He lets me go.
I’m surprised. I thought he’d snug me closer, hold me tighter, tell me that he’s not going to let me go. But his grip loosens on me and I am left to scramble to put myself back together, physically and emotionally.
“What the fuck was that?” I curse at him, though I do it kind of quietly as I pull my garments back into place.
“How do you feel?”
“What… what is wrong with you?” I ask him the question because I don’t want to answer his.
The truth is I am stinging and embarrassed and kind of warm and also… settled. And I don’t know why, and that is weirding me out to the absolute extreme.
“I have a tendency to try to save people from themselves,” he says, unexpectedly answering me with disarming honesty. “I like being a firefighter because it lets me be strong without having to hurt anyone, the way soldiers do.”
Okay, deep and revealing answer that indicates emotional depth and self-knowledge that frankly I didn’t think men were capable of. My father was different, of course. He was a man beyond men. I’ve never met a guy who would measure up to him.
“You should go and see your sister,” he says. “Before things get even more out of hand.”
HIs voice sounds thick and full of an emotion I can’t entirely place. There’s so much energy in this little closet. I am absolutely wrapped up in it.
I feel a tingling between my thighs, the sort of feeling that I know is going to create a problem for me if I remain in this enclosed space with this handsome, heroic man, to whom I owe the life of my sister and her baby. A lot of men would at least try to leverage that for the use of my mouth at the very least.
He reaches around me and opens the door.
We step out of the closet, and as fate would have it, run straight into my middle sister. She’s carrying two cups of tea and is making her way to my sister’s room.
Her brows practically hit her hairline when she sees me and Thor come out of a room clearly marked Supplies, but thank god she doesn’t say anything.
“Mila!” I say, a little too brightly, linking up with her and pretending like the hunky firefighter who just whipped my ass doesn’t exist. “Oh! Wait. I need to go get something. I’ll meet you back in the room. The baby is so cute. And her name is so…”
I rush off, glad for the excuse to get out of the conversation, and the interlude with Thor the Firefighter. What the fuck am I doing?
I get the herring pie and go back to Freya’s room, where the nurses are done doing whatever they do when you have a baby. Arcane, terrible things, I’d wager, though Freya looks pretty happy right now. It is such a relief to see her, and to know she’s okay.
She’s thrilled with the pie too, which is nice. I like looking after my family, and it’s more important than ever to be able to do little good things.
“This is so good,” she says. “I’m so hungry.”
“I’ll get you more,” I tell her, jumping up. I don’t want to be in the room when…
“Selene was flirting with the firefighter,” Mila says.
“I was not,” I deny hotly. “He was trying to talk to me.”
“In a closet?”
I love Mila, but right now I wish she’d shut up. We don’t need to gossip about me and what I’m doing. Today is about Freya and the baby.
“About what?” Freya asks. She should be resting. She should be gazing at her baby girl, though to be fair, her baby is fast asleepand I guess there’s only so long you can stare at a baby before you want to hear some gossip.
“I don’t know. I told him I was going to punch him in the teeth.”
My sisters roll their eyes. “Really, Selene. Keep this up and you’ll never find a husband. It’s cute now, but it won’t be forever,” Mila says.
“Wrong,” I tell them. “It’s only going to get more and more adorable, until sometime around my sixties, I’m so fucking cute that people explode when they see me.”
Fortunately for me, baby Brenna starts crying at that moment, heralding a muted rush of activity to get her fed.
It is actually incredibly heartwarming and beautiful to see my sister with the child she grew in her body. I’m happy for her and even slightly envious for some mad reason I have no intention of beginning to examine. It’s been a weird day, and I’ve acted in a weird way.
