Page 35 of A Baby for the Firefighter
Eli and I looked at each frowning. Nothing much happened in Oceanport. It wasn’t often that you heard sirens. This was a call to action for the local fire department.
“Wonder what happened,” Eli said, walking to the window to look outside.
“You see anything?”
“Nah. We’re too far out.”
“Figures. Maybe I’ll see something on my way back home later.” And that was the extent of my concern at that point, simple curiosity. I didn’t know then that the sound of the sirens was connected to someone I knew.
Eli and I didn’t find out about that until after we’d watched almost an hour of mindless TV. His phone rang at the end ofGhostbusters, and a few seconds after he’d answered, his face went pale.
“I… really? In the hospital?”
Who was in the hospital? I tilted my head, watching my brother grow visibly more uncomfortable with every passing second. What was going on? Eli usually kept a cool head. It wasn’t like him to fidget with the hem of his shirt or bite his lip.
“Who was that?” I asked as soon as he’d hung up.
He looked at me, taking a deep breath. “Those sirens… Our parents’ house burned.”
“Our… what?” I felt my eyes go wide, but this was just… It wasn’t possible. Things like that happened to other people. Not to our parents. Even though we hadn’t spoken to them since Jake had been born, it was still hard to believe something this terrible could happen to them. Not only had their house burned, but Eli had also said something about a hospital.Oh God.“Are they…?”
“Dad’s been taken to the hospital. I’m not sure what’s wrong. She was hysterical.”
“She? Mom?” My voice broke.
Eli looked at me helplessly. I could only imagine what he was feeling. Our parents had kicked him out of the house when he’d gotten pregnant with Jake and there was a lot of hurt still there that would probably never fully heal. I didn’t know our mother even had his number, and I wondered about that, but now was not the time to ask. I had a different question instead.
“Do you think we should go?” I asked, drawing my lower lip between my teeth. After all, Dad could bedying.
“I don’t know.” Eli rubbed his face with the heel of his hand and groaned. “Maybe we should. I don’t really want to, but…” He shook his head, and then he took a deep breath and straightened, as if he’d come to a decision. “Matt!” he yelled the next moment. His husband appeared in the doorway a minute later.
“Something wrong?”
“Griff and I need to go to the hospital and visit my father,” Eli said with surprising calm. It seemed now that he’d made up his mind, he felt better.
Wish I could say the same for myself.
“The hospital?” Matt’s eyebrows went up. “Do you need me to find a babysitter?”
“No, you can take care of the kids.”
“You don’t want me to come with you?”
Eli shook his head. “No, we can’t waste time finding someone for the kids, and I’m definitely not taking them. I have Griff, I’ll be fine.”
“If you’re really sure.”
“I’ll be fine,” Eli repeated. He gave his husband a kiss, and then he grabbed the car keys from a bowl near the door and turned to me. “Let’s go.”
“Okay,” I made myself say, even though nothing about this was even remotely okay.
* * *
We arrivedat the hospital about half an hour later. Since Oceanport wasn’t big enough to have a hospital of its own, it was always a bit of a drive, and one that had been spent mostly in silence this time. Eli hadn’t really wanted to talk, and I hadn’t really been able to think of anything much to say either.
We hadn’t always had a bad relationship with our parents, growing up. They’d been… okay. Regular parents with regular ups and downs. There’d been a couple of fights, of course, but I remembered some awesome family holidays as well. Our parents could have been worse. I knew of some omegas who had their mates chosen for them by their families. Our parents never triedthat, at least.
Things hadn’t really gone to shit until Eli came home from school pregnant, pretending not to know who the other father was. They would have been pissed even if he had known, of course, but it was his complete reluctance to even list candidates that drove them completely crazy.
