Total pages in book: 119
Estimated words: 113056 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 377(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 113056 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 377(@300wpm)
I wanted to give it more time. I wasn’t against raising kids that weren’t mine biologically or against having our baby carried by someone else, so long as we knew they were healthy and responsible, but we were still young; there wasn’t a ticking timer yet.
I was okay with waiting a couple years to see if we got our own baby the normal way first. I encouraged her to maybe go back to teaching, spending her day with kids, while we waited it out. We got along great. Life was beautiful with just the two of us for now.
She didn’t wanna wait, told me that if we couldn’t get pregnant, there were kids who needed parents now, and I gotta say, it thrilled me to no end when she put her foot down and got in my face about starting right away.
The sass was coming out more and more. More and more I got my sassy cowgirl from that bull riding video. My Angel still had fire outside the bedroom, and she felt safe enough to show it to me when it really counted for her.
Of course, I relented, bursting into laughter after her fit, which got her upset and made her throw a bigger fit. It was a good sign about her state of mind. She practically melted when I explained that my glee wasn’t over her frustration, rather her ability to let that show. She felt safe with me, safe to be herself. And she was everything I wanted.
Her face was red. “I don’t know what the fuck is so funny about this!”
I’d grabbed her and pinned her on the bed and she didn’t even show a shred of fear.
“It’s not funny, it’s fuckin’ amazing.”
“What the fuck is amazing?” she’d snapped.
“Angelbaby, my beautiful wife. You feelin’ safe enough to throw a fit and push to get what you want, to tell me how important something is to you rather than shrinking away with a ‘Yes, Master’. It’s beautiful. You’re beautiful and I’ll do everything in my power to give you whatever it is that you want.”
She melted into me. “Don’t you want it, too?”
“Babies with you? Definitely. If I never get a baby with you, I’m okay with just havin’ you. We’ll be everyone’s favorite aunt and uncle and everyone in the family’ll love us because we’ll offer to take their kids constantly. But if we get to be parents together, biological or otherwise? Yeah. I want that, too.”
I’d give my girl anything I could give her to try to make up for what she’d been through. And besides, my queen deserved to have whatever the fuck she wanted in life just because.
We came to a compromise. Fertility drugs for a while to see if anything worked out. If they didn’t, we’d re-group and explore surrogacy or adoption. And if we got our family the natural way, in a couple years we’d seriously consider adopting anyway, to give some kid who needed a family, a family.
She skeptically went on fertility drugs but they worked like a charm; we got our wish. In triplicate.
Triplets on our second month of trying. Close to eight months after getting the news, we got our family. Two boys and a girl. Born early but very healthy.
Our first born: James, after my late brother-in-law Jimmy, with dark blond hair and sapphire blue eyes. He looks like me with his mother’s eyes. We call him Jamie.
Charles David, our little Charlie, after Angel’s dad’s best friend, middle name after her pop, he came next. He’s dark blond and blue-grey eyed, also looking like me.
And then we got our sapphire blue-eyed curly red-haired little girl. Darla Shae. Darla, a combination of Dario and Angelica. We got the Shae in short for Shayla after Lisa’s real name.
Leese sold Pop’s house but is still in our lives on an almost weekly basis because she’s become as close to Angel as she is to the other girls. We made her Darla’s godmother. She was thrilled about her secret little namesake.
Leese has started dating and she is heavily involved in fundraising for charities related to helping survivors of human trafficking. She does it quietly, never revealing anything about her personal experience. There may still be eyes on her. She wanted to help the Kruna victims we’d liberated. She couldn’t, of course, because there could be eyes on us, so it was a while before she could do what she wanted, and help other survivors.
We were approached by Stan Smith who approached on behalf of some remaining partners and expressed that we had no concerns whatsoever about her state of mind or her ability to keep her mouth shut.
We were concerned about those questions and considered taking action against Bart Shaw, the guy who I’d suspected was the one that asked. And in fact, I’m fairly certain she got a warning visit, though she won’t confirm that suspicion she also didn’t deny it when Tommy and I asked her about it.