Rocked (The Everyday Heroes World) - Julia Wolf Page 0,4
letting her go is the right decision. I don’t play fast and loose with Ellie’s health, you know. I just want to give her as much normalcy as possible.”
I curled my lip at him. “She is normal.”
He shook his head, watching Leroy roll around. “I don’t think I’m gonna say anything right today. Why don’t we put a pin in this conversation? We’ve got two weeks before the camping trip. We’ll try to talk again when you’re not about to strangle me.”
“How can you tell?”
He chuckled, glancing back at me. “I’ve seen that look on you before. You’re not very good at hiding your feelings.”
I lifted a shoulder. “I wasn’t particularly trying to hide anything.”
He started to say something, but was interrupted again as the subject of our argument stuck her head out the back door. “Are you guys still fighting?” Ellie called.
I said yes at the same time Veego answered no.
“You are. I don’t know how you guys got along long enough to conceive me,” she held her hand up, “and I don’t want to know. Leroy! Come here. I’ve got a treat for you!”
Leroy was upright and barreling toward Ellie in the blink of an eye. He liked me a whole lot, but he was obsessed with her. His obsession most likely had a direct correlation to her willingness to supply him with treats, but I liked the way he stuck by her like glue. It was always good to have a buddy whose sole mission in life was to keep you alive so you could continue supplying him with snacks.
“We’re not fighting,” Veego said.
I shoved his shoulder. “You may not be, but I am.” Then I frowned in the direction our daughter just disappeared. “We don’t always fight, right?”
“Nah.” Veego curled an arm around my shoulders. “Sometimes I think we might even like each other.”
I hip-checked him, but he stayed put. The man wasn’t tall, but he was built like a brick wall. It would take more than my generous hips to move him. Admitting defeat for today, I let my head fall on his shoulder.
“I hate this,” I said.
“I know.” He laid his head on mine. “Me too, babe.”
Veego and I hadn’t been a couple in over a decade, but our history went much deeper than that. We’d both grown up in Sunnyville, and when my mom had checked out on life, I’d spent a lot of my days with the little boy with the bright smile and awesome family down the street. As boys and girls our age drifted apart, we’d stuck. In high school, we’d tried on the dating thing for size, lost our virginity to one another, fell a little bit in love. In the end, we hurt each other, but had managed to stay friends.
One Thanksgiving visit home our junior year of college bound us for life. Drunk, stupid, and irresponsible, we messed around, and the result was Eleanor Anne Domingo—Ellie for short. Becoming a mother at twenty definitely hadn’t been in my life plans—goodbye med school, hello paramedic training—but Veego was a rock star co-parent, and we managed to figure it out without killing each other.
As friends. Only ever as friends.
“You’re working in the morning, right?” he asked.
“Yep. Six to six. I’m hoping this shift’s a little quieter than the last one. We barely got back to the station before we were heading out on another call.”
He chuckled and rubbed the top of my head. “You love it. Don’t even pretend you don’t.”
I pushed him away again, and this time, he let me. “That might be true, but it doesn’t mean my feet weren’t throbbing by the end of the day.”
He tucked his hands in his pockets. “Told you I’d give them a rub whenever you need it.”
I arched an eyebrow at him. “It’s funny how you keep jumping at the chance to get your hands on my feet. I’m beginning to think you have a fetish. Do you want to rub them right when I take my work shoes off? Or should I soak them and get them smelling sweet for you?”
I was pretty sure Veego did not, in fact, have a foot thing, but he turned beet red when I teased him about it, and I really couldn’t get enough of it. Besides, he deserved to get a little shit for making a parenting decision without me.
“Kat, I swear to god—”
Ellie threw open the back door. “Mom! Dad! There’s a car driving like a snail at the other end