all american | lance tucker

ch. 23 • lance's interlude pt. 1

Lance's P.O.V (brought to you by his red bull addiction)

Fucking kids, man. The second Cara leaves, they think it's time to have mental breakdowns. Aria was at school so I didn't have to deal with all four at the moment, but Ciara was throwing up, and the twins did not like being ignored.

"Okay, you have to keep your head over the toilet. Stop turning to look at me." I grumbled to Ciara, whose hair I was holding back.

"Dada." She groaned, trying to crawl into my lap. I held her away, but not before she could puke on my shirt. I refrained from throwing up myself, a trait I had to learn after having kids. Finally, she had emptied her stomach, and seemed to be done projectile vomiting. I then helped her wash her hands (and mine) and brush her teeth, changing her puke covered shirt. I didn't trust her to walk around the house by herself, so I still hadn't gotten a chance to clean myself up.

Would be nice if Cara could be at the house when I fucking needed her sometimes.

"Dada, thirsty." Ciara said weakly as I led her out of the bathroom. I nodded.

"Ok, bug. Just give me a second to change and I'll get you some juice." I sighed. I slipped into my room and changed my shirt quickly before coming back out. I poured Ciara some juice and sat her down, then went over to the twins who were sitting in the middle of the living room playing with their toys. Funny, the second I walked back into the room they had stopped crying. Thank god.

I sat down in front of them and played with them for a while, keeping a careful eye on Ciara. After she finished her juice, she laid down on the couch and I put a blanket over her, hoping she would fall asleep. My plan worked, and soon she was out cold, snoring softly and drooling on my arm, which she was holding onto. Soon, the babies were starting to get fussy, but I didn't want to wake up Ciara. So I had three kids sleeping on me. Ciara against my arm, Shay on my chest, and Jace in my lap. And now it was time to hope that Cara got home before they woke up.

I used my free hand to scroll through my phone, and then I found myself looking through my old pictures. Like, old old pictures. From like eight years ago. Group pictures with my friends from training, old teams, Cara.

Cara.

I had probably two hundred pictures of Cara on my phone, most of them blurry drunk pictures of the both of us on nights out from some random summer. Those were the times we thought nothing could go wrong. The times I thought that maybe we were going to last forever. When I had first met Cara, that day at her gym (when Haskey had still owned it,) I was immediately entranced.

The thing about Cara is that no matter who you are, she knows exactly how to get under your skin and make you want her. Make you need her. Plus, she was goddamn gorgeous. It took three months of partying and spending endless nights with each other for me to realize that she was the girl I wanted to marry. I don't know if she ever had thoughts like that, but I know I did. But, things change, and now I had no idea where things were going with Cara. One of her [many] flaws was that she had always been flighty, so I never really knew what she was going to do or where she was going to go. Sometimes it was annoying, sometimes it was fucking painful.

Depended on the day and her mood. 10 years ago if I had looked at that determined, flirty, bright eyed sixteen year old girl, showing me her floor routine in her living room and knew that she was going to have my kids and me in my life forever, I probably would've believed you. Five years ago? Probably not. After our last run in the olympics and the permanent end to our relationship, Cara and I drifted to what seemed to be opposite sides of the earth.

Hell, I would've forgotten about her had I not gotten that call from Haskey asking for me to pair up with Cara and help with the deals and agreements, which Cara is terrible at managing and I still do all of it to this day.