Total pages in book: 51
Estimated words: 51122 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 256(@200wpm)___ 204(@250wpm)___ 170(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 51122 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 256(@200wpm)___ 204(@250wpm)___ 170(@300wpm)
I rolled my eyes. “No skin off my nose. Take all the time you need.”
Then Ford was gone, grinning as he left.
“It’s weird,” Sebastian said into the quiet. “I always used to think that being a grandfather would be weird. But it feels like the most natural thing in the world.”
I looked down at my grandson, who had my hair.
“Feels like the world is sitting right in my hands. Exactly like it used to feel when I held my own babies.”
Book: Charge to my Line
CHAPTER 28
It’s probably my age that tricks people into thinking I’m an adult.
-Mia’s secret thoughts
MIA
“Wonderful,” Tai stared hard at the call out on his phone. “Just wonderful.”
“What are you grumbling about?” I asked from where I was folding laundry on the couch across from him.
“We just got paged for a man who thought he would,” he started to read the phone’s message, “try to see if Clorox bleach and rubbing alcohol really did make chloroform when they were mixed together. Wife says he passed out while making it, and she’s scared to go in the room because she doesn’t want to pass out, too. Apparently, they saw this on Facebook about mixing common household chemicals together,’” Tai grumbled, his eyes coming to me. “I’m not going.”
Tai had retired from the Kilgore Fire Department five weeks ago. Two weeks before all this crazy Corona virus crap had started to take place.
Now he volunteered on the volunteer fire department in the small city we lived in right outside of Kilgore.
The good thing about being volunteer, though, was that there really were calls that were unnecessary for people to go to. I wasn’t sure this was one of them, though.
“You’re really not going?” I asked curiously.
He opened his mouth to answer when he got another alert on his app.
“Apparently, the call has been canceled,” he said. “The guy woke up.”
I rolled my eyes and went back to folding.
Which was about the time our second child that we’d had together, Allanah, came running into the room.
She walked right up to her computer, signed on, and then started laughing at something that was on the screen.
I leaned over to see her entire class on her Zoom app.
“Umm, Tai?” I said softly. “You might want to go put some pants on. There are about twenty ninth graders looking at you in your underwear right now.”
Tai looked over at the computer and cursed.
Yanking the cushion off of the couch, he glared at our daughter. “Seriously, Allanah? You couldn’t have fuck—err, freakin’ warned me?”
Allanah looked confused. “Warned you about what?”
Tai walked out of the room with the entire couch cushion covering his ass.
I heard all of the girls giggling with excitement and looked at my daughter. “Do not do that again.”
She held up her hands in a placating gesture. “It wasn’t like I intentionally set out to show my entire classroom Dad’s butt, okay? Why’s he sitting in here in his underwear, anyway?”
I looked over at the overflowing piles of laundry that I had all the time in the world to do, but none of the willpower.
“Be nice,” I grumbled. “And for the love of God, take that outside.”
I was honestly tired of hearing twenty giggling girls, all talking at once, for over an hour. I wasn’t even sure they were doing schoolwork anymore as much as just socializing.
The poor thing.
This was a pivotal year for her, and she wouldn’t get to experience the last half of it.
Even worse, she was in track, and damn good at it just like her father, and couldn’t run it her freshman year of high school.
But they were making it work.
Gathering up the large pile of only shorts and sweatpants that belonged to Tai, I walked into our bedroom to see him laid out on the bed.
“Are you going back to bed?” I teased.
He blinked one eye open. “No. But I’m considering going back to work. This is so freakin’ boring.”
I hadn’t really understood why Tai had retired. He’d gotten his twenty years in and one day just decided that he’d had enough. Everyone, even me, was surprised to see him leave.
I wasn’t the least bit surprised to find him wanting to go back.
There just wasn’t enough excitement on the volunteer fire department for him, and we both knew it.
“I’m thinking about going to the hospital. The ER. They’re saying that they need paramedics.” He squinted at me. “Would you be okay with me working with you?”
Would I?
I didn’t think I’d hate it.
In fact…
“Will you drive me to and from work?” I teased.
He rolled his eyes. “What is it with you and not wanting to drive?”
I didn’t know. But the more he drove us, the more I realized that I hated driving by myself. I was spoiled, and he was the man to make me that way.
I put his clothes on the dresser and then turned around and crawled over him.