Hissy Fit (Southern Gentleman 1)

I frowned, the haze of sleep making thinking cognitively difficult.

Again, I tried to get my eyes to focus, but I was just so freakin’ tired that I was finding it hard to do much of anything besides close them again. Then, whatever it was—the blobby mass that glowed in the dark—moved.

It. Moved.

Logically, I knew that this wasn’t a good thing. There shouldn’t be anything glowing in the dark and blob-like in my bed.

Unless it was a toy…

I reached out and poked it, my finger going into something extremely squishy and warm.

I pulled back, and tried to produce what might possibly be squishy, warm, blob-like, and glow in the dark.

And couldn’t figure out what that would be.

At this point, I decided that maybe whatever it was just might be a figment of my imagination, and I could just ignore it.

So, I did what any sane, rational person would do at that point.

I kicked it off the bed, then rolled over and closed my eyes.

That’s about when the piercing screams started.

***

Ezra

I pulled into the parking lot of the ER and found the closest parking spot.

Once the car was in park, I got out and shut the door, beeping the locks with my key fob before jogging into the building.

I arrived and immediately walked up to the cop at the front desk—Atley.

“Hey, Atley,” I called out. “Have you seen my wife and kid?”

Atley nodded his head and then gestured for me to follow him.

I did, following him through a maze of hallways until I arrived at a door that was partially closed.

“Thank you, Atley,” I said softly.

He nodded his head and continued on to the nurses’ station, looking bored.

I would be, too. It was seven in the morning, and the only car in the parking lot had been mine and the staff.

I pushed in through the door and felt my heart melt at what I saw.

Raleigh was sitting up on the exam table, her eyes closed, her head resting on the top of our son’s head. He was in his glow in the dark pajamas that I’d dressed him in last night, and his curly blond hair was a rioting mass that went every which way but the one it should.

His little arm was wrapped up tight in an ace bandage, and it was covering the majority of his face as he snoozed away, impervious to the harsh fluorescent lights that were shining bright.

Our daughter was cocooned in the mass, too. I could just make out the fuzzy, brown curly hair peeking out just above the baby carrier that Raleigh had her wrapped up in.

All three of them slept, Raleigh partially reclined on the exam table, the rest of her leaning against the wall at her back.

I found myself breathing deep since I’d gotten the call and pulled out my phone so I could remember this exact occasion.

The shutter of my camera had Raleigh’s eyes snapping open, and the moment she saw me, she started to cry.

“I didn’t mean to!” she whispered fiercely.

I found myself walking farther into the room and leaning both arms on the padded bench beside her hips. “J never gets into our bed, honey. It’s not your fault. You didn’t mean to, either.”

Her lip quivered. “I didn’t know what it was. I honestly thought it was that Build-A-Bear that we bought him last week. The Iron Man thing that glows in the dark?”

The ‘Iron Man thing’ was actually a Star Wars thing, and she was right. His lightsaber did glow.

When I’d gotten J dressed last night, I’d seen those pajamas hanging up in the closet, and I’d realized that they were almost too small for him and he hadn’t even worn them yet. After putting them on him, I’d gotten him into bed and closed the door—unaware that by doing that I’d be putting him in something Raleigh wouldn’t recognize in her weakened state.

If anything, I blamed myself for her tiredness, too.

I’d brought the flu home from school, and had given it to her, Charlotte, and J. Raleigh had been the last one to get it, but she didn’t have time to lay around miserably. She had to take care of our babies because I was knee deep in football playoffs.

Not that my woman would ever complain.

In the two and a half years that she’d officially been mine, she’d never once not been there for me, and I felt like I’d failed her time and time again. I always put her first…but it never felt like I did—especially during playoffs.

Not that she would ever say that.

It was just how I felt.

“I love you, Raleigh,” I told her. “And this is not your fault.”

A couple of hours later we were sprung from the ER, and I went back to work, but this time I took my family with me.

I had tried to leave them at home.