“Well, tea, maybe, by the time we get home. I’ve lost track of time.”
“Me too.” Galen straightens Esme’s hat. “I was heading home for a kip when I saw you.”
“From work?”
“Yeah. Car got a flat and I couldn’t be bothered to sort it. Hoping someone else will have done it for me by the time I go back.”
“When’s that?”
“Tomorrow morning. I’m covering the day shift for my fecking sins—oops, sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. She hears all sorts from me and my brother.”
“Uncle Tam.” Galen nods, repeating what Esme’s told him over the last few hours that have flashed by like a whimsical fever dream. “Anyway, I was going to catch a nap, then try to stay up for the rest of the day, so if you can help me stay awake, I’m down for just about anything.”
He’s said that to me before, on FlingIt, and in person. But he’s not talking about sex this time, and as I dare myself to look closer than I have all afternoon, I see he’s tired in the same way Bhodi gets when a run of night shifts wears him down.
I see how to fix it, because I’ve spent a lifetime watching my brother be a better man than me. “Come home with us then.”
Galen
I do go home with them—Sab and Esme—and it’s against my better judgement solely because I’m too tired to cope with how watching him be the cutest girl dad ever does a number on me.
And look, he’s not the only girl dad I know. Nash has a daughter, and I’ve watched her run rings around every grown man she comes across. Around Logan, for feck’s sake.
But Sab…he’s different. Maybe because he really does have no clue howgoodhe is.
Esme, though. She knows. And kids can’t fake that. She laughs at him, clinging and singing, while she bosses him to Tipperary and back. And Sab…he beams as if she’s handed him all the gold, frankincense, and myrrh in the world, and it’s the best thing I’ve ever seen.
Holy feck, I’m emotional today. I’m smiling through the decades-old wound on my soul, but watching them wrecks me. I should’ve gone home after the roughest shift the watch has endured in a while. I should’vestayedand fixed my car. But I didn’t. And by the time Sab sets a plate in front of me, I know I can’t be anywhere else. “Damn, boy. What’s this?”
Sab says something French.
I drink in the fecking feast before me and try to figure it out. Fail and flail enough that he laughs and says it again.
“Poulet rôti, ratatouille. Roast chicken and vegetables.Mange.”
“What does that mean?”
“Eat.”
Sab rubs my fractious shoulder, zero hesitation in the easy touch, and moves on to help Esme. I fall into the first home-cooked meal I’ve had in—Lord knows, actually—and clear my plate as if I’m as starved for hot dinners as I am the casual affection he just gifted me without even thinking about it.
It’s so good.
He brings me more and I eat that too. Then it’s a struggle of the ages to keep my eyes open.
I need to go home.
I need to stop eating the French gingerbread he’s left on the arm of a couch that’s so very nearly as bed-shaped as mine.
Ineedto stop watching him be the warmest, kindest dad in the world and imagining what it would be like to belong here.
Deep thoughts. Bad shifts do that to all of us unless we drink to forget, and I’ve never been one for that.
I’m not one for going home when I’m this comfortable either, though, so I don’t shift myself until it’s time for Esme’s bath.
By then, I’ve come to realise Sab’s not as shy as I thought. That first night in the pub, outside the homeware shop, and even online on that stupid app, I pegged him as quiet. Reserved. Guarded, almost. But here, in his own space, in the home he’s clearly building for his kid with his bare hands, he’s different.
