When she pulled back, I tapped her nose and said, “Your kid just got the turkey leg you told him not to get.”
She gasped and pulled back, glaring across the yard at her oldest child.
“That kid.” She got up and marched away.
I enjoyed the view as her ass swayed as she moved across the yard.
“All these years and you still have it bad.”
I looked at my brother who’d yet to find a woman he wanted to be with.
That didn’t seem to bother him, though.
Him and Dean? They were thick as thieves. And Van was also thinking about going to travel for the summer in Europe with Dean after he graduated in the fall.
Which fuckin’ knocked the wind out of me because it didn’t seem like Dean should be old enough to drive, let alone graduate.
That was what the party was for.
A celebration that Dean had made it.
He’d had a lot of catching up to do once we got him away from his mom, but he’d flourished.
Now he was graduating with his entire life ahead of him.
My phone rang, and I glanced down at it before sighing and answering it.
“Black, what’s up?”
“We got a body,” he grumbled. “Time to get to work.”
I stood up. “I’ll be there. Send me the address.”
I made my rounds to my children, then my wife.
Dean was last as I caught him and gave him a hard hug.
The girl he was talking to giggled.
“Gotta go to work, bud,” I said. “See you later.”
Dean slapped my back before saying, “Bye, Uncle Gentry.”
Later that night, as I got home from work, I found my family passed out on the huge sectional in the middle of the living room.
Cole was on one end with his feet extended into the bend of the couch. Walker’s feet touched his as he stretched out toward the other. Walker’s head rested on our new dog, Poppy. Poppy was a good dog, but she wasn’t like our Neo.
Neo had made it to fourteen years old before he’d passed.
Sage and Dean had cried for days.
Walker and Cole had been devastated as well, but nothing like Sage and Dean.
Poppy came along last year when Sage finally admitted that she wanted another dog.
She was sweet and loving, but she didn’t have that inner fire like Sage’s heart dog, Neo.
There’d probably never be another dog like Neo.
