Page 46 of A Baby for the Firefighter
“I’m sorry for all that happened,” she continued, shaking her head. “I regret it all every day, but there’s nothing I can do to change the past now. I can only try to be here for you if you need me now. So if there’s anything…”
“Thank you, Mom. That means a lot.” To me, anyway. I wasn’t sure my brother could be placated so easily, but I’d never been as stubborn as he was, and I was sick of the family drama, to be honest. I could never stand any kind of drama. I just wanted everyone to be happy and get along. Was that too much to ask?
“Is anything troubling you?” she asked, taking a seat opposite me. Now I really did feel like I was twelve again, but when I was twelve, Dean and I were only friends and life had been much simpler.
“I’m okay,” I said. I appreciated her offer, really, but I wasn’t going to discuss my sex life with my mother.
If there was anyone I was going to talk to this about, it was Dean… and Eli. I remembered that my brother was expecting a call from me anyway, so I decided to ring him up after I finished my sickeningly sweet and absolutely awesome pancakes.
20
Dean
“You back already?” Shane asked me almost the minute I walked into the door as he wrestled with a little girl who did not want to put her dress on. I’d sent him a text last night, saying that I was staying over at Griff’s. “Didn’t think I’d see you before work.”
“Yeah, well…” I headed past him into the kitchen to get some coffee. I wasn’t hungry, but I definitely needed some caffeine after the night I’d had. I’d hardly slept a wink. “Things are complicated.”
“More complicated than getting this dress on this girl?” Shane half-shouted from where he was still standing in the hallway.
I had to laugh. “Maybe not!” Coffee mug in hand, I stepped back out into the hallway. “Mary, why do you not want to wear your dress?”
“Want blue dress!” she exclaimed, flailing with her little arms.
“I see.” The dress my cousin was currently trying to put on her was pink.
“But you like this dress,” Shane said as if to remind her, shooting me a helpless look.
“Want blue!” she insisted.
“Well. At least she knows what she wants. Does she have a blue dress?” I asked Shane.
He scrunched his face up, thinking. “Maybe?” He sighed, shaking his head just slightly. “Ron would have known.”
I slapped him lightly on the back. “Don’t beat yourself up over it. Let’s just see if we can find a blue dress for the little princess.”
He took a deep breath. “I guess.” He picked Mary up in his arms, and together we walked into the nursery. I marveled at how much progress my cousin had made. A few months ago, a moment like this would have sent Shane spiraling into depression for the rest of the day. Ron had been his whole world, and every reminder that he was gone seemed to break Shane’s heart a little more each day. But he was past that stage now. I wasn’t sure how he’d done it, but it felt like he’d used super glue or something to put the pieces of himself back together so he could be strong for his children.
I only hoped that it would hold up.
I had no idea how I would handle it if anything happened to Griff, and we hadn’t been married for ten years like Shane and Ron. We’d just recently become a couple, but we’d been friends for a long time and I cared about him a lot. We weren’t married, no, but getting completely ahead of myself, I could see that in our future. I didn’t know what I would have done if that had been him in that hospital bed instead of his father. I didn’t even want to consider the possibility.
“Dean? Are you listening? You went all pale there for a second.” Shane poked my shoulder, holding a light blue dress in his other hand.
“Oh, sorry.” I rubbed my face. “Spaced out.”
“What were you thinking about?” he asked as he helped his daughter into the dress of her choice.
“Nothing.”
“Oookay,” Shane said, clearly not believing me. “Are you going to tell me why you’re back so early? When you texted me where you were staying, I figured you would… you know…” Shane wasn’t shy about this kind of topic. The only reason he didn’t sayI was sure you were gonna bang your boyfriend and drift through the day in happy bliss, was because his daughter was listening and if Ron had been still alive, that would have netted him a frying pan over the head.
“We’re still taking it slow,” I informed him. “And I wasn’t staying there because we were going to do anything. There was a fire yesterday, did you hear about it?”
Shane nodded absentmindedly as he straightened the dress out once he’d put it on Mary. “Everyone was talking about it.”
“The fire was at his parents’ house.”
“Oh.” Shane’s eyes went wide. “Is everything alright? The gossip varied. You know how it is.”
