Page 31 of Single Mom for the Firemen

I stare at her for a moment. I feel like I have managed to conjure her, just by the pure intensity of how much I’ve been thinking about her these last few days. Shit, I know I should be smarter than to spend time alone with her, after what happened the other day, but it’s not like I can just turn my back on her and leave her and Callie to wander around the woods with nowhere to go, right?

“Sure,” I sigh. “Follow me. You’re not far from the trail, but it’ll be a long walk back to the cabin…”

“That’s fine,” she replies, planting a hand on her chest to indicate how relieved she is. “As long as we’re out of here, I’m good.”

I lead the two of them back out of the forest and toward the long path that leads back down to their cabin. It’s not exactly a shock that she managed to get turned around, given how dry it’s been here lately. In the summer months, the dusty trails start to look like any other bit of turf, and it’s way too easy to wander off and find yourself somewhere you never intended to be. Exactly why we’re out every day keeping an eye on the woods. Even when it’s warm, one cold night out here when you’re not dressed for it could cost you everything.

Once we reach the path again, Callie takes off ahead of us.

“Don’t go too far!” Vanessa calls to her, but then she shakes her head.

“Shit, I don’t even know why I’m saying that.” She laughs softly. “I’m the one who got us lost in the first place. She’s probably better at navigating all of this than me…”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” I reply without thinking. “These paths can be a mess. You’re back on it now, that’s all that matters.”

She glances at me out of the corner of her eye—I can tell that she’s surprised I’m giving her so much leeway, but I don’t have it in me to get pissed at her for getting lost. She’s far from the first, and besides, it’s not as though she meant it.

“Thanks,” she murmurs, watching as Callie bolts on down the path, stopping every now and then to examine something she’s found by the side of the trail. Vanessa watches her fondly, a warm smile on her face, and I find myself watching her—there’s something about the way she looks at her little girl that reminds me so much of Jamie, our foster mother. That same loving care,that same attentiveness, as though there’s nowhere she’d rather be in the world than here and now.

“What are you staring at me for?” she teases lightly, when she glances around and finds me looking in her direction.

I clear my throat and swiftly draw my gaze away from her. “Nothing.”

“Oh, come on,” she shoots back, nudging me in the side. “I saw it. You can tell me.”

I hesitate. There’s a lot she doesn’t know about me, and in truth, a lot I don’t want her to know. I carry a hell of a lot of baggage, we all do—but sometimes it feels as though the weight of it lies heaviest on my shoulders. I’m the oldest, after all. I’m the one who should have been there for them when they needed me—but I wasn’t. No, I was on the other side of the world, fighting a war on someone else’s behalf, when the people who raised me needed more than anything to have their sons there to save them…

“You just remind me of someone,” I admit finally. That’s about the best I’m going to give her.

She cocks an eyebrow. “Of who?”

I pause again, my eyes fixed straight ahead. I guess, if she really wants to know, there’s no harm in telling her…

“My mom.”

“Oh,” she blurts out, clearly surprised. “I—I don’t…”

“My foster mom,” I continue before I can stop myself. “Jamie. The way you look at Callie, it’s just…it’s the way she used to look at my brothers and me, when we were growing up.”

“In a good way?”

“In a great way.”

She smiles slightly. “I’d like to meet her,” she says. “She sounds really sweet…”

“She was.”

The bluntness of my reply makes my blood run cold. I still hate how much I miss her, how much I miss both of them—Theo and Jamie, the two people who were there for us when nobody else was. Sometimes, it doesn’t feel possible for it to have happened the way it did, for them to be so far from us after we were so close.

“She’s…?”

“She’s dead. Her and our foster father, Theo.”

“Oh God, I’m so sorry,” she murmurs, shaking her head and reaching over to give my hand a squeeze. “I had no idea. I…”

She trails off. It isn’t fair for me to expect her to know how to handle the enormity of something like this. She just came out today expecting a walk with her daughter, not for me to dump the full weight of everything I’ve been through onto her shoulders.

“It’s fine.”

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