Page 26 of Forced Proximity
“I’m fine,” I lied. “But you’re nice and dryish. So looks like you’re up.”
He looked at the baby, then grimaced.
I wondered about that for a short second, but then he was handing the baby over to me and wrapping the wrap around his body.
Expertly, might I add.
He didn’t hesitate even a little bit on getting the wrap into place.
He’d done this before.
I wouldn’t have had a clue how to get that wrap on if I hadn’t literally just unattached it from the baby’s mother.
“You have kids?” I asked curiously.
He looked up, and I saw the devastation in his eyes.
“Not anymore.”
Fuck.
That was an awful thing to hear.
I wanted to ask a thousand questions, yet I forced myself to ask none of them.
“I’m sorry,” I replied softly.
I chose to allow him to have his privacy and shut my mouth.
He reached for the baby when he was done and got him situated, the baby’s black onesie with, ironically, blue airplanes standing out starkly against Finnian’s mostly white shirt.
“How’s your leg?” I asked to distract him from the utter devastation of the baby strapped to his chest.
Because he looked worse now while holding that baby than he did when I’d ripped that sliver of wood out of his leg.
“It’s fine,” he said. “A minor nuisance, nothing more.”
I forced my gaze away from him and said, “I keep thinking that the sky will start to look a little better, but it’s just getting worse.”
It was a putrid green now with black interspersed in between. The clouds looked angry and intense, and if I’d had to guess what an imminent tornado sky looked like, it would definitely be what I was seeing now.
“What now?” I asked as we once again started walking.
“We hurry,” he murmured.
I agreed.
The walk back the way we came took a lot less time.
We passed the shed and kept going.
“This shed would normally indicate that there’s a house nearby.”
He grunted and looked to his left, jerking his chin. “All that exposed plumbing?”
I was scared to look, but I forced myself to. “Yeah?”
“That probably used to be a house.”
