“So is his brother. And his other brother. Why would you think he was any different? Runs in the family and all that.”
“Yeah…they’re kind of not family.” He looked straight at the floor, no longer interested in my ink.
“What do you mean they’re not family? They’re brothers.”
“No, I said that wrong. They 100 percent are family, but he was a foster kid.”
That was the first I’d heard of that, and I probably should have known sooner. It wasn’t my business. That was for him to share if he felt like it. At least, that’s what it was like for me.
I loved my bestie, but it took a long time before I let him in enough to know I was in foster care after my parents died. A great-aunt took me in, eventually, but for a time, that had been my reality too.
“How about we not talk about him anymore?”
“Sorry.” He grabbed the back of his neck. “I didn’t mean to—”
“I’m not mad. I promise.” The last thing he needed was to feel guilty about bringing up foster care.
“I don’t have to be home until bedtime. Let’s have an omega night out.”
“You don’t have to be home? Like you have a curfew?”
“No, not like I have a curfew. More like Sothea said, ‘You’re gonna stay out and you’re gonna have fun, and I don’t want to see you until bedtime.’”
“Yeah, that sounds more like him.” He was one of the nicest alphas I’d ever met. I was happy for my bestie for getting one of the good ones. “Fine, we can go out, but I’m really not in the mood for loud crowds and clubs.”
“Me neither.” He stood up and patted his belly. “But I am in the mood for pancakes.”
And off to the twenty-four-hour diner we went. I made him talk about everything and anything that wasn’t Theo. He kind of sucked at it. So did I. But that was okay. Because, pancakes.
Chapter Seven
Theo
The best forty-eights, aside from when we got to go on outreach to schools or libraries, were the ones where we had no calls. That meant there were no fires, no faulty smoke alarms, no home security systems that went awry—nothing. But those were also the most boring.
There were only so many rounds of UNO you could play before you were ready to throw the cards across the room, and we’d played double that. The problem with having that many hours on my hands was that it gave me time to think. And where did all my thoughts go? Brent. The more I thought about him, the more my beast got riled up.
He was livid at me for not claiming Brent as ours, especially now that we’d reconnected. It didn’t matter how many times I explained that Brent was human and we needed to tread lightly if we had any hope of making him ours. My dragon bought none of that—zip, zero, nada.
Unlike other jobs where people got off shift and sometimes went to happy hour or out to eat, at my firehouse, we generally just went home. We’d had enoughtogether timeand couldn’t get out of there fast enough.
Today, I wasn’t in the mood to be alone. I needed something to distract me from myself, from my own thoughts, so I pulled up the group text I had with my brothers.Either of you want to grab something to eat? Or maybe shift?
Xavier replied first.Sorry, I’ve got to outline a full back piece today.
My brother was a workhorse. Even though he was more skilled and quicker than I, that was going to take his entire day.
Maybe next time,I replied, not wanting to make him feel bad about working.
I slid my phone back in my pocket and drove home. When I got there, two messages were waiting for me.
The first was a picture of Sothea holding a diaper. The second:Sorry, Dad patrol.
I shot back a quick,Sorry,to which he immediately replied:Don’t be. Being a dad is the best.
I’d meant, sorry about the diaper, but I didn’t want to play thetrying to explain a past textgame with my brother. Instead, I just sent back a heart and called it good.
“I guess it’s just you and me, bear,” I muttered.
