184 - Aunts and Rabbits
184 - Aunts and Rabbits
An aunt is a safe haven for a child. Someone who will keep your secrets and is always on your side. ― Sara Sheridan
Jaxon, Jolene and Cheryl along with their partners and Gigi, woke up to the same announcement. There was a picture of the newborn baby in a Navy onesie and a tiny knit cap, and another of Dean sitting in the hospital bed with her men on either side of her and their son in her arms. The three parents looked tired, excited and blissfully happy.
Cooper Jonathon Reese entered the world at 5:42 this morning. He weighed in at 8 pounds 12 ounces and 19 ½ inches long. Mom and baby are both doing well. Dads, however, are nervous as hell.
Laughing at the text, Jolene sent back a text sending her congratulations. She then crawled out of bed and headed for her attached bathroom. After emptying her bladder and brushing her teeth, she pulled on a short-sleeve day dress with skulls and roses all over it.
Downstairs, she found Victoria in her highchair with Sam sitting in the chair next to her. The teen was cutting up slices of banana into quarters. Jolene kissed her daughter on the top of her head and smiled at Sam.
“How are you doing this morning?”
“Fine,” Sam smiled as she placed new pieces of banana on the tray of the highchair causing Victoria to squeal in delight. At the look of disbelief from Jolene, Sam blushed and looked away. “A little sick this morning. I’ve had worse. Neo made me some peppermint tea.”
Jolene reached out and gently touched her dark hair, “He’s pretty good about that. He’s good at spoiling his girls.”
“All three of them,” Neo said as he sat a plate of scrambled eggs, sausage, toast and sliced strawberries on the table in front of Sam. “Do you want strawberry or grape jam?”
“Do you have any of that orange stuff?” Sam asked.
“Orange marmalade? I think so.” He walked over to the refrigerator and looked inside it. When he did not find any in the black appliance, he went to the walk-in pantry and found a jar of his unusual guilty pleasure. Walking back into the kitchen, he twisted open the metal lid on the glass jar.
“I do not see how you two eat that stuff,” Jolene walked into the kitchen and found her coffee had already been poured into her favorite mug.
She spoke the truth when she said that her husband spoiled her. Victoria too. Sam seemed to be lumped in with his ‘girls’ now. Not that either Jolene or Sam was objecting.
Neo stepped up behind her and wrapped his arms around his wife and nuzzled her neck. “I know, you want grape jelly.”
Smiling, she leaned her head back on his shoulder and turned her face to accept his kiss. After a quick brush of his lips across hers, he came back for a deeper kiss. Guiding her to face him, he buried his hand in her short hair and gripped her hip with the other. Her hands slid around his neck and she pulled him closer as she spread her legs to accommodate him.
Breaking off the kiss before they got carried away and he took her on the kitchen counter; he stepped back slightly. Jolene moved her hands to his shoulders and smiled at him.
“Good morning, pet.”
“Good morning,” she started to say Alpha, but remembered that they had a teenager sitting at the table watching them. “What do you have planned for today?”
“I’m supposed to meet with the senator later today,” he smirked and she knew which senator it was that he was talking about. “But since we have a new baby in the family, I think I’m going to let Shelby and Jake handle the meeting.”
Laughing at her husband, she leaned in and rested her head on his chest. “You have an evil streak in you.”
“I do,” he admitted with a little chuckle. “I thought that I would take my girls to meet the little one.”
“Is it the woman from the café?” Sam asked between bites of her breakfast.
Neo gave his wife a quick kiss and a light swat on her bottom, “Go on.”
“Yes, Alpha,” she murmured before picking up her coffee and going towards the table. Sitting down in her regular spot on the other side of Victoria, she nodded. “Yes, Dean.”
“She has a boy’s name too?”
Neo sat his and Jolene’s plates on the table as she explained, “Dean is short for Denise. She’s married to Jo’s younger brother and their partner.”
“The firefighter?” Sam asked.
Jolene gave a small laugh, “No, that’s my other brother’s partner. Both of my brothers are bi and are in poly relationships.”
“What’s bi?” Sam asked quietly.
They had discovered that she was really quite curious and had so many questions that she had been too scared to ask. Her parents had restricted what she could be around and be exposed to. While other kids were reading Harry Potter and Twilight, she was immersed in Hans Christian Anderson and the Brothers Grimm.
Even Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland was banned in her parent’s house. Neo’s hardback, leatherbound copy currently sat on the living room coffee table where Sam had left it. Allowed to pick her own books from his large library in the big house, she had been overwhelmed. Jolene handed her the first book in the series and advised, “Find your white rabbit and chase after it.”
“Bisexual,” Jolene answered. “They both like girls and boys.”
Sam’s mouth fell open and her eyes went wide. “And… and you’re okay with that?”
“Why wouldn’t we be?” Neo asked.
She looked between Neo and Jolene before she quietly answered, “Anytime that I said that I thought that a woman was pretty, I got punished.”
“Do you find women attractive?” Jolene asked softly.
Sam nodded and then shook her head, “I… I don’t know.”
“That’s perfectly fine,” Neo told her. “You need to get to know yourself before you make decisions like that. You can ask us any type of questions that you have.”
“Like anything?”
“Anything at all,” Jolene replied.
“I’d be too embarrassed to ask some of them…” she admitted as she blushed bright red.
“While we’re out today, we’ll get you a notebook,” Jolene suggested. “You can write your questions in there and we can either discuss it or answer it in the book.”
“That’s a good idea; we need to get her a laptop for her schoolwork.”
“A computer? For me?”
“Yeah,” Jolene agreed as she stood up to take her nearly empty plate to the counter.
“Leave it there, pet,” Neo told her. “You two need to go get ready so that we can go see this new little boy.”
Thirty minutes later, Jolene sat on the couch in Dean’s hospital room with her newest nephew in her arms. Looking up at her brother, she whispered so that she would not wake the sleeping baby or mother. “Cooper, JD, he’s adorable.”
“Dean did a good job,” Cooper whispered.
“She did,” JD agreed. “We’re calling him CJ.”