Page 134 of Before You Can Blink
“Oh!” Daisy instantly understood, and before long, the room grew dimmed, and I blinked a few times before my gaze landed on the love of my life’s face—a face I feared I’d never see again.
I remembered enough from earlier on Mac and Aspen’s front porch to surmise I’d had a heart attack, which made sense considering I was currently lying in a hospital bed with my wife perched on the mattress beside me, concern alight in her blue eyes.
It brought me back to the last time we’d been in this position, the sense of déjà vu hitting me square in the extremely sore chest.
My lips twitched, and I joked, “Is this the part where you tell me you’re pregnant?”
Laughter filled the air even as tears rolled down her face. “Sorry to tell you that ship sailed a long time ago, cowboy.”
“Just as well. Not sure Tripp could handle the competition of a younger sibling, anyway.”
“How did I get dragged into this?” Daisy shifted enough on the bed so that I had a view of my son leaning against the far wall, both arms crossed over his chest. Even from this distance, I could see the tension running through his body.
This had been a rough couple of years for the Sullivan family. First with Daisy getting sick, and then my ma passing suddenly. If I was stressed out enough to have a damn heart attack, I could only imagine what my kids were going through.
Feeling the whole family needed a little levity, I smirked at my boy, who had somewhere along the line become a man. “You know why we stopped having babies after you, don’t you?”
Tripp lifted his eyes to the ceiling. “Why do I have the feeling I don’t want to know?”
His intuition was spot on, but granting him mercy felt like a cop out. “Because you were the biggest cockblocker known to man.”
“Oh my God.” Tripp dragged a hand down his face.
“Jett!” Daisy exclaimed, smacking my arm gently.
“What? It’s true.” With a wicked grin, I tacked on, “Any time I tried to go near your mama, you’d start beating down the door, crying for her.”
My wife tsked. “That’s not why we stopped after two kids.”
“Maybe not. But it sure as hell wouldn’t have helped if we had wanted more.”
Tripp shook his head, muttering, “Almost liked it better when we used to butt heads over everything.”
“Oh, come on,” I chided. “You’re a father now. Certainly, you can understand the challenges of intimacy with your wife with a bunch of little ones underfoot. But don’t worry, you get to rediscover each other again once they’re grown and out of the house.”
Ignoring me, he spoke to Daisy. “Are we sure it was his heart? Because right now, I’m more concerned there’s something wrong with his brain.”
“What’s wrong with his brain?” Aspen’s panicked voice preceded her entry into the room. “Did he have a stroke too?”
“Nothing’s wrong with your father’s brain,” Daisy assured our daughter.
Brow creasing, Aspen turned to her brother. “Then what were you talking about?”
Tripp kept his eyes locked on mine, arching an eyebrow in a silent challenge. When I refused to speak, he let out a wry laugh. “Oh, nothing, big sis. Just Dad commiserating over the fact that we don’t have sex lives because we have kids.”
“Whoa, speak for yourself, buddy.” Mac’s voice echoed from down the hall before he came into view, wrapping his arms around Aspen’s waist. “There’s no shortage of orgasms in the Blaze household. Isn’t that right, Freckles?” He placed an affectionate kiss to the side of her head.
Aspen’s pale face went red as a tomato, and her mouth opened and closed soundlessly.
A smug smirk tugged at Tripp’s lips. “See what you started?”
Yeah, this had gone a little off the rails, but at least the heavy blanket of tension in the room had lifted. I’d take the small victory.
Daisy leaned in close, whispering, “I see what you did there.”
“Worked, didn’t it?”
She hummed in the affirmative, letting her forehead rest against mine.
