Room for Just a Little Bit More(17)

“You mentioned that before, so I went to the sports store and bought these really cool suits that have floaties built into the chest area and actually make it impossible for them to be submerged,” he said proudly. “They can go down the slides and go under real quick, but they immediately pop right back up. They’re pretty cool.”

“Those do sound cool. We should get them for here too, Kacie.” Brody did his best to sound reassuring.

Oddly enough, I didn’t need it. Just knowing that Zach had thought ahead and taken the time to run to the store and get the girls something that would both protect them and satisfy my crazy overprotectiveness, made me feel so much better. It also showed me just how much Zach had grown over the last year. In the beginning, it was rocky. He didn’t know them and they didn’t know him, but he did his best to try learn all he could about them and have fun every time he was over.

But now, this showed me he was thinking like a real dad. In that moment, I relaxed. Maybe my relaxation would last five minutes, maybe five days, but I knew Zach was capable of being a great father to them. With him and Brody behind them, Lucy and Piper were gonna conquer the freaking world.



8 - Brody

“How you doing?”

Kacie sighed and let her head fall back against the couch, turning it to look at me. “Miserable.”

I pushed a stray piece of hair from her forehead. “For what it’s worth, you make miserable look beautiful.”

She smiled at me and leaned over, resting her head on my shoulder. “Thank God I have you here with me or I’d lose my mind.”

“I know.” I squeezed her knee gently. “You’re doing good.”

I lied. She wasn’t doing that great, but some lies are just necessary. Lucy and Piper had only been gone two hours and she’d already texted Zach twice to check on them. I had to give the guy credit though, he was being very patient with her.

“How long have they been gone?” she whined.

My head fell against the couch, mirroring hers. “About ten minutes longer than the last time you asked.”

She grimaced. “No way am I going to make it.”

“Yes, you will.” I stood up and grabbed her hands, pulling her up too. “Come on. I wanna show you something.”

“Where are we going?”

I pulled her along behind me, out the front door. “Hush. You’ll see.”

Holding her door open while she hopped up, I stood back and whistled for Diesel, who was sound asleep on Kacie’s porch. “Come on, you lazy bastard.” He opened his eyes and slowly walked down the steps and over to my truck. I stared down at him and he stared up at me. “Well, come on. Get up there,” I ordered. Two steps back, one running start forward, and he leapt into the backseat of my truck, parking comfortably in the middle of the two booster seats in the back.

I walked around to my side of the truck and climbed up, smiling at Kacie, who was looking at me out of the corner of her eye.

Shooting her a big cheesy grin, I started the engine and pulled out of her driveway. After driving north for fifteen minutes or so, she asked again, “Are you gonna tell me where we’re going?”

“I want to check on something and figured you might want to see it too.”

That answer appeased her for the rest of the ride as we held hands in silence, with Kacie checking the time on her phone every ten minutes or so.





A little while later, we pulled into my parents’ farm. The gravel popped and leaves crunched under my tires as I drove the truck all the way up past the house and to the left, where vehicles don’t usually go.

“What are you doing?” Kacie exclaimed.

“You’ll see.” I winked at her.

I steered the truck carefully around my dad’s shop and past some tall grass until the barn came into view. Kacie grinned when she saw it, still with Will You Marry Me? #30 painted in red on the side. While the rain had faded it a tad, it wasn’t gone completely. I hoped it never would be.

“What are we doing here?”

Parking the truck, I jumped out and went around to her side to open the door. “Come on out and you’ll see.”

Diesel almost knocked her over as he jumped out and chased a flock of geese into the lake, which was tinted orange from the setting sun. Kacie checked her phone one more time and took my hand. We walked up to the barn doors and I turned to face her. “I have no idea what it’s going to look like in here, but I had a crew come out the last two days. They’ve been cleaning out all the old hay and cobwebs and stuff.”

Kacie’s lips curled into a wide smile as she bounced up and down excitedly, clapping her hands.

Laughing at her reaction, I pushed the heavy door open and propped it so we had as much light as possible. The barn looked fantastic, better than I had imagined.

“Oh my God.” Kacie’s mouth hung open as she walked wide-eyed around the first floor of the barn. Every corner, every nook, had been swept and wiped completely spotless. Not one piece of hay or one speck of dust was visible. “This looks incredible.”

“It does.” I was pleasantly surprised as I wandered the first floor too. “They even cleaned the windows.”

“This is gonna look so pretty, Brody.”

I was happy to hear joy back in her voice. It was an added bonus that she hadn’t looked at her phone in a few minutes.