With All My Heart - Emilia Finn Page 0,44
of was.”
“I understand completely. I know what it’s like to love so deeply, the man you clutch to is the only thing keeping you on this earth. I know that feeling, and even if our time was cut short, I’ll never regret it. Bry might’ve taken my heart with him, but never forget, he gave me his in exchange. I carry him around inside me every single day. He lives on. I can still feel him.” I press a shaking hand to her flat belly. “Then a few years after you turned up on my doorstep, after you married my son, after you tried for so long to conceive a baby, you gave birth to a brand-new Bryan Kincaid. You named your son for a man you never met, and from your body, came a boy that looks just like my son.” I sigh with content. “He looks just like my husband. Bryan would’ve been stoked with that.”
Continue the Kincaid’s story in Finding Home.
Book 1 of the Rollin On Series.
FULL CIRCLE
Then
“I can’t do this, Bry! I can’t. Make it stop.”
Laughing, I pry Nelly’s hands away from her face and press them down around her hips. Wrapping my arms around her torso, I lock her in and refuse to let her loose. “Just watch him, Bert. Watch him go.”
“I can’t!” She buries her face against my chest. “I’m not ready for this. You promised!” She rears back and pins me with angry eyes. “You promised you’d never let me hurt. This hurts!” Snapping her arm from my grasp, she slams her fist into my chest until I cough out a laugh. “You promised a lifetime of servitude and happiness, Bryan Kincaid!”
Using my weight – and more strength than I should need for such a small woman – I pin her arms and turn her toward our seven-year-old ‘baby’ as he steps up to his opponent in the center of a boxing ring.
He’s covered head to toe in three-inch thick padding; head gear, shin pads, gloves, body armor.
He’ll be fine, but my poor, sweet wife isn’t dealing with it so well.
Jimmy is our youngest son. The final piece to our puzzle, and though Nelly cheered Bobby on during his first fight, and she cheered Aiden on in his, she’s having a coronary over her not-so-angelic baby boy.
The referee, dressed as though this was a world title fight with a massive purse, steps between the two kids and places a hand on their shoulders. “Boys, I want a good, clean fight. Listen to my commands at all times. Defend yourselves at all times. Touch gloves and step back.”
Shakily, the kid in red taps my arrogant son’s fist and skitters away like Jimmy’s going to whale on him.
Jimmy is smaller than that other kid. Two inches shorter. Seven or eight pounds lighter. But his arrogance makes him a million times bigger.
Plus, his little girlfriend on the ropes screaming her support. “Get him, Jimmy!” She’s a fearsome bitty thing, and she’s probably the reason my arrogant son is so arrogant. Because if anyone hurts him, she’ll beat them up. “Legs, Jimmy! Legs. Quick. He’s coming!”
I laugh when Jon, my oldest son’s best friend, and that little girl’s big brother, steps up behind her like a tired parent and tugs her off the ropes. He’s twelve, she’s not quite six, but it’s like a father daughter relationship as he wears the exhausted smile of a parent that’s been up with the baby all night – but he wouldn’t change it.
I’ve never met a more responsible or fatherly kid until Jon Hart stepped into our family. He was the poor kid at school, figuratively and literally; broke, hungry, cold… And bullied.
I adore my sons. They can do almost no wrong. But the day I turned up to school to pick them up for the afternoon and I found my arrogant child teasing the scrawny kid who was clearly missing a few too many meals, I saw red.
We’re not bullies.
We’re not assholes.
And the day I found Bobby taking Jon’s hat and calling him names, was the day they became best friends; because I damn well forced them to. They hugged it out, traded jabs they thought I couldn’t see, then because they did that, we went and got ice cream.
I’m convinced that was the first time Jon had ever had ice-cream.
He sat in the red and white checkered booth with his eyes drawn low. He refused to meet my eyes. He refused to answer my question when I