heart so wanted him to say yes.

I’d never seen a more genuine smile on his face. He stormed across the yard, picked me up, and spun me in a circle. “Hell. Fucking. Yes.”

Giddy joy spread through me.

He set me down, checking I was steady before he held his arms out to Whip. “Your turn for a spin!”

Whip opened his mouth, no doubt to threaten X with deadly violence, but X held up one finger. “Uh! No threatening to kill me in front of our children!”

The kids stared between the four of us with huge eyes. But it was Ari, actually the older twin by minutes according to her birth certificate, who asked the question I knew they were both thinking.

“We’re your kids now?”

Oh God. I didn’t know what to say. It couldn’t be that easy. I doubted we could just adopt them legally. We would need to somehow get paperwork that would be good enough to pass if their guardianship was ever questioned. But we knew many men who had…questionable skills…and I would have bet money at least one of them would know how to get that done.

We would need to learn how to be parents. We’d need to work out where we could all live. Not only were we committing to these kids, to give them the stable home they’d never had, but we were committing to each other.

To a real, permanent bond.

One I knew was already there, cemented in the tiny baby growing in my belly that linked us all, no matter who had fathered it.

X nodded. Levi and Whip did too.

I stared down at Will and Ari. “Would you like that? To stay here with us and for us to take care of you? For us to be your parents?”

Will cocked his head to one side. “What do I call you though?”

Whip laughed. “Whatever you want. Whip. Or Wyatt.”

Ari’s voice was quiet. “But if you’re going to be our parents, shouldn’t we call you Dad?”

My heart stopped at the expression on Whip’s face.

But he very quietly got to his knees, so he and Ari were the same height. “If the day ever comes when you want to call me Dad, then I will be honored.”

That was too much for my hormones and for my heart. A tear slipped down my face.

Ari turned away, not committing to calling Whip Dad but not saying she wouldn’t either.

That was more than enough for right now. What they called us didn’t matter. They would find what suited them best, and we would let them call us whatever they wanted.

All that mattered was in that moment, the six of us, or seven if you counted the baby I hadn’t told anyone about, became a family.

37

VIOLET

Icouldn’t stop staring at the twins’ birth certificates. More specifically, the names of their parents, written in little black, nonthreatening letters that gave away no sign of the cruel, horrible people they were.

How they had created the two children who currently sat on the floor at my feet, X in the middle of them, reading from a stack of books he’d brought over earlier in the day, was baffling to me.

“Again!” Ari shouted when X finished the fifth picture book for the second time. Then she quickly added, “Please.”