Falling for Mr. Wrong(60)

Ross laughed. “We didn’t fly. I was twenty-two when Luke was born. We didn’t have any money. Where would we have gone?”

“Oh. Right.” Brit slumped into a chair.

“Are you okay?” Ross asked. His brother didn’t just seem tired. Something more lurked behind his eyes.

“It’s been a tough couple of weeks.” He twisted off the cap and took a long drink from the beer.

Ross felt a twinge of alarm. “Is everyone okay? Mom and Dad? Melissa? Lizzie?”

“They’re fine. We had a little scare with Paddy. I didn’t want to worry you.”

“What happened?” Ross sank down into a chair beside his brother.

Brit stared down at the bottle. “It was just a virus. He started running a fever and it spiked up fast. Before we knew it he was running 104, 104.5, 104.9 and it wouldn’t come down. Apparently the fever triggered a seizure, because the next thing I knew he was shaking and…” He trailed off. Ross’s gut twisted in sympathy. “We called the ambulance,” he continued, voice thick. “They said it was normal, but then he had another one while he was at the hospital, so they decided they needed to admit him. Just to be safe.”

“Shit, that sounds horrible.” Ross leaned forward. “He’s okay now?”

Brit nodded, picking absently at the label on the beer. “They say febrile seizures are pretty common at his age, especially with a fever that high. The fact that he had several in a row was worrying, but they did a million tests and everything came back normal. They don’t think it’s epilepsy, or anything chronic. Just a bad fever.”

“That reminds me of one of Luke’s episodes,” Ross said. “He used to run these high fevers for days on end, sometimes with no other symptoms, and they had us worried about all sorts of things. Things you don’t say out loud.” He shivered at the memory. “But he’s fine now. A little grumpy and occasionally disrespectful, but otherwise fine.”

Brit stood up and paced around the kitchen. “How did you do it? I mean, you were twenty-two. How the hell did you handle it all?”

Ross squinted at him in confusion. “What do you mean?”

“Look at me,” Brit said, pointing at his chest and shaking his head. “I’m a mess. I worry about Paddy constantly—especially now. Every time he coughs I imagine he’s getting sick again. Every time his cheeks look flushed I imagine him having another seizure. But I’m thirty-five, with steady work and plenty of money. You were just a broke kid. I can’t imagine how hard it must have been.”

“It’s all part of being a parent, I suppose. Doesn’t matter how old you are, or how much money you have.” Ross tried to remember what it was like back then, when Luke was young and everything felt like a potential disaster. “You just have to keep telling yourself that you’ll get through it. That as fragile as they seem, babies are incredibly resilient.” He flashed a smile to break the mood. “And you should get pregnant again. Nothing stops you from hovering over baby number one like baby number two.”

Brit shuddered. “Tori says the same thing. It’s like she’s already forgotten that she was in a hospital bed screaming for twelve straight hours with the first one. I’m not sure I can go through it all again.”

“Of course you can.” Ross looked at his brother then, and it was as if a filter had been lifted from the lens of a camera, and he was seeing someone he’d never seen before. Not the brother he’d always emulated and feared. Not some business tycoon or hard-driving father figure. Just an ordinary man. A man who worried about his wife and kids. “Listen to your wife. She’s always been smarter than you.”

Brit laughed, and a little of the mood lightened. “When did you know things had gone wrong with Jenna?” he asked a moment later.

“You mean, with our marriage?” Ross asked, surprised by the question.

“Yeah. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to,” Brit added hastily. “I just realized that we never really talked about it.”

It was a strange conversation, but felt oddly comfortable. “Right from the start,” Ross replied. “And never. All at once. But you can’t regret it, or second-guess. I’ve been incredibly lucky.”

This answer, though hardly intelligible, seemed to satisfy Brit. “You’ve done a great job with it. Managing the divorce. Taking care of the kids. Sharing custody with Jenna. Doing it all on your own. It never occurred to me how hard it all must have been for you until I was in the hospital with Paddy. I thought about you doing all this when you were so young. I don’t think you ever asked for help—not once—from any of us. Which was probably smart, because I probably wouldn’t have been the least bit helpful.”