days.
I sat with him for another hour to make sure his sleep was sound.
While he snored softly, I put down the ice pack that Braden gave me and pulled out my phone.
The urge to call Dominic was overwhelming and disconcerting. It made no sense. He didn’t know about my father. We weren’t together in any sense of the word. But just thinking about hearing his voice pushed the urge into compulsion territory.
Biting my lip, I debated for another minute before settling on a text.
Me: Hey. Do you want me to pick up breakfast for you on the way into work?
I hit send and immediately felt like an idiot. He was my boss. Not my boyfriend.
My heart gave a kick when his response lit up my screen.
Charming: That depends. Can you spell ‘fuck off’ with danishes?
The smile tugged at the corners of my mouth, and my chest felt a little looser.
Me: You’d be amazed at what I can spell with breakfast foods.
Charming: Your talents know no bounds. But I already have our breakfast planned. Just bring your annoying self.
Me: Okay. Hugs to Brownie.
He responded with a photo of Brownie sprawled across his legs on the couch. Dominic was wearing sweatpants, and there was a fire in the fireplace. It looked so cozy. So safe. I had to swallow around the lump in my throat. There was no cozy and safe for me. Just a long walk home on a winter night.
I left the ice pack at the empty front desk and headed for the front doors with Dad’s laundry in a bag.
It was bitterly cold and almost midnight. Fat clouds blotted out the night sky.
The doors closed behind me, cutting me off from the warmth, and I took a deep breath of lung-shocking cold.
“Yo, Ally.”
Braden was leaning against a sedan in the parking lot. He held up a bottle.
I hunched my shoulders against the cold and shuffled over.
“We keep this in the locker room for after tough shifts,” he said, pouring a shot of Fireball into a little Dixie cup.
“I will accept this emergency Fireball,” I told him.
“That was tough in there.”
“Yeah.” It came out as a gasp. The yummy burn in my throat was an improvement over the choking sensation of six months of suppressed tears lodged in there. “He thought I was my mom, his ex-wife… or wife.”
“I noticed she’s never come to see him,” Braden said in that nice, non-pushy way of his.
“She left us about a hundred years ago. It’s always been just him and me.”
We were quiet for a long beat. Lazy snow flurries drifted silently down from that midnight sky.
“Do you have to write up a report about tonight?” I didn’t want to ask the man to not do his job. But I also didn’t think I could face another layer of jeopardy to my father’s residency.
“We’re not writing anything up,” he promised.
I slumped in relief.
“Look, I know that this is a shit situation,” he said. “And I know that you’re doing your very best to keep it all together. But we all want you to know that when you’re not here, we’ve got your dad. We’re his family, yours too. And we’ll do whatever it takes to keep him happy and safe.”
“Thank you,” I whispered.
Tears blurred my vision and battled the cold for supremacy. My eyelashes were going to freeze shut, and I was going to have to stumble home blindly. But my father had people who had his back and that made any temporarily frozen corneas worth it.
“The rest of the staff want you to know that no matter what Deena the Bad Witch says, we want your dad here. No missed payments or late fees are going to make us treat him less than the best.”
“Aw, crap, Braden,” I said, swiping an errant tear away with my mitten.
“And one more thing,” he said.
“I don’t know if I can take one more thing.”
“Give me the damn laundry.”
“It saves me money to do it myself,” I insisted.
“Do you have a washing machine and dryer at home?” he asked.
I considered lying. But just the thought of it had my neck flushing bright red. “No. But there’s a laundromat with Wi-Fi just a couple blocks away—”
“You have better things to do than sit in a laundromat. We’re taking care of your dad’s laundry from now on. No charge.”
“I can’t ask you to—”
“You didn’t ask. And we didn’t offer. We’re telling you. Leave the damn laundry alone.”
I bumped his shoulder with mine. “You’re kind of my hero