As promised, here's futuretake one of seven. I'll post one a day for a week, along with an uncovered piece of my new WIPs cover (over in my reader group, CiaraShayee's Dreamers on FB). Come join us there to see it before anybody else!
Waves of Hope
Daddy Daycare
Edward ~ August 5th 2023
"You're sure you'll be okay?"
Chuckling, I tug Bella's lip from between her teeth, brushing a kiss over her forehead. "We'll be fine, short stuff. I mean, really...how hard can it be? It'll be a piece of cake."
Her eyebrows shoot up and a smirk plays on her lips. Instead of letting her say what I'm sure was going to be a scathing retort, I catch her mouth in a kiss and don't pull away until a screech from down the hall is echoed in the baby monitor on the nightstand.
Grinning up at me, she wipes her lipstick from my mouth and reminds me that she's just a phone call away.
"We'll be fine, Bella. Don't worry. Have fun with your girls."
I lean in the bedroom doorway to watch her go, my heart aching as she kisses her fingertips and brushes them against the nursery door on her way toward the stairs. If she goes in and the babies see her, it'll be game over. She'll never get out of here and she's been looking forward to this shopping trip with no babies or kids hanging all over her all week.
And besides, she has no need to worry. The guys are all coming over and we're going to start work on the playhouse Bella has been requesting for the kids. She thinks it'll look great tucked on the border of our new property, under the shade of the trees but still within view of where the back deck will go.
It'll be me, Dad, Charlie, both my brothers, Benjamin, and Emmett against our collective gaggle of kids—that's seven grown men against fourteen kids. Two each, and most of them are old enough to take care of themselves anyway, really.
We have great odds.
Like I told Bella, it'll be a piece of cake.
It's possible my 'it's my birthday' good mood is lending me a little too much confidence, as I'll soon discover.
~ oOo ~
"Why do I smell shit?"
"Sit! Sit, Sully, sit!" Rylee parrots, Sullivan groaning when I shoot him a half-hearted glare from my spot on the floor where I'm scrubbing 'sit' off the hardwood. Dad has the filthy culprits in the tub right now, both Mackenzie and Asher giggling their heads off down the hall.
"Sorry, bro." Scooping Rylee off the floor, Sullivan fuels the fire further by muttering 'fuck' as he snatches Bella's aloe vera plant out of River's hands.
"Duck!" Rylee squeals, clapping her hands, and honestly I just give up. At this point, only two hours in, I've considered calling Bella maybe twenty times. The babies are hyped up on the Lucky Charms Emmett gave them before I realized what he was doing. The big kids are over the babies and want to do their own thing, but the babies want to follow their older siblings and cousins, so they're tearing up the baby jail and screaming bloody murder.
Jasper, Dad, and Charlie are outside attempting to follow the playhouse assembly instructions, but I really can't see the damn thing getting done today, not with all this chaos.
"Dad, where's my Jeep?" Arlo yells as he wanders into the kitchen, brushing his mop out of his face with a frown when he spots me on the floor with a bucket of soapy, shitty water in front of me and a scowl on my face. "What are you doing?"
Huffing, I dump the sponge into the water and snap off the rubber gloves, making a mental note to replace them because Bella will lose her mind when she sees how stretched these are now. "The little twins took off their diapers."
"Ah…" Arlo tries to stifle his grin. He fails miserably. "I have an idea to keep them busy. It involves—"
"Do you know what? I don't care what it involves as long as they aren't going to break their necks."
His grin widens, mischief lighting his dark eyes. "They won't."
Shrugging, I give him the go ahead and pray his big idea isn't something that will make Bella divorce me later.
Thirty minutes later, when the babies are squealing and smiling and happy as pigs in shit—not the real kind this time, thank fuck—I pull my shirt over my head and flash the guys a grin as we get to work for real.
Dad shakes his head, tipping his beer bottle at the babies chasing Arlo's RC Jeep. "He's a genius."
The babies were interested in the toy anyway. Throw in the pack of Goldfish Arlo taped to the roof and they're sold. They'll chase that thing until the bag is empty and then probably want a nap to boot. Win-win.
I take a moment to lament the fact that the babies were clean, and now they're covered in orange Goldfish dust which will be a nightmare to wash off of them later, before shaking it off and chuckling at their big smiles. "I wish I'd thought of it myself. They're going to be wiped after all this crawlin' and runnin' around."
"Running?" Sullivan snorts. "More like staggering. They're like little drunk people."
"Oh yeah, they definitely take after their uncle," Emmett ribs, nudging Sullivan with his elbow as he carries a new round of beers over from the cooler.
Jasper nods, cracking the top off his beer. "I've seen you at the club, wobblin' all over the place."
"Naw, he meant you, Jas," Sullivan says lightly, and I warm as I listen to the good-natured ribbing that follows as we all get stuck in with the playhouse, making sure to keep checking on the kids and the babies. There was a time when Jasper and Sullivan didn't really get on, their time together limited and Jasper's loyalty to Mom too strong for him to let our younger half-brother in.
That divide, the distance between them, is gone now. I look up toward the sky, hoping Mom can see us all living and laughing and loving each other, wishing she could be here to yell at me for letting the babies eat too many snacks and to snuggle the sweet grandbabies she'd have absolutely adored if she'd had the chance to meet them.
Tipping my bottle toward the sky, I send her my heartfelt thanks for raising me to be the man I am and pray for enough patience to make it through the day without Bella as the babies start squawking and Arlo yells that he's run out of Goldfish.
Bella
"Here you go, Rose." I smile as my sister reaches for her iced coffee, gulping it down without stopping. Reaching over to squeeze her hand, I remind her that Violet's only two months old and adjusting to being a mom is hard even without the added complications of her situation.
She twists the end of her hair between her fingers, a nervous tick she's had since she was little. "I just...it's so hard. I'm so tired and she just doesn't sleep."
"Preaching to the choir, girl," Carlie chimes in, returning from the bathroom just as Xavier arrives with our food.
"She's right, hon," Alice soothes, patting Rosalie's shoulder. "We're all moms here and we all know how you're feeling. This time is tough."
"A-freaking-men," Angela agrees, shaking her head as she laughs wryly. "I swear, I can't have slept more than twenty-four hours in Danny's whole first year of life."
Shooting her a sympathetic smile, Mom adds that she's only eight weeks into this gig and it's bound to be hard. Nobody is their best when they're sleep-deprived.
"I mean, Christ, the amount of times I did stupid things when I had newborns in the house...it's a wonder your father didn't have me committed!"
We all laugh at that, because we're all right—we're all moms here and we totally get it. We've all had newborns and we've all trudged through those sleepless days and nights of early parenthood. We've been there, got the t-shirts, and we're here for her.
"Tell you what, why don't you leave Violet with us tonight?"
Rosalie raises her eyebrows at me across the table, digging into her food. I smile, remembering the heavenly experience of being able to eat without a newborn in my arms or attached to my boob. It's easier with the sixers now that they're a year old and are mostly happy hanging out in their sixer table when we eat.
"You want to take my two-month-old and add her to your pack? Are you crazy?"
I shrug, thanking Xavier when he brings over the last of our food and heads off. "What's one more? You're going to be with us until late anyway, just leave her after the party. You can pick her up whenever you want tomorrow. We're just going to be by the pool all day anyway. She can hang out with me and the babies."
I can see her mulling it over, the indecision in her eyes, the wondering if it would make her a bad mom, so I offer her a reassuring smile. "Think about it. You can decide later, okay?"
"Yeah, okay. Thanks, Bella."
"You're welcome. Now, let's eat. I'm freaking starving after all that shopping!"
"Did you get everything you wanted?" Alice asks, pulling the tomatoes out of her burger.
"I think so…" I run through my mental checklist, checking things off as I go. "I didn't get the banners, but there are some out the back for when we have parties here, so I'll just steal a couple of those."
Today is Edward's forty-third birthday.
Sticking to tradition, we're throwing a pool party. This year will probably be the last that we throw at Mom and Dad's though, seeing as this time next year we'll be in our new house with more than enough room to host everybody. I'm excited to get in there and make it our own, to fill it with the things that will turn it into our home.
Memories.
~ oOo ~
Piling out of the cars laden with shopping bags and food for the men and kids, we head inside expecting to find them all camped out in front of the TV. There's a game on, I think. I'm sure Dad said that.
But the living room is both silent and empty. As is the kitchen, and it's only when I step further into the room that I spot them.
"Uh, so..."
"Yeah," Angela says, fanning herself with her hand.
"What's going on? Where's the hold-up?" Carlie asks, peering around me. Her eyes widen and a smirk appears on her face. "Well, hell. I hope y'all are thirsty. There's plenty of tall glasses out there to go around."
Crowding in the open doors looking out over the back yard, we take the opportunity to stare unnoticed. My eyes are obviously drawn to Edward, his broad shoulders and muscles flexing in the sun. He's forty-three today and takes my breath away even more than he did fifteen years ago when I was just a heart-eyed teenager mooning over her first unrequited love.
"What are they doing?" Mom wonders.
"Who cares? Look at them go." Carlie wolf whistles and that's what busts us. It's the kids, not the men, that notice us though.
"Mom!" Angela catches Freya as she squeals and runs to her, catching the attention of Dad, Carlisle, Jasper, Edward, Sullivan, Benjamin, and Emmett. They put down their tools and flash smiles our way, only making the calendar-worthy picture better.
I'm not about to drool over my dad, father-in-law, or brothers-in-law, but I can objectively say that there'd be a queue of women from here to Timbuktu if we could persuade our guys to pose for a calendar.
Add in a bunch of cute kids and…wait.
It takes a second or twenty for me to realize exactly what's going on, but when it clicks, my eyebrows shoot up toward my hairline.
"Are they...Cheetos?"
Edward's gaze follows mine. The second it lands on Arlo's remote control Jeep—and by default, the babies stumbling after it like wolves chasing down a deer—he grimaces. "They were getting restless in the pen," he rushes to explain.
"They're having fun, Mom!" Arlo grins, driving the Jeep all over the grass while the babies chase the bag of Cheetos taped to the roof. Every now and then it goes over a bump and a couple of Cheetos fall out, the babies scrambling to get them.
Incidentally, it's true what they say.
You sterilise the shit out of everything your first baby touches. By the ninth, you're over it.
I'm not sure if I'm more amused or annoyed, so I look away from the gaggle of babies chasing Cheetos and, for the first time, notice the state of the yard. There are half-finished bottles on the low table next to the couches—the ones I gave the babies before heading out hours ago. There are also two empty packs of Goldfish and the diaper bag dumped out all over the seat and the deck. My eyes and feet follow the trail of destruction into the house, a big sigh rushing from my lungs.
I didn't notice on my way in, too distracted by my search for the guys and kids, but the house looks like a hurricane tore through. The toy bin has been turned over in the middle of the baby jail—or gated community, as my mom calls it—and there's dirt all over the hardwood from my tipped-over aloe vera plant.
The kitchen is in the same disarray, lunch dishes piled high in the sink and bowls with remnants of baby food still sitting on the high chair trays.
"I'll clear it all up," Edward says ruefully, rubbing his beard as he looks around at the mess, the children's giggles riding the breeze through the open doors.
Pursing my lips to stifle my smile, I slip my arms around his waist, pressing myself against his bare, sun-warmed chest, kissing the spot right over his thumping heart. "Too right." Smirking up at him, I arch an eyebrow. "Can I assume you're regretting that flippant comment you made right before I left, or…?"
He snorts, one hand at the small of my back to hold me against him, the other slipping into the hair at my nape. "I regretted it about five minutes after you left when Asher had a diaper blow-out and Mackenzie helped him smear it all over the floor."
Forehead to his chest, I laugh until I'm breathless, and he sighs at my evident amusement. "Maybe next time we'll divide and conquer," I offer, peering up at his crooked smile and beautiful, soft green eyes. "Maybe daddy daycare isn't quite up to the challenge of all the kids at once just yet."
Now don't forget to run along to my reader group for the first teaser of my new WIP ;)