Jax (Titan #9)(73)

Seven snickered. "I can't believe that sweet, Aussie hottie could possibly be the cause of any headaches."

"That hot Australian is driving me nuts. Bat shit. Absolutely bonkers."

"Really?" Seven crawled up to the top of the bed and shoved the pillows behind her, propping herself up in anticipation of listening to the tales of a honeymoon-gone-wrong story. "You have to be very convincing for me not to take Ryder's side," Seven teased, knowing full well she would never do that. "What gives in the land of lovers? Last time I saw you two, it was all googly love faces and smoochy kisses. I wanted to puke."

"We were newlyweds. I'm pretty sure life has returned to normal. No more nausea for you."

"I was just kidding, and you two were always and will always be cute." She wondered if anyone would ever call her and Jax cute.

"Hope so." She sighed into the phone. "I looked over the first morning of our honeymoon and wondered how did I get so lucky."

Well, hell. Seven laughed at the memory of her morning after. She'd shrieked, nearly fallen out of bed tearing the veil from her hair, and had kicked Jax awake. "That's a dead giveaway that I'm right. It'd be a whole new conversation if you woke up, looked over, and wondered, 'what the heck did we do?'"

Victoria scoffed in her ear. "Yeah, how bad would that suck? I bet that happens to people all the time in Vegas."

Seven laughed so hard, she choked. "Yep. Bet so."

"Ryder's mad because I let the pizza delivery guy in."

Her brows pinched, and Seven smoothed her hand over the pillow next to her, trying to remove every last wrinkle and crinkle before asking the most obvious question that came to mind. "You ordered pizza?"

"Exactly!" Victoria grumbled.

At that point, Seven knew Victoria was on the verge of admitting that Ryder was right and she was wrong and at least they would have makeup sex. "You let a delivery guy in who wasn't your delivery guy. I think you both have done more questionable things. Not that I'm one to cast judgment," she added as she stared at her wedding band.

"No, he's right," Victoria lamented. "It was probably harmless. But I let somebody into our house when he had no reason to be there. Both of our careers make that a very bad idea, and it could've gone in another direction faster than I was prepared for."

"I get it. But everything was fine."

"The kids were running around earlier, and I was frazzled, and he showed up with his pizzas, insisting that he had the right address. I was insisting that he didn't. I'd been bribing Nolan to eat, and then he started, and I didn't want to leave him alone with food in his mouth. It was storming outside, and so I told the guy to come in while he made his phone call to figure out where the pizza was going to go—"

"Victoria, take a breath. It's okay." Her exasperation sounded as though she had been self-flogging to excess, whether she'd been called out by Ryder or not.

"You just never know what people's intentions are. It was okay this time, but for all I know, that guy was scoping my house out. He could've been some freak that liked kids. It might not have had anything to do with Ryder and me."

"Now you're just getting paranoid, Victoria. It's not like you've had kids for some freak-show pervert to stalk and obsess over. You know?"

Victoria hummed as though she didn't agree but had no defense left to put up. "How about you talk to your super-cute rug rats? They just walked in. I'll put you on speakerphone."

"Seven! Seven! It's Bianca. It's Nolan. Can you hear me? Us? Can you hear us? Me?"

"Hi, guys. I can hear you. What are you doing? Are you having fun?"

They started to talk over each other again with a list of activities that sounded as though Victoria had been offering a day at camp. Arts and crafts. Hide-and-seek. Duck, duck, goose. Something that had to do with glitter.

Seven shuddered.

As much as she loved all things glittery and sparkly, glitter was one of those things that could also be used as a torture device. One sneeze gone wrong, and it was hours of cleaning. She once made the mistake of asking for help with glitter cleanup, and it took about two minutes to realize that all the little hands were making it ten times worse despite their best efforts.

Nolan and Bianca ended their call with a series of competitive I love you's, each determined to say it louder and prouder and mean it more than the other before, apparently, they ended in a hug-and-tickle war that required Victoria to put down the phone, pick them up, count to one, and send everybody to coloring books.

The rumble in the room quieted on the phone line, and Victoria came back. "The coast is now clear again."

"You, Madame Deputy Mayor, sounded very motherly a moment ago. All 'don't make me count' and 'one…'" Seven laughed. "I'm very impressed with that."

"I learned from the best."

"Ahh, I'd say thanks, but sometimes, I don't know if you should say that about me. Speaking of which, how's my mom?"

Victoria grumbled. "First, don't say that about yourself ever again. I've never met anybody more selfless and giving, in general and to these kids, than you. And second, your mom… I don't know anymore, Seven. I think moving your mom to assisted living was the right thing to do, but she seems so much worse than even three or four months ago. I know that's not a conversation you want to have right now." Victoria sighed sadly, and Seven felt the same way on the inside as her best friend continued. "A couple weeks ago wasn't that long ago. It's just like something has changed."