Page 66 of A Baby for the Firefighter
But he wasn’t with me this night. No, I was lying in my bed at my cousin’s house, staring at the ceiling at 2am, willing myself to fall asleep and dream of something nicer than that goddamn accident. I had to get this under control if I wanted to function in my job. Hell, I had to get this under control if I wanted to be an alpha worth dating. Worth marrying, perhaps, someday. But I was getting ahead of myself, and I wasn’t going to fall asleep.
With a sigh, I decided to get up and grab a glass of water.
When I went down the stairs, I saw that the light was on in the living room. I figured maybe Shane had forgotten to switch it off when he went to bed, but as I stepped into the room to do it myself, I spotted my cousin sitting on the couch with a glass of something that looked like liquor in his hand.
What was he doing up and drinking in the middle of the night? We both had work in the morning.
“Shane?”
My cousin startled a bit when he heard me speak. “Oh, it’s just you,” he said, looking at me.
“What are you doing down here?”
He shrugged, and I noticed the bottle of whiskey on the coffee table beside him. It looked like he’d already consumed a considerable amount of it too.
I sat with him. “Is something wrong?”
“Nothing,” he said, half-heartedly. “Couldn’t sleep.” Well, that made two of us, but I hadn’t been aware that anything was troubling Shane. Anything beyond the usual, anyway. And it didn’t seem like he wanted to share. It was a stupid alpha trait really, never wanting to share your worries. Not that I was one to talk.
I grabbed the glass from him. “You realized that we have work tomorrow, right?” I asked because I knew the seniors meant a lot to Shane, simply because they had meant a lot to Ron.
“I know that.” He snatched the glass back from me. “Do you, though?”
“What do you mean?”
“I know you haven’t been sleeping, man, look at those bags under your eyes. You can’t judge me.”
I scratched the back of my head. Was it that obvious? Come to think of it, Griff had asked whether anything was bothering me too, but how could I tell him that I felt like I was suffocating on smoke every time I tried to sleep?
How was I even going to start talking about that?
I had no idea. Once or twice now I’d caught Griff looking at me with such open admiration that it felt impossible to let him down now.
“I just have a lot on my mind,” I told Shane.
The way he looked at me told me he didn’t believe me, but he wasn’t going to get anything more.
“This isn’t like you,” I said, gesturing at the bottle of whiskey.
He shrugged. “I have a lot on my mind too.”
I grimaced. He obviously wasn’t going to share if I wasn’t. “I’m having a hard time going back to my old job,” I said, putting it as harmlessly as possible.
“Really?” he looked up at me. “You’ve only been once or twice. Did anything happen?”
“No, nothing special.” Not yet, anyway. I shuddered to think of the first time there would actually be a fire in town. “It just still brings back memories of the accident,” I said.
Shane let himself sink back into the couch and stared at the ceiling. “You know that wasn’t your fault, right?” He snorted as if he’d had some funny thought, and I guessed the alcohol was taking effect. “I always knew you were gonna go back to being a firefighter someday, but I still hate it.”
“You hate it?” That was news to me.
“I hate that I have to find a replacement for you.”
Ah. Now we were getting closer to the heart of the issue. “I’m not going to leave you hanging, I told you that.”
“Yeah, you’re a part time firefighter now.” He laughed as if the idea was ridiculous. “You’re going to want to go full time sooner rather than later. I know you. You don’t fuck around like that.” He took a sip of the whiskey. “So I’m starting to look for someone to help me so you can move on. You’ve helped me a lot, Dean. I’m not gonna keep relying on you forever, man.”
While that was a nice sentiment, I really didn’twantto go full time in the near future. But Shane wasn’t going to believe that unless I told him a lot more than I was comfortable sharing.
