Page 65 of The Fire Captain's Unexpected Baby
He says nothing. Doesn’t look in my direction. His expression gives away nothing about how he feels.
If I take time to think, will he even hear me out when I come back to him?IfI come back to him?
“I’ll find someone else to take on your care,” I whisper, before backing out of the room.
Lisa sees me rush out and make a beeline for the quiet room around the corner. She follows me down there and doesn’t seemphased when I throw myself onto the tiny cot in the corner, a sob tearing from my throat.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” I confess.
“None of us do,” she says, rubbing my back with a confident and steady hand. “But you’re going to do the right thing foryou.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I was there the moment you held Noah for the first time. I watched you fall in love with that little boy. You’d do anything for him, even if it cost you your own happiness. Maybe you could have both.”
I shake my head and sob into the pillow.
She sits with me until the sobs subside. My shoulders stop shaking, and my breathing evens out. I blow my nose into the tissue she hands me.
“We need to get back to the floor,” she says, all business.
“I can’t be his nurse,” I mumbled.
“I’ll take over his care, but you have to be there for the rest of the floor,” Lisa offers. “Now, let’s get you up and out of this bed.”
Chapter Nineteen
Aaron
“Drinking alone on a Wednesday night?”
The voice drifts through the jukebox music. At first, I think it might be a hindrance to me tonight. They let me out of the hospital—okay, I browbeat them into letting me out of the hospital—and now I plan to get stumbling drunk before I head home and fall into a dreamless sleep.
Anything to forget what happened.
But then Levi swings onto the barstool beside me and signals to the bartender for another round. We sit in companionable silence for a little while, both of us having ended up here on our own. Maybe Levi has demons of his own to chase tonight.
“Double shot of tequila,” he orders.
His order surprises me—stronger than I would have thought for a dad of two. The unflappable superintendent who runs thingswith a pretty tight fist. Maybe there’s more to this family than I thought.
“What are you doing here?” I finally ask as two shots land on the wooden counter in front of him. “This is hardly your hangout.”
“A dive bar?” Levi laughs. “You’re right. Not my scene. But I had a hunch that I’d find you here tonight.”
“Remind me to keep my secrets closer to the vest,” I mutter.
I’d told no one that I was coming to the bar after ending my shift tonight.
“Nobody ratted you out,” Levi says, reading my mind. “But you did throw me for a little bit of a loop. Checked the usual places: corner booth at the diner, laundromat, grocery store. This was the one place nobody suspected.”
“And the one place where I could drown my sorrows.”
“This whole sappy thing doesn’t really become you. You were much more handsome before.” Levi wrinkles his nose. “Don’t tell the guys I said that.”
“You’re her brother,” I remind him. “Maybe you being here isn’t the smartest thing for your relationship with Paige.”
“Paige is complicated.” He hesitates as he thinks. “She thinks she knows what she wants—the safe route, the one where she doesn’t get hurt, and doesn’t get Noah hurt.”
