Perhaps, just perhaps, instead of trying to cling to the old, he needed to get started on the new. It was time to make his own damn family, and to hell with his parents. Let them deal with their own shit-storm. He was going to concentrate on Chloe and Spencer and the rest of the people he loved. They’d be the family he’d been missing for so long.
Jim stepped into Wallflowers, fully expecting to be greeted with smiles. What he got was—
“Oof.” Jim laughed as Emma practically jumped him. “Hey, pretty girl.”
A pissed-off yip came from the couch.
“You are such a good boy, Jimbo.” Emma pinched his cheeks. “Yes you are. Oh, yes you are.”
Jim laughed and shoved her off of him. “Knock it off.”
Becky shook her head at them while Sheri simply smiled serenely, well used to Emma’s madness by now.
Their reactions weren’t the ones that interested him, though. It was Chloe, who still sat holding on to Spencer, whose opinion truly mattered. “Chloe?”
“Tell me.” She stared at him, her eyes reddish-brown, her tone clipped.
He maneuvered past Emma, kneeling next to Chloe’s chair until they were eye-to-eye. Her Fox was close to the surface, driving his Wolf to respond. His vision blurred, Chloe’s brilliant red hair becoming a muted yellowish-brown. He’d known that canines were unable to see reds or greens, but until his eyes first changed he hadn’t realized how it could impact his world.
He loved Chloe’s red hair.
“Spencer filled you in on what’s wrong with him?”
She nodded. “And I’m sorry about that, but I’m not sure what this has to do with you and me.”
He ran his fingers nervously through his hair. Here was the rough part, the part where he worried she wouldn’t be able to forgive him. “We thought he was dying.”
“And?” Her eyes went wide. “Oh. This happened right around the time—”
“When you were in the hospital, yes.” Even worse, at the time he’d still believed her not only too young for him, but pining for another man. That was a discussion for another day, though. “I’d just found him, and we thought he was dying. Everything I heard was that you were here, you were unconscious but stable, and the best of the best was working on you.”
“While I had no one.” Spencer’s tone was soft, but even now he didn’t sound sorry for himself. Spencer was far too comfortable in his skin to ever display sorrow over his situation. “Jim stepped in when no one else wanted anything to do with me, including my sperm donor.”
Jim smiled wryly. “I hate to say it but I’m beginning to think of him that way too.”
The brothers shared a sympathetic glance before Jim gave his attention once more to Chloe. “So. Once my parents figured out I was helping Spencer, they both freaked and demanded I stay away from him.”
“Yeah, the sperm donor even went so far as to call and threaten me. Said he’d cut Jim off if I didn’t drive him away.”
Jim glared at Spencer. “You didn’t tell me that.”
Spencer shrugged. “It didn’t matter.” That cheeky, lovable grin crossed his face. “Besides, you would have ignored me if I’d tried.”
“True.”
“Worse, it happened.” Spencer tightened his grip on Chloe’s hand when she tried to pull away. “His father stopped speaking to him months ago, and his mother? She’s kind of…well…”
Jim shrugged fatalistically. “Rage-tastic?”