Page 63 of Embracing the Change

Goddamn fuck.

“Come here,” Jamie urged.

Judge shook his head. “No. I can’t. I need to shower. I need to get back to them.”

“Chloe is fine. JT is fine. You need to ground yourself in that fact.”

“How?” Judge clipped. “You didn’t see…you didn’t hear…fuck. Shit!”

Jamie watched his boy as he dropped his ass to the arm of a couch, bent double and wrapped his arms over the back of his head, both dogs worried and snuffling him.

Jamie got close as Judge said to his thighs. “I get it. I didn’t even lose her, and I get how everything can turn to nothing in a flash, and you can’t handle it.”

Jamie crouched by his son and reached to put his hand on his back.

“You’re going to handle this, Judge,” he said quietly.

Judge’s torso shot up, dislodging Jamie’s hand, and he clipped sarcastically. “Doing a bang-up job of that, aren’t I?”

Jamie stayed low and stated, “You’re having an honest reaction to a traumatic situation, and you’re entitled to that.”

“I have a wife and kid to look after.”

“You’re still human.”

“I can’t be human, I’ve gotta be—” he cut himself off.

“Everything?” Jamie filled in for him.

Judge’s eyes were haunted when he looked at Jamie. “God, I get all of it now. Everything you went through.”

“This isn’t about me, it’s about you, but I’ll tell you about me to move this along. When the captain of that ship told us Chloe and JT were in distress, I froze. I was immobile. I might still be standing there if Nora didn’t kickstart me. And I’m not embarrassed about that. I love you. I love Chloe. The fact I was so far away and powerless to help when I heard that news wrecked me. There is nothing wrong with feeling love. It can make us weak, like that, but even if it does, it never ceases to make us strong.”

“If that’s the case, then what the fuck with you wasting time claiming Nora?” Judge asked.

“I stopped wasting time. We’re together. Get ready to have another stepmom.”

His son’s eyes rounded. “Shit. Really?”

Jamie stood while grinning and confirmed, “Really.”

“Stepmom? That was fast,” Judge muttered.

It wasn’t fast.

It took decades.

“Obviously, we have to work up to that part,” Jamie told him. “That’s important, but it’s not what’s important now. What’s important now is you stop being so damned hard on yourself. Yesterday was terrifying. That was yesterday. Today you have a healthy wife and a beautiful son. Trust me, buddy, life is too damned short to get stuck somewhere you don’t need to be. I’ve learned that twice, the second time very recently, and I learned it the hard way. Don’t turn away from feelings. Feel them. Then get on with it. Yesterday scared you, because it was fucking scary. Admit it. Feel it. I’m here to talk to about it. But in the end, today is today. And you need to get on with it.”

In an agonized voice, Judge shared, “I love her with everything that’s me, and I overheard them talking about the possibility that they’d have to save one or the other.”

Fuck.

Jamie pulled his son to his feet and into his arms, and he held tight.

Judge’s arms went around him, and he grabbed fistfuls of his dad’s shirt.

“I would have picked her,” he said quietly into Jamie’s ear.

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