Close Range Christmas by Nicole Helm (best free ebook reader .txt) 📕

“We just wanted to congratulate you,” Jamison said. “Whatever the circumstances that brought you here, being a father is... It’s a big thing. It’s a good thing.”

Dev wanted to shrug away all that...emotion. Before his brush with death, he’d wanted to model himself after Jamison. Then he’d realized he was such a coward. He’d given up on that dream. So having any kind of Jamison’s approval felt like a noose. “Maybe for the likes of you, but I’m pretty sure it’s a terribly selfish thing for me.”

“Selfish?”

“I wasn’t going to be involved. Before you get that battle light in your eye, Jamison, Sarah didn’t want me to be. Or at least, she said she didn’t. But when all the danger started, I got to thinking about how we weren’t protected when we were babies. We had each other, but we didn’t have a parent who’d lay it all down to keep us safe and I just... I wanted to be that. Isn’t that selfish?”

His brothers were silent and Dev wished he’d kept his big mouth shut.

“I think we can convince ourselves of a lot of things,” Jamison said at length. “That we’re the most selfish. Or the most noble. I think it’s human nature to cast ourselves in some role—hero or villain. Maybe most especially when we grew up with nothing but villains.”

That made a little too much sense to Dev, who’d often wanted to cast himself as the villain because... Well, he hadn’t been as good as the heroes in his life. But he hadn’t been as bad as the villains in his life, had he?

“Maybe it’s part selfish to want to give someone what you didn’t have, but being a father isn’t a selfish act. Giving isn’t... It can be for selfish reasons, but it’ll change you. Having that kid. It changed me and I didn’t meet Brianna until she was seven.”

“Gigi isn’t mine in the biological sense of things,” Jamison said carefully. “When you choose to be a father—when we choose to be fathers—I don’t think you could ever separate what Ace was to us, did to us, from that choice. Maybe it’s selfish, but... We’re human. You can’t separate your humanness from your relationships with other people—the ones you choose, the ones you don’t. Life’s complicated. It isn’t black and white.”

Gage clapped Jamison on the back. “My God, an old dog can learn new tricks.”

“Ha. Ha,” Jamison replied with an eye roll.

Before they could say anything more to make him feel...confused all over again, Liza walked into the kitchen.

“Everyone’s down for the night pretty much. You guys are officially on lookout. But I just wanted to warn you not to play hero and not wake us up,” Liza warned, and while Dev figured that warning was mostly for Jamison, she looked at all of them. “We’re in this together. Always.”

“I promise,” Jamison replied.

Cody and Gage followed Liza out of the kitchen to their posts at the front of the house. Dev was assigned the kitchen window and door. Jamison was supposed to have the basement, but he stood there not moving for his station.

Dev shifted uncomfortably under his brother’s assessing gaze. “What?” he demanded. “We had our little heart-to-heart. Now it’s time to do our jobs.”

But Jamison didn’t stop looking at him like he understood all the horrible depths of his soul. He reached out and squeezed Dev’s shoulder. “I don’t think you’ve ever given yourself room to be human, Dev. You always wanted to be more or better, but sometimes being you is enough.”

Dev didn’t know how that could be true, but he also didn’t know how to refute his oldest brother’s words. And they hung with him as Jamison left for his post, as he spent four hours watching out. As he went to his room, where Sarah was asleep in his bed.

He didn’t disturb her, rolling out a sleeping bag on the floor, but he couldn’t sleep because Jamison’s words haunted him. His own thoughts haunted him.

If he could be enough...what might the future hold?

Chapter Thirteen

Sarah was happy to wake up naturally, even if it was a bit late. She yawned and pawed on the nightstand for her phone. Really late. Almost noon. No one should have let her sleep that long.

She lumbered out of bed, winced a little at the pain in her stomach. Not like a contraction. More achy than sharp. Probably just slept on it wrong. Or just her muscles aching from all this weight she was hefting around.

She took care of practicalities and got dressed, wondering where Dev had slept and if she’d missed anything terrible happening. It would be nice to wake up and just...have a normal life again.

When she walked down the hall and into the kitchen, it was bustling. Almost like that normal life she’d wanted had showed up as ordered.

Of course, real life wasn’t sleeping in Dev’s bed or walking into Grandma Pauline’s kitchen at nearly noon after having slept through chores, but it was nice nonetheless.

The two older children were at the table with a variety of dishes. Claire was in her high chair banging happily at the tray. Grandma Pauline and Rachel were hunched over the counters, mixing together what looked like cookie dough.

“What’s all this?”

“We’re going to decorate for Christmas,” Brianna said, bouncing in her seat. “Daddy and all the uncles went to get a tree!”

“And we’re going to make cookies, and have hot chocolate tonight when we decorate,” Gigi said, matching Brianna’s excitement.

Sarah might have smiled at their enthusiasm, but Brianna’s statement had her moving over to Grandma Pauline. She couldn’t think of one time in her life where she’d dared question Grandma Pauline, but the words came out of her in a hissed whisper she couldn’t bite back.

“We’re being threatened and you sent them to cut down a tree?” It was usually a Christmas Eve tradition anyway. While at the Knight Ranch they’d had their tree up since the beginning of December, Grandma Pauline’s family had always done