Parents aren’t supposed to abandon their children.
I scoff lightly, turning it into a cough when Bailey glances up at me from where she’s sprawled out on the carpet. I lift my third cup of coffee of the morning to my lips and take a hefty swallow.
Shit, my own dad had left us when my brothers and I were kids. I’d been nine, I think, when Mom had finally given him an ultimatum to stay here with us or walk out and not come back.
As a dad myself, I still don’t understand how he’d made the choice he did. My older brother, Xander, has tried to explain it from his perspective. As a Hotshot—a wildland firefighter on a crew stationed out in Washington state—our dad had been gone most of the year and we never knew if the last time we’d seen him would actually be the last time. It had been too hard on Mom, so she’d finally said enough was enough and made him choose. Us or the job, and he’d chosen the job.
Xander had followed in his footsteps, moving out to Sky Ridge, Washington to join our dad’s crew ages ago. He’d worked his way through the ranks until he’d been named Superintendent after Dad died on a job seven years ago.
Both Xander and our dad had pretty much been married to the job. Xander was a lifelong bachelor up until last summer when he’d gone and finally admitted he was head over heels for his best friend’s little sister, a widow with three kids that moved in next door to him.
And trust me when I say, the similarities in his situation from a year ago and mine now are not lost on me in the slightest.
He’d gone and married Teddy and gotten pregnant—or maybe it was the other way around, I’m still not completely sure with the timeline being suspiciously close—and had just welcomed a baby girl a few months ago. Damn cute kid. My first biological niece—although Teddy’s kids have adopted Joel and myself as uncles—but it’s something I had been sure I’d never get with Xander being the perpetual bachelor he was for so long and Joel being… well,Joel.
Don’t get me wrong, Joel’s loyal to a fucking fault. He’ll give you the shirt off his back without the blink of an eye and is the first man on my boot heel going into every fire we’re called to, and I wouldn’t want it any other way.
Oh…yeah. We’re both firefighters, too. Kind of a family thing, I guess. One of the few things we got from Dad.
Joel joined Xander and myself on the Petoskey Fire Department as soon as he was old enough to, but the three of us had only worked alongside each other for about six months before Xander left for Sky Ridge to join the Hotshot crew. I’d worked my way up to Assistant Chief, working directly beneath Chief Clayton Jensen. Joel is one of our best training officers, and someone I’m always happy to have my back in a call.
But, my younger brother is a habitual playboy with absolutely zero interest in settling down any time soon. Unless we’re on a call where his entire focus is on work or a fire, he’s thinking with his dick.
I eventually had to make a rule that he wasn’t allowed to bring random women to family functions anymore, because the girls just didn’t understand why there was always someone new with Uncle Joel. Britt had called him a man whore too many times to count, until I’d finally snapped and told her to keep her mouth shut. Of course, that had spiraled into another fight, as usual.
Fuck. How many stupid fights had the girls had to listen to between Britt and myself over the last few years? Way too many, that’s for damn sure.
I met Brittanee one night at a bar downtown, she had just come back home from college for the summer, and flirting across the bar led to one drink and to another, and then to a positive pregnancy test a month later. While it felt a little crazy and rushed, I was even crazier about this firecracker blonde that kept me on my fucking toes, and the thought of not being part of my child’s life was unfathomable to me. Britt didn’t go backdownstate to finish her senior year, she moved in with me, and we were married shortly after that. When Abigail was three, Bailey had come along, and it was after that the problems really started.
She’d asked for a separation when Bails was a year old, which had devastated me, but I’d been hopeful that we could work through it. She’d come back late one night, crying and begging for forgiveness. She’d asked me to hold her, so I did… and just like that first night so many years prior, one thing led to another and nine months later, Chloe arrived.
Things were better, good even, for a long time. She was present, loving, doting… until she wasn’t.
Until all the lies finally started to catch up to her and I finally had to admit defeat, for real this time.
A shrill squeal breaks through my thoughts as I lift my coffee to my lips again, the suddenness of Chloe’s outburst startling me so bad that I slosh half my cup over the rim and down the front of my shirt.
“Shit!”
“She’scoming!” Chloe screams, peeling herself away from the window and scrambling over the arm of the sofa in her mad dash to the front door.
“Chloe—fuck—” I mutter, sloshing more coffee over the rim onto the counter as I set it down roughly. My other hand goes to the front of my shirt, pulling the material that is now soaked through with scorching hot coffee away from my chest. “Chlo, wait—”
“But she’s heeeeerre!” my youngest wails from the door, her hand on the door handle.
Bailey vaults herself over the couch to catch up to us. “Dad! You didn’t scare her off after all!”
Good God, I’m positive the entire complex can hear us, let alone Princess right on the other side of the door.
Absolutely zero fucking chill from either of them. Abi may be the only semi sane one of the bunch after all.
Chloe yanks the door open just as Bailey and I catch up to her, andfuck me sideways. She’s just as pretty this morning as she was yesterday.
Those pretty pink lips I’d spent far too much time thinking about last night as I lay in bed are rolled in, clamped between her teeth, like she’s trying—and failing miserably—to hide a smile. Those green eyes are dancing with mirth when they meet mine, and I know she heard absolutely everything from this side of the door from my two smallest heathens.
“You came!” Chloe exclaims, jumping in place in all of her six-year-old excitement. “You got our note!”
Princess’s eyes stay on mine for just a heartbeat longer before she drops her gaze to Chloe, and then she’s bending low, like she had yesterday, hands braced on her knees. “I sure did. Thank you for the formal invitation.”
