David climbed down from the tree and helped Jordan down after he was on the ground. After they got back inside, Jordan gave her father a hug and kiss on the cheek before heading toward the studio to look for the boys. When she got down the stairs, there was no one there. She grabbed her phone and called texted Malachai. “Where is everyone?”
The response she got back was explained everything. “Caleb went home. Logan and I are upstairs. Logan was waiting for Dad to come in from checking on you. Needs to talk to him.” She nodded to herself. Figures. I jet to cool off and Malachai cancels practice. Just like my big brother. Always trying to look out of me.
She went up stairs to hear Logan asking her Dad if he could crash for a few days. “Please, Uncle David? My apartment is so big and lonely. I’m bored out of my mind over there.”
“When is your girlfriend supposed to be here?” David asked.
“By the end of the week, I swear.”
Brie giggled. “He’s so adamant, David. I wonder if John knows how much of a kiss ass his oldest son is.”
“I’m sure he does, Brie. But, what has me so confused is why he thinks he has to beg. He IS our nephew after all. Like we would tell him he couldn’t stay.”
“I know. He’s just as much a part of this family as our kids are.”
Logan cleared his throat. “So, I can crash here?”
David looked at him and tried to keep a straight face. “No. Abso- fucking- lutely not. We just don’t have the room, Logan.”
“I’ll sleep in Malachai’s room.”
“Logan, he’s fucking with you”, Malachai said.
Logan looked at David, horrified. “Are you seriously screwing with me?”
“Yeah. You are my nephew, after all. I think I’m entitled to mess with you every now and then. I rarely saw you there for a while.”
“And for eight years, you saw my smiling face pretty much every day.”
“Yeah, I don’t really miss those days. I remember you as a snot nosed little kid who just wanted to play matchbox cars. Though watching you grow into the young man you are now was fun, I wouldn’t want to relive that period.”
“I don’t think any of us do, Uncle David. Did Jordan tell you about what Caleb said?”
“Oh, yeah. And I’ll tell you and Malachai the same thing I told her. Educate him. Teach the ignorant Caleb about the hell you guys went through for eight years.”
“And that’s exactly what I intend to do”, Jordan said as she finally walked in the door. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m still pissed at him, but as Dad pointed out, he’s ignorant. He didn’t live what we lived. He didn’t live through eight years of no sunlight except for the RARE occasion and even then it was under the ever watchful eyes of our parents AND armed guards. He didn’t have to watch his Uncle nearly bleed to death slowly because he escaped from prison where he was being tried as a spy and traitor. Malachai, you and I lived that. Logan, you live that right beside us. You were there when Uncle Matt went into the hospital to have a bullet removed from his leg or he would have bled to death. Remember? Mom was pregnant with Maddie.”
“Oh, yeah. That’s right. Fuck, I totally forgot”, Logan laughed.
“Jake and I were having a contest for a while to see who could block out the mass majority of that first eight years the fastest. Neither of us won. Neither of us could block it out.”
David chuckled. “You and your twin were seeing who could block that eight year period of the war out the fastest? What did the winner get?”
“A year of servitude from the other”, Jordan said with a laugh.
“Wow, you and Jacob are sure creative”, Brie laughed.
All Jordan could do is shrug.
--------------
After they finished their conversation, the kids all left the living room. Jordan went to help Maddie with her report, and Logan and Malachai went to Malachai’s room to get things situated for Logan to crash there for a couple of days. After they got things in Malachai’s room moved around they headed to Logan’s apartment to get him his basic survival needs for the time he stayed with the Draiman’s.
As they cooked dinner that night, David and Brie reminisced about the fond memories they had of their time in hiding. “What was your favorite thing about that period?” David asked Brie.
“The Anniversary celebration after the Lake Tenkiller rally. I was so pissed at you, and then you surprised me with the most romantic anniversary dinner ever. You haven’t topped that anniversary dinner yet. You’ve come close, but you haven’t topped it yet.”
“Did I get close this year?”
“Surprisingly so. A romantic getaway at that spa in Denver was just what I needed. But, I still like it when you do the simple stuff like me a dinner that I thought only I could make then we made love all night long. We didn’t go inside until it was well into afternoon. That was the best anniversary.”
“I’m going to have to work on giving you another anniversary like that.”
“Why don’t you ever let me do something for you?”
“Because you’ve already given me everything I could ever want by giving me yourself and my kids. What more could you possibly give me, Brie?”
She smiled as he laid a hand against her cheek. “So why do you work so hard to give me a great anniversary every year?”
“To show you that I love you.”
She rubbed her cheek into his palm. “You don’t have to prove to me that you love me.”
“I’m not doing it to prove anything. I’m doing it to celebrate how much I love you.”
“To celebrate how much you love me? Baby, I love you and you know it, but that was corny as hell.” She kissed his palm.
He brushed a piece of hair from her face and shrugged. “I thought corny was romantic.”
She laughed. “Oh, baby, it is. I just thought I’d point out how corny it was. But, you’re totally getting laid tonight.”
“That wasn’t exactly the goal, but it works for me.”
---------------
“Holy hell, Logan, you have so much shit!”
“A lot of which I just couldn’t bring myself to throw away after we went to live each family to themselves.”
“Are you telling me that you still have a lot of the shit that you got when we were in hiding?”
Logan nodded. “I still have every birthday card that Maddie made me, every drawing from Meagan and Kayla, I even wrote down every insult Jordan ever slung at anyone. You sister was a genius back then.”
“Dude, really?”
“Yep.”
“What the hell?”
Logan shrugged. “Dude, we did have some fun times in those shit hole safe houses. Like, that time Justin got locked in the panic room because we were playing where we shouldn’t have. That was great. Uncle Danny went fucking crazy. ‘You guys get up in that living room NOW’. It was fucking scary, but after Justin got out we all had a good laugh over it.”
“Dude, I remember the grounding I got AFTER the war was over for that shit. Mom and Dad were waiting for us to get out on our own before they punished us for a LOT of the shit we did. The only two that didn’t get into trouble after we moved in were Jessi and Marc and that’s because they hadn’t been conceived yet.”
“Speaking of conception, is it true that the house you guys live in is the house that Jordan and Jacob were conceived in?”
“I believe so. You’d have to ask my parents about that.”
“I remember how big your mom was when we went to that first safe house. Holy hell, she was HUGE. I can’t believe that she was carrying ONLY Jordan and Jacob in there.”
“At first, she wasn’t. She was pregnant with triplets. She lost the third baby out of the second trimester I think.”
“Oh, well, that’s different.”
“Yeah. Neither of them knew, Mom bled a little bit, but she was in the hospital when it happened. They couldn’t stop the miscarriage, but they did something to control the bleeding. It was during one of her fainting spells. When we were at home, Dad could handle it, but that fainting spell was at the mall and Dad tripped balls, dude.”
“I would have too. He was an expectant father and his woman was fainting in the middle of the MALL? Oh, yeah, trip city, here we come.”
Malachai laughed. “Well, what matters is that I have two awesome siblings directly younger than me, and seven after them. And, to this day, I question what possessed my parents to have TEN kids. But, I can say that there’s never a dull moment in the Draiman household. Now, let’s get your shit and head back to my place so that we can be home in time for dinner.”
Logan laughed. “You got it, cuz.”
---------------
“Are you serious? THAT’S how Mom and Dad got together?” Maddie asked.
“Yeah, Maddie, Dad saved Mom’s life. I know they tell this sappy story about how they saw each other across a crowded event grounds and Dad just HAD to go talk to Mom. Not true. Just ask them.”
“Whoa. That’s crazy. But, the assassination attempt on Mom is what tipped off the start of the Second Civil War. Dad getting shot at the end of the Uproar Festival later that same year was what actually started it?”
“That’s what MY history book said. What does yours say, Madison?”
Maddie grabbed her book from her book bag and cracked it open to the chapter on the Utopian Occupation of the United States. Right there in black and white, her book said what her big sister just told her. “Whoa. That’s cool.” Maddie looked up at Jordan over her book. “Jordan, do you know why I got this fucking assignment?”
Jordan laughed. “Let me guess, because you’re last name is Draiman and you’re the second oldest daughter of the man that was the Voice of the Resistance?”
“Exactly. It’s stupid. I swear our last name hurts us more than it helps us.”
Jordan just laughed. “I know that better than you think, little sister. Trust me.”
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