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I grimace. “Sounds rough.”

“You wouldn’t have any idea,” Rune snaps.

Elio rolls his eyes again. “Please stop being weird.”

Rune opens his mouth, then shuts it, then takes a breath. “I’m not being weird. Easton is my coworker. This is how we banter.”

“You just said banter, like, with no irony, oh my god,” Elio whispers. He covers his face. “Do I have to stay here all night?”

“You’re going to stay here until we get your lung scans back and until we make sure pneumonia doesn’t set in,” Rune snaps. “And after I go haul your wheelchair from the pond to my car.”

“I’m sorry,” Elio whispers, and Rune immediately stiffens, then goes soft.

“No. No, kid. Christ.” He stands up and moves opposite to where I’m standing and leans over, pressing a kiss to his son’s forehead. The moment is tender and quiet, and I think maybe I shouldn’t be here for this. Like I’m the unwanted interloper.

But I won’t lie and say it doesn’t do something to my insides to see Rune be soft like this. To see how much he absolutely loves his son. It’s a feeling I’m not sure I need to be exploring right now, so I file it away with all the other moments Rune has made me question the way the universe works.

“Alright, I’m going to—” Rune starts, but he’s interrupted when the curtain is yanked back, and suddenly, there’s a strange man standing there.

He looks pissed.

And Elio looks terrified.

My hackles are up, and I curl my hands into fists when the guy’s eyes land on me, and then his lip curls up.

“So. Is this really an emergency, or is this some elaborate way for you to cheat on me with your coworker?”

FOUR

RUNE

Once upon a time, I thought I knew how I’d handle an emergency with Elio. I mean, I have had emergencies with him. I’ve become intimate friends with medical staff of every ER in the cities we’ve lived in. That’s just the reality of a medically complicated child.

I’ve been there when he aspirated, or when he fell out of his chair, or when he had a seizure, or when his guts stopped working. I’ve seen him turn seven different shades from seven different ailments made worse by his SMA.

Not to toot my own fucking horn, but I took all of that like a champ.

So I don’t know why this moment has me losing my shit like some kind of Victorian-era duchess who found a rat on her breakfast table.

The call I took from Ozzie, who told me with a shaking voice that there was an incident at the park, had left me more rattled than I knew I could be.

An incident, he’d called it. Apparently, that’s the polite way to say that my son escaped the watchful eye of my parents, drove himself to the fucking park, fell out of his wheelchair and into the pond, and was found unresponsive by some bystander.

It was by some miracle that the restaurant was less than two minutes away, I suppose. But I’m not really sure what kind of panic demon turned my fear and anxiety into anger so profound I put my hands on Easton like he’d been the one who pushed Elio into the water.

I was able to calm down, though every second Easton stood there talking to Elio made me want to throw him against the wall and…well. I’m not sure what that hot feeling in my gut wanted me to do.

Punch him for being fucking everywhere?

Kiss him for saving my son?

Shove my hand down his pants and reward him for being good at his job?

I could have handled that. What I cannot handle is my jackass, beetle-dung-for-brains, should-be-ex standing between the wall and the curtain with a smirk on his face and accusations on his lips.

The room is dead silent. Elio’s face is shoved into his pillow, and Easton is blinking at me in complete confusion, because of course he is. A few people know about Neal, but I don’t know if anyone knows his name or what he looks like.

It takes me a moment to answer him, and unfortunately, he loves to take advantage of those lapses in my speech because he takes a step further into the room and raises his voice. “Is it this guy? That you’re fucking? Or one of the doctors here? Are you letting people run a train on you⁠—”