all american | lance tucker

ch. 30 • the boys

All of a sudden, a lot of things were changing. Lance pulled a surprise on me and informed me that he was having three friends (one of which was his brother) staying at the house for a four day weekend, he rearranged the whole house while I was gone at work one day so that now we were in the girl's room and the girls were in ours, my step dad called me and told me he was coming to visit with Maddox and Will (perfectly timed with when Lance's boys were coming), and with moving the house around, Lance brought up that maybe we needed to think about moving, seeing as we were running out of room.

He wasn't wrong. The twins were getting bigger, and so were the girls. They were continuously taking up more room, and on top of all of this, there was really nowhere for them to play at our house. We had no yard, just a deck with an empty pool. But moving was a big step, especially for Lance, who had lived in this place ever since he had permanently moved to New York.

"Okay, everything is ready, right? Shit's cleaned, we got groceries, girls are set up in the twins' room, laundry's done, liquor cabinet is stocked. Is there anything else I could possibly be forgetting?" Lance stressed, arms crossed, standing in the middle of the living room looking around the house.

"Yeah. Your sanity." I grumbled, shaking my head. He gave me a distasteful look.

"I need your skills here, sweetheart." He said annoyedly. "We have to fit a shit ton of people here, and we don't exactly have ample space to do so." I thought for a second, calculating the logistics of how this was going to work.

"Well, Marco, Maddox, and Will are staying in the hotel up the road so they don't need a place to sleep, there are two beds available in the girl's room- and did you put the sheets on those? - so someone just has to sleep on the couch." I explained. He nodded.

"Guest sheets are on. My brother is going to throw a hissy fit when I tell him to sleep on the couch." This would be the first time I met Rowan, who sounded exactly like his brother the way Lance described him.

Great, just what we needed. Two Tucker boys with the same personality. Along with my stepdad Marco, the oldest Cattaneo boys (Maddox and Will) and maybe a couple of my sisters. It was going to be a madhouse here. And then the boys got here.

There was no knock, just the explosive entrance of the two of them.

"Tucker!" They roared, attacking Lance as he made his way to the door. It was his friends, who I admittedly hadn't been listening when Lance had told me their names. He reciprocated this wild energy, in the middle of a forceful group hug.

"Damn, Lancey, you've really changed shit up." One of them said, looking around. His eyes eventually landed on me, and a look I knew far too well fell on his face. It was very similar to Lance's cougar face.

"Who's this?" He asked, eyeing me. Lance stepped around so that he was standing partially in front of me.

"Boys, this is Cara. Cara, this is Marshall and Tre." He pointed them out. "And she's mine, so don't make me knock your eyeballs back into your head." His tone was borderline threatening, but Marshall just laughed.

"I'm kidding, bro." He grinned. Tre looked around.

"Where's the little gremlins you got running around?" He inquired. Well, at least Lance had told them about the kids. If he hadn't, that would've been an interesting surprise for everyone.

"Somewhere. Probably making a mess on the deck." Lance turned around to look out the sliding glass door, where Aria and Ciara were playing with kinetic sand.

"Damn, how many kids do you have?" Marshall scoffed, leaning around Lance to look.

"There's two more around here somewhere." He sighed, walking into the kitchen. "You guys want something to drink? We've got it all."