Weak in the Knees Ch. 05 - Sex Stories

Weak in the Knees Ch. 05

... that."

"Reese is a sad, desperate man," Daniel said. "His promises mean nothing."

Brinxton eyed Daniel meaningfully from outside of Daniel's sightline but didn't say anything. Diego noticed it, though and the look further confirmed his judgment that Daniel was not well-liked among his friend group right now. Zach narrowed his eyes at Daniel, which Daniel did catch, but neither said anything. Brielle had frowned but just ate her salad.

"Either way, he's getting at least fifteen years in prison," Zach finally broke the awkward silence. "That's a lengthy amount of time for that. I feel some pity for him, but..."

"Of all of the people to have sympathy for the man, I wouldn't have figured it'd be you," Elias pointed out.

That got some of them to start joking about Zach's righteous fury, which Zach took graciously by laughing at them. It wasn't like they were wrong. Zach could have a temper though it rarely flared up at people he cared for. It usually flared up when someone he loved was threatened or hurt. Though now he worried that Diego would think it was an issue Zach couldn't handle.

When they finished with lunch, everyone helped clean up and then they ended up in the living room talking about everything they had all been going through. Talking about it like this made Zach realize he'd been dealing with a lot: from Kali's death and Nadya's birth, to his MS diagnosis, the kidnapping, and his symptoms getting worse.

It made him emotionally exhausted just ...

... thinking about it. Of course, he wasn't the only one with issues. Aspen and Elias were in limbo on whether they were miscarrying a baby right then, Zayne and Brinxton were talking about whether they could handle a baby of their own on top of everything and unsure at the moment, and Brielle and Daniel were having some marital problems, which Zach was mostly staying out of.

And thanks to the kidnapping, Zach also knew Diego was having issues with his school funding. He didn't think Diego would let Zach just fix it for him though. Diego was blissfully unaware of some of the issues plaguing the rest of the family, though he would have welcomed the knowledge if it had been offered. He knew from simply living in a house with them that Brinxton and Zayne were trying to figure out whether they wanted to be parents.

They had asked to babysit Nadya a few times to see if they could handle it with Diego still in the house just in case. That was before the kidnapping, of course. She was just starting to accept being watched for a little bit without Diego or Zach around, but it was touch and go some days.

At some point they got to talking about the surprise of the pregnancy with Nadya and Zach changing around his priorities, which some of them never thought would happen.

"You jumped into daddy role so fast though," Aspen said with a smile. "It's like, as soon as you knew Kali was keeping the pregnancy, you wanted nothing more than to be a good dad."

"Who knew you had it in you ...