She was tiny, feminine, and was the greatest love of my life, along with my five children. Children she gave to me. I glanced down at my ringed finger, smiling at the reminder that we recently celebrated our thirteenth wedding anniversary. We’d been married for thirteen years, but together for twenty, and I couldn’t wait to spend fifty more with her, God willing. I couldn’t imagine spending my life with anyone else, and I didn’t want to, either.
“Good morning, Mrs Slater.”
I knew she smiled without having to turn around. I could sense it on her.
“Good mornin’, Mr Slater,” she replied. “How did ye’ sleep?”
“Before or after you woke me up with your mouth on—”
When she spun around and narrowed her bright green eyes at me, my own laughter cut me off.
“Children,” she whispered hissed. “They are present.”
I glanced to my left, noting my third and fourth sons, Quinn and Griffin, sitting at the kitchen table on the far end of the room, not paying us a lick of attention. I turned my attention back to my wife and grinned.
“They can’t hear me.”
She gave me a once-over, her eyes lingering on my groin and torso a little too long, allowing naughty thoughts to enter my mind, but like I knew she would, she turned back to face the stove.
“I made you eggs, and I’m workin’ on your protein pancakes,” she said, rustling the pan to make the pancake flip. “The boys horsed down the first two batches I made, as well as two ten-egg omelettes.”
“Q and Griff?”
“Yeah,” she answered with a shake of her head. “Axel and Beau had cereal; Georgie hasn’t been down to eat yet. Quinn and Griffin are goin’ to eat us out of a home all by themselves. I can’t believe how much they can put away. They’re just as bad as Locke, and that lad never stops eatin’.”
“They’re growing boys.”
Bronagh snorted. “Growin’ boys, me arse; they are always feckin’ hungry.”
“So were my brothers and I growing up.” I chuckled. “We still are.”
“Oh, I know,” my wife answered. “I do the cookin’. I know how much your fat self can gobble up.”
I stepped closer to her, pressing my body against hers and sliding my arms around her tiny waist.
“You think I’m fat?” I teased. “My body fat percentage would disagree with you.”
“You have the appetite of a fat person and so do your kids. Well, except Georgie, but she used to eat just as much.” Bronagh shook her head. “I don’t know how we afford it. Ye’ know, it costs me nearly three hundred and fifty euros a week on just food? I don’t even shop in Dunnes anymore because it’ll easily reach over four hundred in price if I go in there.”
I leaned down and kissed her cheek.
“Why are you worrying about this?” I questioned. “I make more than enough to cover our bills. We own the house since Branna signed it over to you, and the cars are brand new since we traded in our others for a steal of a price. We have a fantastic policy on our family health insurance and both of our life insurance policies. You set aside money each month to pay our bills on time. You’re worrying yourself over nothing.”
“I know.” She sighed, her body relaxing. “It’s just with the football season startin’ back up, and the lads all bein’ taller with bigger feet, it means we have to buy all new team uniforms and tracksuits, and new football boots, which are over one hundred euros each in their sizes, and new clothes since they’ve no summer clothes that fit. Don’t even get me started on Georgie’s art supplies. She goes through them so fast that we need to replenish every—”
“Sweetheart,” I cut Bronagh off. “We have savings for a reason. This kind of reason.”
She tensed all over again as she placed a large pancake on top of four others next to the large omelette that I assumed was for me.
“Heat the eggs up,” she grumbled. “They’ve been coolin’ while I made the pancakes.”
I watched her as she moved around me.
“Bronagh, honey—”
“I’m goin’ to get a shower,” she cut me off, leaving the room. “I won’t be long.”
I stared after her, frowning. I had no idea why she was so worried about our finances all of a sudden. Ten years ago, I got a loan from my older brother Kane and bought a broken down old building in the city centre and demolished it. After rebuilding it from the ground up, I opened Slater’s 24/7 Fitness. Every month since it opened nine years ago, it’d turned a considerable profit. I was even considering opening a second gym in Tallaght because the main one was doing so well. I paid Kane back and had no debt whatsoever.
Bronagh knew all of this, so I had no idea why she was worrying about paying for our children’s sports gear or art supplies. I had enough to buy hundreds of football cleats. Hell, we could buy another house if we wanted to. My instinct was to follow her and find out what was truly bothering her, but over the years, I’d learned that she needed her space when she got upset. Normally, I invaded her space and didn’t give her a chance to run away when an argument got her going, but right now, something else was bothering her. I had to time when I chose to talk to her about it.
With a sigh, I turned to my plate of food and put it into the microwave as instructed. While it heated, I went to the refrigerator with the intention of pouring myself a large glass of orange juice, but when I lifted the carton and found it was empty, I scowled and shut the door with a little force before I turned to my sons.
“Which one of you morons put the empty OJ carton back in the refrigerator?”
Quinn and Griffin pointed at one another, but when Quinn scowled and slapped Griffin’s hand, Griffin yelped, most likely thinking Quinn was going to pound on him for lying, which I knew he had done.
“Griffin?”
“I’m sorry,” he said, his eyes still on his older brother. “I forgot.”
“How do you forget the carton is empty when you can feel it’s fucking empty?”
Quinn glanced around me, looking for his mom, but when he saw she wasn’t there, he kept his mouth shut about my cussing. I rarely cussed in front of my kids, and especially not to them, but sometimes, they irritated the life out of me when they did dumb shit, and it just slipped out. Putting an empty carton of orange juice back into the refrigerator was a dumb shit thing to do.
“I’m sorry, Da.”
I sighed. “It’s okay. Just don’t do it again.”
“I won’t.”
“And I’m sorry for cussing.”
Griffin’s lips twitched. “It’s okay. Just don’t do it again.”
Quinn laughed but muffled it with his hand while I smirked.
“You’ll tattle on me to your mom otherwise?”
“Well, duh, I’m hardly gonna try to fight you.”
I snorted. “You’ll be as big as me someday. You both will.”
“In height, yeah, probably, but you work out a lot. I don’t think I’d be into that. I’m lazy.”
Griffin was lazy.
If you gave him the choice to go outside to play and get fresh air, or stay inside and play video games all day, his games would win every single time. He was on the soccer team purely out of parental force. Bronagh and I ran out of ideas to entice him to leave the house, so we had to resort to giving him an ultimatum. He either joined the soccer team or picked a different sport or activity to participate in, or all his gaming consoles, his computer, and his phone were going in the trash.
He signed up for the soccer team the next day.
Beau, at fourteen, played for the sixteen and under soccer team, Quinn and Griffin, who were twelve and eleven, played for the under thirteen team, and Axel had just joined the under eight team. Griffin tolerated the soccer team, but damn, the kid was good. Luckily, Beau and Quinn were awesome too, but they lived and breathed the sport. It wasn’t punishment to make them go to practice or to games; it was punishment to stop them from attending. Axel’s team wasn’t competitive because of the age group, so each game for him was just for fun, but he loved it.