He had thought his brother couldn’t look any prouder. But he did.
“Oh, she’s thrilled. She’s already trying to strong-arm us into letting her name him or her. So, if we end up with a kid named Ragnar the Destroyer, you’ll know what happened.”
Justice’s chest felt strange. It was so... It kind of blew his mind to see his brother in this position. It had been a few months of watching Landry come into fatherhood. Watching him learn to parent Lila. Then watching him learn to be in a relationship with Fia. Then they’d gotten married. After all those years. All those years of circling each other. Of no one knowing where their bad blood came from. He was like a new man. For one acidic, awful moment, he envied his brother so much he thought he might not be able to keep it off his face. And then the moment passed. Landry was Landry.
The truth was, even when your father was an awful bastard, he wasn’t an awful bastard to each of his kids in the same way.
Hell, the McCloud family had a great and obvious example of that. Seamus McCloud had been horrible to all his children in their own special way.
He never laid a finger on Brody. He had manipulated him instead. He’d tried to kill Gus. Gus carried permanent physical scars from that. As for the other boys, they had endured varying degrees of abuse. But it looked different for everyone.
Justice knew the things his dad had put him through had done some particular, specific damage. He didn’t waste time worrying about it. He didn’t waste time worrying about whether or not he ought to fix it. It was what it was.
He thought back to the conversation he’d had with Rue earlier in the day. The idea that he didn’t have women over because he didn’t want to deal with it. It was true. But fractionally. He didn’t like sharing his space.
Rue was an interesting exception to that rule. She felt like home. She washer. Also, she was organized and she wouldn’t go moving things without talking to him. He just liked his space. He liked control. Maybe that was the real problem. Right now nothing about life felt predictable. It didn’t feel in control.
Rue wanted to get wild and Landry was settling down. It was all just a little bit too off-brand for him. He didn’t care for it. It was his sister who peppered Fia with questions, while Bix stood back, eyeing everybody with suspiciously glittery eyes. His brothersdidn’t ask lots of questions, but their happiness for Landry and Fia was evident.
Daughtry looked at Bix. “What do you think?”
She wrinkled her nose. “I dunno, Sheriff. Not sure I’m ready for you to put a baby in me. Maybe we can just keep practicing.”
He laughed. “I’m good with that.”
Bix had been such an easy addition to the family because she was as feral as the rest of them. And he wondered if she was uncomfortable in a similar way to him. All this... functional family shit.
It made him kind of want to run for the hills, and embrace his brother at the same time. That was the problem. Moments like these made him feel like he was being split in two. It was why he preferred control. Preferred for things to keep bumping along like usual, not... get all upended like this.
It was Fia who approached him, and then she stood up on her tiptoes and ruffled his hair. “Justice,” she said. “Are you good?”
“I’m good. I just don’t know what to do with pregnant women.”
There. That was true anyway.
“You don’t have to do anything with me. I’m not your responsibility. You do have to be a fun uncle, though.”
“I’m already a fun uncle.”
Granted, Lila and Arizona’s stepson were teenagers, and he found that a damn sight easier to deal with. Babies... He didn’t the hell know about that. Thinking about how vulnerable little kids were... it made his stomach hurt. They were born into this world with no choice of who parented them, and there was no...test to take or anything like that. People made you, gave birth to you, didn’t ask you if you wanted to be born, then did whatever the fuck they wanted with you. Didn’t seem fair to him.
“I’m happy for you,” he continued. “You guys are going to be great. You’re already great. But now you get to do sleepless nights and diaper changing together.”
“It will be great,” said Landry. “Because we didn’t get to do it the first time. And now... we do.”
He hugged his brother and his sister-in-law and sent them on their way, went back to work and was a little bit annoyed that the binder wasn’t the only unexpected thing he should’ve been looking out for.
He didn’t really get why everything was changing like this. Of course, it had been bound to change no matter what. Rue had been about to marry somebody else.
He’d been certain it wouldn’t change their relationship, though.
He’d been so happy for her, he wondered if he hadn’t fully thought all that through. Well, that didn’t sound like him at all.
He huffed. Finished out his work for the day and headed on back to his place. And that was where the binder reared its head. Rue was sitting on the floor in front of his coffee table, her eyes overbright.
“I have a plan,” she said.
She lifted the first binder, one with flowers. “This one is all about my plan for what I’m going to do with the new phase of my life. Rental options, purchase options, potential locations. Things like that. And this one is about me personally.” This binder was the one with the squirrel on it. He didn’t know what to makeof that. “New hobbies, new activities and new things I’m going to try. Because I have to become a different Rue than I was before, because the old Rue can’t come to the phone right now. Do you know why, Justice?”
