Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 80439 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 402(@200wpm)___ 322(@250wpm)___ 268(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80439 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 402(@200wpm)___ 322(@250wpm)___ 268(@300wpm)
I feel a tingling between my thighs, the sort of feeling that I know is going to create a problem for me if I remain in this enclosed space with this handsome, heroic man, to whom I owe the life of my sister and her baby. A lot of men would at least try to leverage that for the use of my mouth at the very least.
He reaches around me and opens the door.
We step out of the closet, and as fate would have it, run straight into my middle sister. She’s carrying two cups of tea and is making her way to my sister’s room.
Her brows practically hit her hairline when she sees me and Thor come out of a room clearly marked Supplies, but thank god she doesn’t say anything.
“Mila!” I say, a little too brightly, linking up with her and pretending like the hunky firefighter who just whipped my ass doesn’t exist. “Oh! Wait. I need to go get something. I’ll meet you back in the room. The baby is so cute. And her name is so…”
I rush off, glad for the excuse to get out of the conversation, and the interlude with Thor the Firefighter. What the fuck am I doing?
I get the herring pie and go back to Freya’s room, where the nurses are done doing whatever they do when you have a baby. Arcane, terrible things, I’d wager, though Freya looks pretty happy right now. It is such a relief to see her, and to know she’s okay.
She’s thrilled with the pie too, which is nice. I like looking after my family, and it’s more important than ever to be able to do little good things.
“This is so good,” she says. “I’m so hungry.”
“I’ll get you more,” I tell her, jumping up. I don’t want to be in the room when…
“Selene was flirting with the firefighter,” Mila says.
“I was not,” I deny hotly. “He was trying to talk to me.”
“In a closet?”
I love Mila, but right now I wish she’d shut up. We don’t need to gossip about me and what I’m doing. Today is about Freya and the baby.
“About what?” Freya asks. She should be resting. She should be gazing at her baby girl, though to be fair, her baby is fast asleep and I guess there’s only so long you can stare at a baby before you want to hear some gossip.
“I don’t know. I told him I was going to punch him in the teeth.”
My sisters roll their eyes. “Really, Selene. Keep this up and you’ll never find a husband. It’s cute now, but it won’t be forever,” Mila says.
“Wrong,” I tell them. “It’s only going to get more and more adorable, until sometime around my sixties, I’m so fucking cute that people explode when they see me.”
Fortunately for me, baby Brenna starts crying at that moment, heralding a muted rush of activity to get her fed.
It is actually incredibly heartwarming and beautiful to see my sister with the child she grew in her body. I’m happy for her and even slightly envious for some mad reason I have no intention of beginning to examine. It’s been a weird day, and I’ve acted in a weird way.
I was going to leave the house within a few days after the birth, but now that the house has burned down, I guess I’ll stay until her husband gets in and I know she’s got somewhere safe to live.
Mila can go to her husband’s home. Freya and her husband have access to military housing. They’re both going to be fine. They don’t really need the old house, practically speaking anyway.
Our father built the house when he married my mother. Both of them are gone now. The house was the last remnant of our family. I can’t believe it, too, is gone.
“My wife! My son!” A booming male voice interjects loudly into our conversation as Freya’s husband gets half of his opening statement wrong.
Ragnar is a musclebound idiot who loves my sister more than anything in the universe. He comes bounding in wearing his shiny blue spacefaring uniform. His beard has been trimmed close to his chin to allow him to wear a space helmet if he needs to.
He engulfs Freya in a hug, and she smiles brightly and thoroughly for the first time since, well, everything happened.
Mila starts to fuss with the baby while Ragnar puts his forehead against Freya’s, and murmurs soft romantic things to her that would make me gag if I had to keep hearing them, so I slip out of the room and leave them to their love fest.
I go back out into the hall and sit on the plastic chair, and wait for Ragnar to stop acting like he’s useful.
Someone clears their throat a few feet away from me. I look up vaguely, faintly acknowledge the guy, and zone out again, staring at the wall across from me and trying to work out what I feel. It’s such a strange day. We have lost a lot, but the fact that Freya and the baby are alive makes it joyous. I am happy and I am sad. I am home, and I am homeless. Where will we go tonight? Mila’s house, probably. Her husband has an apartment that overlooks the river. It will be crowded with all of us, but a roof is a roof.