Page 41 of Dangers of Love

Twenty-Three

Eoin

I putmy phone down on the counter and got a beer from the fridge. If I wasn’t driving anywhere tonight, I didn’t need to worry about how much I drank. If I couldn’t be with Aline, taking care of her, getting a little drunk sounded like a good idea. Not so much that I’d be hung over tomorrow, but enough to take the edge off.

It was a hell of an edge.

Pregnant.

I was going to be a father.

Maybe. Aline could decide to terminate the pregnancy, but after how her parents had struggled to have kids, I didn’t think that was going to be the route she took. If she did, I’d be there with her, but even as shell-shocked as I was right now, I was hoping she’d have the baby.

Mybaby.

Fuck.

I needed to sit down, but the few chairs I had were covered with shit from my storage unit. The floor would have to do. I leaned back against my refrigerator and took a long drink.

I’d never really thought about being a father. My parents never pressured any of us kids about giving them grandchildren, even before Evanne had come along. Besides, with as many of us as there was, the likelihood of no more grandkids was virtually zero, so I’d never felt guilty about not considering marriage or family. I loved Evanne, and I’d love being an uncle to any other nieces or nephews that came along, but one of my own?

A little girl with strawberry blonde hair and green eyes. A boy with Aline’s smile and fair skin. A leftie like me and my mother. Not Theresa, my biological mother. I was the only one of the kids who’d gotten that.

I didn’t remember her, but I had no doubt she’d have been excited to have another grandchild. My heart twisted painfully as I realized that my child wouldn’t know anything about Ma, not from me anyway. Yeah, I could tell them that her name had been Shannon McCrae, and her maiden name had been Allen. I could share all the stories that Alec and Brody had told the twins and me growing up. Carson and Cory only had a couple vague memories, but I had nothing.

She was one of the reasons I hadn’t wanted to get married or have kids. Da marrying Theresa had driven it home, but not because I’d ever been angry at him getting married again. They’d both been so young when they’d lost their spouses, and I’d seen how much losing a parent – or both parents for Fury and his siblings – had hurt all of us. I didn’t want that for anyone. I didn’t want to risk leaving a child without a father.

Or at least that was what I’d told myself while I was in the army. Now, I wasn’t really in much more danger than the average person. Less than a cop and far less than a firefighter. Sure, it’d been an unusual couple of months, but Cain had insisted that wasn’t the norm.

So, if my excuse had really been about my job, then it wouldn’t have applied since March, but since I’d been out, I hadn’t changed my mind or even thought about it again. Because I was still afraid. Not afraid of what the loss of me would do to them, but what it would be like for me to lose another person I loved.

Shit.

I was such a selfish little shit.

Asshole.

Images began to flash in front of my eyes.

A picture of my mother holding me in the hospital hours after I was born.

Doto impaled and bleeding, dying.

Bart’s broken neck.

Leo.

Pulling him from the wreck.

Getting shot.

Him looking up at me in that split second before the explosion blew him apart, sending a piece of his bone through my body armor and almost puncturing my heart.

Other men and women who had gone out on missions and never come back. Who’d come home safe from a tour and then killed themselves. So many. Too many.

I closed my eyes and put my head back. I couldn’t spiral. It’d been a couple days since I’d been woken up by a nightmare and having that shit in my head when I was awake would probably fuck with me when I was asleep too.

I needed to focus on Aline and the baby. The future, and not the past.

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