“Oh, my God. I thought I was the only person our age who knew that one.”
“No. My folks are big Christmas cartoon people. Both sets of families. So we watched a lot of them depending on whose house I was at.”
“Was it weird or cool to have two Christmases?”
“Well, it wasn’t odd to me because they’d been divorced for a while, but you know, I mean, you see it on TV, the idea of this, you know, insular family situation and it’s what you’re supposed to have. And so when you don’t have it as a kid, you feel unusual. But really, it was just, I spent half the day with Mom. I spent half the day with Dad. And since I was the only child from that marriage, and they had kids from their new marriages, I was part-time.”
Laird winced a little bit. “I swear to you, our child will never be part-time. Ever.”
He kissed the corner of Laird’s mouth. “Well, I bet there are points when they’re a teenager that we’re going to wish that they were just part-time.”
“Oh, God. No doubt.” Laird snorted. “Especially if the kid is like me. I was as shit.”
“Yeah?” Devon stroked Laird’s chest, his hands needing something to do. “Were you really that awful?”
“As a teenager? Yes. Though that’s actually why I became an EMT.”
He glanced up at Laird, seeing the weight of memories on his face. “What happened?”
“My best friend…” Laird sighed. “We were at a bonfire, and he was drunk. He got in his truck to drive home, and we all got to see him run it right into a tree as he tore off.”
“Oh my God.” He rose up on his elbow, staring. “Did he?—”
Laird’s mouth twisted. “He bled out. I tried to help, but yeah. And this is a very depressing subject for the day, huh?”
“But I’m glad you told me.” Laird needed to share this stuff more, get the poison out. He was used to being very much an island. “These are the things that a couple can share together to ease the pain, right?”
“I guess, yeah. One way or the other, my folks have forgiven me.”
“Of course they have. I mean…you didn’t do it. You weren’t driving the car.” Not that that mattered, he guessed. Guilt was guilt.
“No, but I didn’t stop him, did I? I didn’t make him give me his keys.”
“Could you have?” He remembered being a teenager, feeling invincible on one hand and utterly incapable of confronting his friends in a real, meaningful way on the other. “I mean, honestly. Could you have made him stop?”
Laird chewed his lower lip. “I’m not sure, honey. I want to think I could have, I guess. But I know I was never all that convincing about it. We were stupid kids.”
Devon nodded. “Exactly. You can’t look at the past through the lens of now in terms of what you could have done then. You can use it to make sure nothing like that happens again.” He put a hand on his belly. “Or to talk to our kids about making good choices.”
Laird’s eyes widened. “God. Our kids. That makes me a little wild. Makes my heart race.”
“In a good way, I hope.” He winked because he got it, because it was kind of in a good way and kind of in an oh my God that’s scary sort of way. He totally understood.
“I definitely think it’s in a good way.” Laird rubbed their noses together. “Also, in an I’m not sure I’m mature enough to be an actual father sort of way.”
“Oh, I don’t know. You save people’s lives. We can probably raise a baby.” Of course, he’d brought how many babies into this world, and he still wasn’t one hundred percent sure he had the slightest idea how to raise a child to a month old, much less adulthood.
“I guess we muddle through, huh?” Laird turned on the TV and hunted down the cartoon he wanted.
“I don’t think that we have a choice, love.” He leaned in and told himself to relax. It was time to Christmas.
Laird stood there at his parents’door, frozen for just half a second.
He was about to go in and tell them that he was getting married to Devon, who he wasn’t sure they even liked.
Well, he knew Mhairi liked him. And Jason liked him well enough, but he wasn’t sure about Mom and Dad, who Devon was still calling Mr. and Mrs. McCallum, not even Fiona and Archie.
Still Devon was standing there waiting. His baby bump barely showing, a pan of homemade Parker House rolls in his hands.
