Page 37 of Fierce-Michael

Ty slid the bag off his back and Michael caught it before it hit the floor. His son put his jacket on and the two of them left.

He didn’t even tell Ty to give his mother a kiss or a hug. He was too pissed off to have his night interrupted for something so stupid yet again.

But he wasn’t going to let his kid be screaming with nightmares either.

“Can I sleep with you tonight, Dad?” Ty asked.

“Can we try your room first?” he asked. He didn’t want Ty getting used to this any time he had a bad night.

“Will you lie with me on my bed?”

“Of course,” he said. “Don’t I always?”

“You’ll save me, right?” Ty asked.

“You know it, bud,” he said.

Michael drove home trying to think of ways to relieve his son’s mind so that they both could get some sleep tonight.

“I need to brush my teeth,” Ty said when they were upstairs in his house.

“I thought you were ready for bed?” he asked.

“Mom says I don’t have to brush my teeth at night. Just in the morning. But I like doing it at night too.”

He let out a sigh. “If you want to brush your teeth any time at your mother’s just do it,” he said. “That isn’t something you have to ask.”

Ty ran to the hall bath and brushed his teeth. Then he heard his son going to the bathroom. Ty always left the door open and they’d have to deal with that at some point too.

The toilet flushed and his son ran out and to his room next door.

“I’m ready,” Ty said, climbing into bed. At some point he might put a TV in here. That could have helped Ty, but he didn’t want to get into those habits just yet.

“Do you want a story first?” he asked.

“Can I?” Ty asked.

“Why don’t you pick one out while I shark-proof the room?”

“Shark-proof the room?” Ty asked. “How do you do that?”

He pulled a small spritz bottle of peppermint hand sanitizer out of his pocket. “Did you know sharks don’t like mint?”

“They don’t?” Ty asked, his eyes wide.

“Nope,” he said. “I’m going to spray it around the doors and windows and then under your bed. There won’t be a spot in the entire room they can go to without ending belly up and vanishing into smoke.”

“Cool,” Ty said. “I asked Mom how long a shark could survive out of water and she didn’t know. She didn’t even look it up like you would have.”

All Electra had to do was make some comment about them not being in the water so the shark couldn’t get Ty. It wasn’t that hard to convince a four-year-old of things.

“That is how I found out about the peppermint spray,” he said. “Good thing I had some in the house. Did you get the book you want?”

Ty just grabbed one at random while Michael spritzed peppermint spray around the room like a fairy with pixie dust. He might have gone overboard as the room smelled like a tube of toothpaste exploded next to a bottle of mouthwash.

His son got under the covers and Michael stretched his legs out on the bed, his back to the wall, so that he was next to his son lying down.

Before the book was done, Ty was sleeping steadily.

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