Page 64 of A Baby for the Firefighter
“Yeah, I was going to call, but I didn’t want to talk about this on the phone.”
Eli’s brow furrowed in an expression of concern. “Did something happen?”
I shrugged helplessly and looked at my niece, who was staring back at me with her big blue baby eyes. Was I going to have a baby like her soon? That couldn’t be. I couldn’t be a parent yet.
“Griff?”
I shook myself out of my stupor. “I’m not sure we should be talking about this in front of your girl.” How much did they understand at that age? Probably not too much, but I wasn’t going to risk it.
“Okay,” Eli said slowly. “Well, come inside.”
I took my shoes off and followed him inside the living room.
“Matt’s out grocery shopping with Jake,” he told me. “But I assure you Livvy won’t share your secrets with anyone. She won’t even saydada.” He glanced down at his little one. “I’m sure you could, but you don’t want to, do you?”
Livvy babbled something in response that was incoherent, but made her daddy smile anyway.
Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if I was pregnant.
Jesus, what was I thinking?
I sat on the couch with my brother and ran a hand through my hair. “I’m an idiot.”
“I don’t necessarily want to disagree with you there, but tell me what happened first.”
Could I really? I took a deep breath. This was my brother, who had come to me whenhe’dscrewed up—and he’d screwed uptwiceby now. I could admit one mistake to him. “Dean and I had sex last night,” I started, surprised that I got the words past my lips.
“You did? Awesome!” Eli grinned and patted me on the back. “I knew you could do it.”
“Yeah, well…” I exhaled. “I don’t know what happened, really.”
“Did something go wrong?”
I bit my lower lip. “I don’t know. Something just came over me. I mean, at first I was nervous, as usual, and then… I guess I decided to trust my instincts? And they completely took over. I wasn’t myself.” I shook my head, looking back on it. If I’d been in full control of my brain, I’d never have been so stupid as to forget a condom. I might have acted like I was twelve sometimes, but I wasn’t. I knew better than most people what happened when you got careless in bed.
“I don’t want to say this,” Eli started. “But it sounds like you went into heat.”
“Only teenagers go into heat.” I waved him off.
“That’s why I didn’t want to say it. I was just thinking, maybe… if you never actuallyhadone as a teen… Or never acted on one…”
“You think I delayed it and now it’s come to bite me in the ass?”
“Kinda, yeah. I remember my own and it’s a bit like what you describe. Seriously, how do you think Jake came to be?”
“I try not to think about that,” I said, but it made sense, of course. When we were younger I’d always wondered how my brother had screwed up like that. Having sex without protection with his secret lover wasn’t like him. But now it made sense. If he’d felt the way I’d felt last night…
“Feels good, though, doesn’t it?” Eli elbowed my arm with a dirty grin. “Sometimes I wish I could be a teen again, but honestly, when you find the right partner the hormone rush can totally feel like being in heat. Maybe it was just that for you.”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. I’d never gone into heat as a teen, so I had nothing to compare last night’s experience to. “It doesn’t really matter what it was, I guess. Just that I did something really stupid.”
Eli raised an eyebrow at me. “What did you do?”
“Kind of the same thing you did to have Jake?” I tried.
“Oh.” My brother grimaced. “No condom, huh?”
I buried my head in my hands. “It didn’t seem important at the time.”
