“You saidthat the night you set the street on fire.” I reminded him buckling Axel in whostill hadn’t woken up.
“At thattime it was the greatest night of my life...untiltonight.”
On the wayhome that night, I thought about what I’d do if my kids never moved out.
Axel hadhis own place now but after Aries’ ordeal with Brian; I didn’t want her movingout. And Sway didn’t want Casten moving out for obvious attachment reasons.
We werescrewed.
Sway wasup, in bed, going over schedules when I got home around six that morning. Idropped Casten and Axel off at his condo and hurried home to be with her. I wassomewhat relieved that I left the rest of those jerks in Jacksonville because Iknew they’d be invading my house tonight if they would have come with us.
“How’d itgo?” Sway asked snuggling against my side. Her cold feet pressed gingerly to mybare legs testing whether I’d move them away. I didn’t, instead I let her warmthem against me.
“It washorrible.”
“Why?”
“Your‘baby boy’ hired a prostitute.”
“Hedidn’t?” she looked up at me horrified. “You’re joking, right?”
“Nope,” Ipulled the blankets up higher and leaned over to flick the switch for thefireplace.
“That’snot good,” Sway said snuggling back against my chest.
“You know...these last two will never leave.”
“That’sall right.” She smiled kissing my cheek. “I kind of like them.”
Like Isaid, it’s not like they were mooching from us.
Arie wasworking on Axel’s fan club and his charity with Children’s hospitals. She alsotook care of his website, Facebook and Twitter accounts making sure they allstayed up to date.
AndCasten, he was still in high school. When he wasn’t in school, he worked at theJAR Racing with the boys and frequently traveled with his brother to learn moreabout what Willie and Tommy did. He was taking an interest in being a crewchief, something I knew he would be good at.
They allhad jobs and earned their keep, just in different ways. They had to deal withthe destruction they caused.
Feature – Axel
The day ofthe wedding, you would have thought that all hell broke loose in the Riley andWest families.
Lilywasn’t happy about my bachelor party but to be honest I wasn’t happy with thepictures that I saw from her bachelorette party. We agreed to disagree on thematter and moved past that until she asked me the night before the wedding if Ihad cheated on her.
I waspissed.
This was aconstant battle between us. It also wasn’t something I wanted to spend the restof my life with her arguing about.
So I said,“If you can’t believe me when I tell you that I haven’t been with anyone else...we have no business getting married.”
It wasn’tmeant to be harsh nor was it me calling off the wedding. I just wanted her tounderstand that “trust” was the most important part, to me anyway.
She hadother ideas about my statement and burst into tears thinking that I had calledoff the wedding. I guess all the insecurity might have been my fault. It didn’thelp that I gave away my virginity to the first willing girl when I was youngerand ended up breaking her heart but seriously, that was years ago and I askedher to marry me. To me that was the ultimate commitment. I wasn’t goinganywhere and didn’t have the desire to sleep with any other women. There werealways willing girls when your dad is Jameson Riley but other than theoccasional smile, I didn’t offer those girls anything more than a hello. Iwasn’t rude to them like my dad was but I didn’t leave with them either.
Lily and Iended up staying up to three in morning the night before the wedding arguingabout it when I finally got through to her that I wasn’t going anywhere.
My brotherand sister weren’t helping in the morning when they met me at my hotel room inJacksonville.
Thatwasn’t so bad and it was a nice change from Lily’s crying the night before, butthe shit got out of hand when we got to the beach where the wedding was.Florida usually had nice weather in the winter, it was usually around 70° inthe winter but today is was a scorching 38°.
