“Slim, we were married and in each other’s lives for over a decade and you’ve got nothing to say after I just told you I’m moving away?”

“Bon voyage,” Brock muttered.

Mitch tried to strangle down another bark of laughter, failed, quickly knifed out of his chair, and headed toward the hall.

Olivia’s face got red.

“Nice,” she hissed, gave him a long glare, turned on her high heel, and marched her bony ass out.

He didn’t watch.

He turned to his desk, instantly grabbed his phone, flipped it open, and hit buttons without looking at them because he’d memorized them.

She answered on the second ring.

“Sweetness,” he said the minute Tess finished her greeting, “you are not gonna believe the surprise birthday present I just got.”

* * *

“Brock, honey?” Tess said in his ear as he walked through the backdoor into their kitchen.

After they finally got Rex’s room sorted, he sorted the one-car garage in the back that was old, had no garage door opener, and thus Tess didn’t use it and parked on the street. And he sorted it as in he had it scrapped and a massive two-car garage built in its place.

He did this because he was not a big fan of scraping ice off his windshield.

He also did this because he was less of a fan of Tess doing it so he did it for her and since he didn’t like doing it on his own fucking truck, he didn’t like adding her car.

And, lastly, he did it because it was a fuck of a lot safer for her to drive into a garage that had a door to a fenced backyard that had motion-sensor lights that lit up the backyard from both garage and house the instant she exited the garage. Something else he installed.

This took up a fair amount of the backyard.

Tess didn’t say a word. Somehow, she sensed when something was important to him and she didn’t argue. Ever.

He liked this. He also liked that she didn’t make a big fucking deal about stupid shit like him (or his boys) drinking from the milk jug. If it mattered to her, she had a quiet word with him (or his boys). If she could find a fix without having her quiet word, she did. Case in point, they each got their own milk jug. She wrote their names on them in magic marker before putting them in the fridge.

This way, she could give him (and his boys) sweet mostly all the time.

And she did.

It made for a beautiful life.

For him.

And his boys.