“Do you want me to come over and help you?”
“No. I’ll need your help soon enough. I know it. Jocelyn?”
“Yeah.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” she said softly.
She hung up and saw her mother standing in the doorway. “You’ve got this.”
“That’s right, I do.”
Until she saw the text from her twin pop up wanting to find out more about this guy she was dating.
Talk about shitty timing.
She didn’t understand why he was so interested now and she wouldn’t be bothered explaining when half the time Jayce was too preoccupied with his job to even listen to her talk.
A problem for another day.
29
SEEN FROM A DISTANCE
“What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be at the firehouse,” his grandmother asked when he walked into the bar at ten on Tuesday. They wouldn’t open for another hour and he had to talk to her before anyone else came in.
Jocelyn was shopping right now for him. It was divide and conquer.
“I switched with someone. We need to talk.”
“I don’t like the look on your face. It’s the same as when you got in trouble at school.”
He snorted. “Much worse than that.”
“Are you sick?” his grandmother asked, almost rushing him.
He let her run her hands over his arms as if she was looking for invisible wounds.
He had plenty of them.
“No. There is no easy way to say this so I’m going to just blurt it out. I’ve got a son.”
“What?”
“Sit down. Everything is happening so fast. I didn’t want to say anything until I knew for sure. I got the call last night with the results and have been scrambling.”
He immediately ordered a twin bed for delivery this afternoon.
“I need more than a seat. I need a drink. If you told me Jocelyn was pregnant I’d laugh, but saying you’ve got a son is a child that already exists.”
“Yeah. He’s two. His name is Maverick.”
“And you’re just telling me now,” she said, reaching her hand over to whack his arm.
“I just found out Sunday night,” he said. “Do you think I’d keep this from you? I didn’t want to believe it, but I could tell by looking at him. I got a DNA test and paid for it to be rushed.”
“And now what? You’re going to be paying a ton of back child support?”
