15. Rose
Rose
Containing Ben’s excitement from the house to the car and then to the firehouse was a task that required every ounce of my focus.
I nearly lost control outside when he saw the two red fire trucks parked just behind the large silver shutters. He started babbling, stumbling over his words, eyes wide, hopping up and down as he tried to pull me inside.
I still have no idea what he was saying.
All I know is that I have rarely seen my son this happy.
Rios Fire Station is at the end of Main Street. Inside the firehouse, four men stand around one of the fire trucks. Two blond men—one familiar, the other with enough of a resemblance to be Joel’s brother—rise from their seats at a long wooden table in the kitchen.
The second Ben sees Joel striding toward us, Ben’s excitement can no longer be contained. He rips his hand from mine and sprints at Joel, who grins, bending to catch him and lift him. “Joel!”
Joel beams at him. “Ready to be a firefighter?”
“YES!” Ben shouts as I grin, slipping my phone from my cross-body bag and snapping a picture.
Joel turns to the men near the firetruck, shouting out, “The newest member of our team is here. Get over here and say hi.” He turns to Ben and whispers loudly. “You get a helmet to wear today.”
I can’t remember the last time I saw Ben this excited. Not even Christmas morning when he got a new bike comes close.
The men approach, and Joel points to each one. “That’s Dylan. My brother Noah. Then you have Callum, Silas, and Oscar. Everyone, this is Ben and his mom, Rose.”
They greet Ben with wide smiles and fist bumps, their welcome so warm and genuine that I know it’s not just pretend.
Joel turns to me with Ben still in his arms. “Is it okay to show Ben the truck? He won’t be out of my sight. I’ll show him what the truck can do and some of the equipment we use to fight fires.”
“That’s fine.” I lift my phone. “Can I take pictures?”
“Snap away. One last important thing.” Joel snags a bright yellow helmet with an eye shield from the man with shaved hair and plonks it on Ben’s head. It slips, but Joel readjusts it before it can fall.
Ben beams at me. “I’m a firefighter, Mommy.”
Suddenly tearful, I swallow past the lump in my throat. “Yeah, you are.”
Joel shifts his attention back to Ben and says casually. “While we show you around, we might need to rush off. Doesn’t mean anything is wrong. Just means you get to stay with Mom and that someone needs our help.”
Ben grips his shirt. “Can I come help them too?”
My heart literally hurts at his small-voiced offer to help.
Joel shakes his head. “Not this time, buddy. We have to do a lot of training before we can use this equipment, or we’ll hurt ourselves or each other.
One day, when you’re a little bigger, if you still want to be a firefighter, you can.
” He looks at me, as if to make sure he hasn’t said anything he wasn’t supposed to.
I smile at him. His tone was perfect, and so were his words. Ben could hurt himself by thinking he’s doing something helpful, and he has to know that being a firefighter is more than just putting on a helmet and riding a fire truck.
Joel bounces him in his arms. “So, are you ready to see this fire truck?”
“Yeah!” Ben yells.
The next thirty minutes are probably the happiest of Ben’s life.
Joel and the rest of the firefighters show him the truck and equipment safely and make sure he doesn’t touch anything that could hurt him.
He wears a helmet, and his eyes are wide as he takes in the sights and sounds of a firehouse.
To Ben’s utter devastation, there’s no pole he gets to slide down.
Since this fire station is small, all living and work quarters are on one level.
Me? I fill my phone with a truly shocking number of photographs of Ben’s perfect day and have absolutely no regrets about doing so.
Joel told Ben that the firehouse is called a house because it’s a home away from home, and the men are a work family.
There’s a room with camp beds for naps during long shifts, a bathroom and shower room, and a kitchen where they take turns cooking.
Ben is told about, but not shown, a storage room where they keep most of their gear and an office, which we can still peek into through a large glass wall that reveals a wooden desk, an office chair, and silver filing cabinets.
As our visit winds down, I snap yet more pictures of Ben sitting with the men at the big table where they eat their meals. He’s wearing a small yellow plastic firefighter’s helmet and is being overwhelmed—and delighted—with all the stickers and a firefighter sticker book that he gets to take home.
“Cute kid,” a male voice says from my right.
“I think so,” I say, turning to Noah, Joel’s older brother and the fire chief. I’d lost sight of him during Ben’s visit. He was probably in his office. “I honestly thought he would die of excitement before today.”
Noah chuckles. “He wouldn’t be the first. We have classes from the elementary school visit, and we have to keep the numbers low. No more than fifteen kids or we’d have no way to keep all that excitement in check.”
I grin at him. “I cannot imagine what that would be like.”
He crosses his arms and fixes his gaze on the conversation and laughter drifting from the table a few feet away. “I heard you were living with my brother.”
My eyes snap toward him. “Are you here to warn me away in case I might be trouble?”
He looks at me, and although I search for a hint that he doesn’t like me, I don’t find it.
“And why would you think that?” he asks, his tone frustratingly neutral.
Tension radiates down my spine as I prepare to defend myself. “Because you waited until Joel was distracted before you came over to talk to me.”
“Joel broke his arm jumping from a tree when my mom accidentally started a fire in the kitchen, and my dad was at work. He was eight.”
I blink. “Huh?”
He turns back to the men at the table. “He was born with this need to help anyone and everything—person, cat, dog, hamster. It’s hard-wired into him.”
“Hamster?”
A small smile plays on his lips. “Waffles, his class pet, went missing when someone didn’t shut the cage door properly. Joel launched a one-man search-and-rescue operation while his teacher tried unsuccessfully to get him to sit down.”
I laugh. “How old was he?” I don’t just see humor stirring in his gaze, but pride.
“Six.”
My heart melts. I look at Joel, smiling as he flips through the sticker book with Ben, and I just want to hug and kiss him.
“Did he find Waffles?” I ask, heart in my throat.
Please let this story end well. Not only for me, but for six-year-old Joel.
“Yeah. It was a cooler day, and Waffles had burrowed under a coat to keep warm. Mrs. Morgan had a long talk with our mom when she picked up Joel. Mom just shook her head and said, ‘That’s Joel.’”
“That’s a really sweet story, but why are you telling me?”
“I don’t know what your plans are, but you couldn’t have found a better person than my brother.” He squints at me. “If you tell him I said that, I’ll deny it.”
I grin. “Your secret is safe with me.”
Except for the story about Waffles. That’s too adorable to keep to myself.
Stuffing his hands in his pockets, he shifts his attention from me to the men chatting.
“My brother will tell you I live in my office, and I don’t care what goes on outside these four walls unless it pertains to my job.
I’m telling you I keep my ears open so I know when someone blows into town and might need a little help. Part of it is my job.”
I tilt my head. “And the other part?”
“I was a step behind Joel, rushing to help our mom put out that fire. I’d say we were cut from the same cloth. My dad’s the same. He’s a retired paramedic.”
“Do they still live in town?” I ask, since Joel hasn’t mentioned them and they haven’t come to the house.
“They’re in California, at least for now. Once Dad retired, he promised he’d do all the traveling Mom had wanted to do for years. She was a homemaker and wanted to see more of the world before they got too old to. There’s probably a lesson there.”
“Don’t wait until you’re old to do the things you love. You might not make it,” I say quietly, remembering the road trip I always planned to take with Simon but never did.
I left Memphis to get away from my grief, and I can’t pinpoint the exact point when I stopped wanting to run and started living in the moment.
“Joel said you’re from Memphis.”
I nod. “Weldon. It’s a small town where I grew up. We were on a road trip.”
"Are you going to go back or continue on this road trip?”
My gaze settles on Joel, who now has Ben in his lap as he points at something on the fire truck. It’s hard to imagine Ben’s eyes any wider or his smile any bigger.
“I don’t know. I really like it here.” Given the personal things Noah just told me about Joel and his family, I let myself be a little vulnerable, too. “And I like Joel. A lot.”
“Joel wasn’t one to settle, but I haven’t seen him like this before.”
“And how is he with other women?” Joel hasn’t spoken about dating anyone else, and I haven’t wanted to ask after he noticed me being jealous when he told me about Maisie making pies for all the firefighters.
“A date here and there. Nothing serious, and definitely nothing that had him talking about freshening up before showing a kid around the firehouse.” He looks at me. “So obviously, I was intrigued.”
I give Joel a quick scan and can’t find anything that would require him to change or freshen up. My nose wrinkles. “But he looks fine.”
“That’s why I was intrigued.”
“What about you?”
He lifts a brow. “What about me?”
“Are you the settling kind?” He’s handsome, an alpha, and a firefighter to boot. There’s no way this guy is single.
“That’s a dangerous question to ask me while my little brother is here.
But no, my job keeps me too busy for that.
” He glances at Joel, a brief flash of amusement crossing his eyes, then turns to walk away.
“Oh, and he’s jealous—so jealous that he warned all the men not to walk around shirtless near you.
He would have seen us talking and wouldn’t have liked how close I was standing to you. ”
“So why’d you do it?”
His serious expression softens, and his playful grin mirrors Joel’s as he winks at me. “Sometimes, it’s fun for a big brother to mess with his sibling. See you around, Rose.”
Joel pops up in front of me without warning, startling me. “Hey, you scared me.”
“Sorry.” He watches Noah, frowning as Noah opens his office door, then swings his gaze back to me. “So, do you have any plans later?”
It must be killing him not to ask what I was talking about with his brother. “The grocery store.” Seeing his confusion, I explain. “Win has been more than generous by cooking all the time. Since y’all refuse to let me pay rent, I wanted to stock the refrigerator and freezer.”
He frowns as he opens his mouth.
I rise on my tiptoes and put my finger to his lips before he can tell me no. “I’m not going to be argued with, so don’t you dare even try. This is no longer asking how I can help out; this is me telling you that I intend to.”
Omegas are biologically submissive to dominant alphas. That doesn’t mean we don’t have backbones.
“Bossy,” he murmurs, those gorgeous dark green eyes hooded.
I pull my finger from his hard mouth as it tilts into a smile, my cheeks burning. “Is that a bad thing?”
“Depends,” he says in a voice so husky that I gulp.
“You can take him,” Noah calls out, startling us both so badly I’m not sure who jumps higher.
One quick glance reveals Ben collecting yet more stickers from the firefighters, happily chatting away with them. I don’t know how many stickers they usually give the kids, but the small pile forming in front of my son keeps growing.
Relieved Ben missed whatever just happened—or nearly happened—between Joel and me, I turn to find Noah standing in his office doorway with one hip against the doorjamb, arms crossed. Ben might not have seen, but Noah certainly did.
“Were you talking to me?” I ask, cheeks hot.
“Joel’s shift ends soon. You can take him if you want,” Noah says.
I frown. “If you need him, you can have him.”
“I feel like a trash bag blowing around in the street. Unloved. Unwanted. Never have I felt so rejected until this moment,” Joel mutters just loud enough to be heard.
Noah’s lips twitch. “Quit fishing for sympathy.”
Joel turns to me. “What do you say, Rose? Want the company?”
“It’s going to be boring. Ben hates grocery shopping, and I’m not exactly fond of it either.”
Joel nods. “We can keep each other company through the hell that is grocery shopping.”
“It’s not that bad,” I say with a reluctant smile.
Grinning, he wraps his arm around my shoulders and steers me toward Ben. “See, I’m already helping you overcome this terrible fate.”
I laugh. “Okay. If you want to come, that would be great.”
We say goodbye to all the firefighters and gather Ben’s stickers.
This takes a while because Ben hugs everyone goodbye, including Noah, who emerges from his office and drops into a crouch to receive Ben’s goodbye hug, and there are an awful lot of stickers.
Then we head out to our cars for the short drive to the grocery store, just a few minutes away.