I laugh.
He rests his elbows on his knees again. His head is free from a hat, which doesn’t seem to happen often. His hair looks like he’s run his hands through it a hundred times today, and I wish I could reach out and take a turn.
“How was Nana today?” I ask.
“She was good. Great, actually, since Vincent told he they’re staying in town.” He sighs happily. “Being there and watching her with us boys was pretty special. It’s … what matters in life, I think.”
He turns slowly, lifting his eyes to mine. Our gazes connect like two superheroes colliding above a battlefield.
I sit back, absorbing the impact of his stare. He leans forward as if it will help him dig deeper into my thoughts. All I can see is how he cared for Nana. How he’d do anything for her, and I’m guessing that would extend to all his family.
All those he loves.
“You’ll be a great dad,” I tell him.
“What about you?”
“What about me?” I ask.
“Do you want to be a mother?”
My breathing quickens. I fiddle with the edge of a pillow.
“I don’t know,” I admit. “Sometimes I do, and sometimes I don’t.”
“Can I ask why?”
I stand and walk over to the little fireplace beneath the television. There are pictures on the mantle. I gaze at them, taking in Peck’s smiling face as a little boy and pictures of him and his cousins.
“Things like this,” I say, pointing at the images. “This makes me think that having a family would be amazing. But then I remember my own familial experience, which was nothing like this at all, and I’m not sure.” I furrow my brow. “Does that make me a bad person?”
He shakes his head. “Not at all.”
“I’ve never known a love like you should have for your kids,” I admit. “I’ve never felt anything like that coming from me, and I’ve never felt anyone else love me like that. So what if I can’t … do it? What if it doesn’t come naturally to me?”
“I think that’s probably something a lot of people worry about.”
I shrug. “I don’t want to mess someone up because a gene is omitted in my genome that gives me a mother’s unconditional love. Besides,” I say, “I’d have to find someone who wants to build that kind of life together. And I’d have to trust them explicitly to get to that point. And, well, I’m not even sure if that’s practical. Or realistic.”
“I have the same worries sometimes.”
“Really?”
He stands too. “Yeah. I mean, I want a family someday. I want the life my nana and pops had. But my luck, I’ll fall in love with someone who doesn’t want those things too.”
My heart hurts for him. He deserves every good thing in the world, and the idea of him not getting it seems … tragic.
But does that mean he’s not in love with Molly?
He walks my way, reaching for me.
My heart leaps in my chest as I place my palm in his. He rubs his thumb over the top of my hand and grins.
“You are blissfully unaware, aren’t you?” he asks.
“Of what?”
He laughs. “So let’s get the elephant in the room out in the open.”
I gulp. The elephant isn’t just too big to be ignored, but it’s sweaty and stinky and right in front of our faces.
I don’t know how this is going to go. My first instinct is to protect my heart, to build a wall as tall as I can so it doesn’t hurt when he tells me he wants to cool things off. But as I look into his eyes and feel his smile settling over me, I’m not afraid.
“I know you’re wondering what’s happening between us the same as I am. And if you aren’t, well, I guess I look like a pussy now.”
I grin. “I guess if that’s the case, you’ll just have to prove your manhood.”
He shakes his head, trying to hide his smile.
“But, yes, I have wondered a time or sixteen thousand today,” I admit. “Last night was kind of amazing …”
He pulls me close, our hands locked together between us.
“Tell you what,” he says. “Let’s take things a day at a time. If we want to hate each other one day, then fine. If we wanna fuck each other’s brains out another day, awesome.”
“No, that’s better than awesome.”
He chuckles. “And if we want space and room to sort of do our own thing, then that’s perfectly fine. But I like having you around, Hawkeye.”
My heart flutters in my chest at his simple, sweet words. I like having you around. That might be the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me. Period. Because it’s not a comparison or challenge of some sort. It’s a statement. One that warms me from the inside out.
“And I kind of like having you around, Wes.”
His brows shoot to the ceiling. “So it’s Wes now, huh?”
“Wesley is a mouthful.”
“Is that one of your innuendos?” he teases.
“Well,” I say, batting my lashes. “I don’t actually know that to be true or not. But we could remedy that.”
“Name the place and time, sweetheart.”
I unwind my hand from his and take a step back. His eyes grow wide as I grin lasciviously.
“How about right here, right now?” I ask.
“I like it.”
“You will. I promise,” I say, working at his belt. “You will.”
His hands capture mine. He brings them to the small of my back as he tugs me close to him again. He kisses the tip of my nose.
“I’m going to hold you to that little promise,” he whispers. “But can I just kiss you first?”
I stand on my tiptoes and bring my lips to his. God, I love kissing this man. And I’m in awe that he didn’t want me on my knees first, pleasuring him, but wanted to kiss me before. First. Like it was more important.
What sort of a man does that?
This one. The one with a massive heart and a beguiling soul. And it’s at this moment that I know, without a doubt, there aren’t walls big enough to save me from him. If he wants to break my heart, I can’t do anything to stop him.
Twenty-Four
Dylan
I knock on the front door.
As soon as my knuckles touch the wood, I second-guess this decision. All of it. Not just the knocking on the front door as opposed to the back—the one that Peck and I used when we were here together, but also the fact that I’m even standing on Nana’s porch in the first place.
The materials I found at the hardware store in Merom today are piled at my feet. There are trays, rails, screws, and a battery-operated drill that I found in Peck’s garage. I also found some prepackaged hooks for kitchen cabinets to hang small saucepans or towels or bottles of cleaning liquids.
“I shouldn’t be here,” I singsong through clenched teeth. I bend to scoop up the stuff and scramble out of here when the door swings open.
Nana’s face lights up when she sees me. “Dylan! Oh, honey. I’m so glad to see you.” She scoots back so I can walk by. She spies the boxes at my feet. “What’s all that?”
“Well, I realize now that this might’ve been presumptuous of me, but I was bored today. I don’t start my job for a few more days. So I ventured over to Merom and spotted the hardware store, and before I knew it, I was leaving with the stuff to fix your cabinets.” I shrug meekly. “I hope that’s okay. If not, I can come back or even leave the stuff—”
“Stop,” she gushes. “This is the nicest thing. Please, come in.”
I hold the boxes in my arms and carry them inside. Nana shuts the door behind me.
She leads me through a formal living room that’s really not formal. Pictures dot the walls—tons of them. Baby pictures, others that I recognize as Peck and Machlan. The one closest to the doorway has to be a young Nana and Pops.
I pause, taking in the image. They’re standing in front of this house. Her arm is wrapped around his waist. She has the biggest smile on her face as she looks up at Pops. He�
�s tall, way taller than Peck, with shoulders that span a mile. He has a head of dark hair and a smirk that makes it impossible for him to deny Peck. It’s exact.
“What I wouldn’t give for those days,” Nana says. She’s standing beside me, looking longingly at the picture. “We had just had Eddie and Jessica.”
I furrow my brow.
“Eddie is Walker and the boys’ dad. Jessica is Vincent and Peck’s mom.” She smiles sadly. “He probably hasn’t told you much about her, has he?”
I shake my head. “Just that he isn’t really that close to her.” I leave out the bit that he doesn’t even know where she is to spare Nana any pain. I’m not sure what the deal is or what she knows, but I don’t want to make waves. It’s not my place.
Nana nods. “Well, my daughter hasn’t been that kind to her children. It breaks my heart.” Her voice quivers. She places a hand on her throat as she looks at the picture of her and her husband. “Jessie was a good girl. Absolutely beautiful. Smart as a whip. I just knew she was going to be a veterinarian as much as she loved animals. She’d spend every waking hour at the farm down the road if I let her.”
She looks lost in a memory I’m not privy to. I just stay quiet and let her work through whatever is going through her mind.
“Something happened to her. Drugs, I think,” she says. “She got with Mel—that’s Peck’s dad—and she was never the same. Still funny and could tell a story like nobody’s business.” She grins. “But she just … disconnected. It’s like she was afraid to get too close to anyone.”
“That must’ve been hard for you,” I say, balancing the boxes in my arms.
Nana’s hand drops to her side. “Listen to me jabber while you just stand there holding those boxes. Just tell me to hush next time.” She scoots down the hallway toward the kitchen.
I place the boxes on the island.
“Can I ask you a question?” I force a swallow as Nana nods. “How long has Jessica been gone?”
“She left for good when Peck was fifteen. Vincent was a senior. That was a hard year. Poor Vinnie acted out, causing mayhem, and Peck sort of internalized it. It was rough.”
I press my hands against the island and think of the weight Peck must’ve been carrying around. The loss of his parents. Taking responsibility for Molly and her problems. The poor kid must’ve been ready to break.
“He seems to have turned out all right,” I say.
She grins. “That he did. He’s a very good boy. If I need something, he’s there. He’s there before I need things.” She laughs. “I guess, in some ways, I’m all he has. It’s why family is so important to him, I think. He’s already lost so much of it.”
My throat tightens as I take in her words.
“All my boys are good, family-centric kids,” she says. “But Peck … it’s different with him. I don’t care what Machlan does to him or how many of my cheeseballs Lance takes or how much he and Walker bicker at work, Peck doesn’t hold grudges. He lives and loves and lets go. The other boys can be mad for a while.”
“I know he’s happy Vincent and Sawyer are moving back.”
“Me too.” She ambles over to her rocker and gets settled. “The boys think I want them all together because it makes me happy. And it does. It thrills this old heart to death. But you know why I really want Vincent back here?”
“Why?”
“Because once you get to be my age, you realize family is absolutely all you have.”
I sit on a barstool. The weight of her words falls on my shoulders, pressing me down into the hard wooden seat.
“That’s unfortunate for people like me,” I say.
“Why is that, honey?”
“My family … isn’t like your family. We just aren’t close.”
I look at the ceiling, concerned that I feel so comfortable with this woman to be opening up like this. But now that the sieve is open, I can’t close it. I don’t want to. With every word, I can feel my load lightening.
“What are they like?” she asks.
“Well, my dad is gone. My mom …” Tears well up in my eyes. “She doesn’t really even like me.” I blink back the water that threatens to spill over my cheeks. I can feel my nose turn red as I try to rein in my emotions. “I don’t know what I ever did to her, but … I have to earn her love, and that’s hard …”
She rocks gently back and forth in her rocker. The sound is soothing in a very strange way.
“Dylan, sweetheart, I’m going to tell you something. And this is a fact with my hand up.” She waits for me to look at her. “That’s not love.”
I try to speak, but my mouth is too dry.
“You don’t have to earn someone’s love. Their respect? Yes. Their loyalty? Absolutely. But true love comes freely. You can’t stop it or start it. You have no control over it.”
Her words hit me in the chest, digging right into my heart. I think they should hurt. They should cut me deep with the truth that my mother doesn’t love me. But it doesn’t. It doesn’t hurt. Because I accepted it as truth a long time ago. But clearly, from these tears, I haven’t fully grieved the loss of love from my mother.
“But here’s another thing for you,” she says. “Parents always, always love their children.”
“But …”
She sighs. “Parents are people too. Take my Jessie. I know she loves her sons. But someone looking from the outside may think, ‘How could she? She left them. She wasn’t a great mother.’ Those people have never considered that maybe the best thing she could’ve done for Vincent and Peck was to leave them.”
I think about that. If she was strung out or into bad things, maybe Nana’s right. But I wouldn’t have thought of that.
“Parents make mistakes,” she says in that steady way of hers. “Sometimes, they don’t know what to do or say. Sometimes they don’t even realize how badly they’ve treated you. They’re just dealing with things the best way they can. Does that make sense?”
I nod. It does. I’m going to need to really think about that to absorb all of it, I think, but it makes sense.
It also hurts my heart.
“Will you promise me something, Dylan?”
“Um, sure,” I stammer.
“Always remember what I just said.”
“What part?”
She smiles. “All of it. One of these days, I’m not going to be around. I haven’t told the boys yet because they’ll just worry themselves crazy, but I had some tests come back not too good. I meet with a specialist next week.”
“Nana,” I say, mouth agape. “You have to tell them.”
“I will. I promise. But I’ve been sitting on this information for a month, just waiting on the right time to tell them.” She looks at me intently. “I’m fine with whatever happens. I’ve had a great life. I’m ready to go if the good Lord calls me home. All I have left are Peck and Vincent, and Vin has Sawyer. Peck has no one. And I’ve sat here praying for God to send him someone …”
I swallow. Hard. “Oh, Nana. I’m not sure that …” I laugh nervously. “I mean, Peck and I aren’t … together. We aren’t serious.”
“You’ll see.”
As though that says it all, she stands up. A satisfied look is on her face, but I don’t feel like this can be over. I can’t have that thrown on me. Is she nuts?
“Nana, with all respect, I promise you that I’ll always … be there for Peck if he needs me, but …”
How do you tell a woman that you can’t promise your everlasting love to her grandson?
I stand in her kitchen, mid-shrug, when she laughs.
“You’ve failed me already,” she says.
“How’s that?”
“You forgot what I said.”
My brain clouds with what feels like a thousand things she just said. “What part, exactly?”
She stands in front of me, taking both of my hands in hers. They’re cool to the touch. The veins sit at the top of her skin as she squeezes me with the grip of a baby.
“Yo
u can’t start or stop love, honey,” she says. “It’s just there, or it’s not, and it’s present between you and Peck. Everyone can see it. Maybe not you yet because it’s a scary thing to finally see. It took Walker forever.” She laughs. “But you will. You can’t deny it forever.”
“Okay …”
“Just … love him. Like you, he’s never really had someone love him unconditionally but me, and I don’t count.” She smiles like she’s won a prize. “I promise you that he’ll be patient with you. He’ll be kind. He’ll drive you crazy with his incessant need to make sure you’re all right.” She laughs. “Please just be the same to him. For me.”
I stand, bewildered, as she squeezes my hands again. Before I have to figure out how to respond to that, the back door opens.
And there he is as bewildered as me.
“Um, what are y’all doing?” Peck asks.
Nana winks and drops my hands. “We were saying a prayer before Dylan starts remodeling my cabinets. Never hurts to ask the Lord to be in the midst of a kitchen.”
I bite my bottom lip to quell the laughter that shakes my chest.
Peck walks my way. “Okay …” He makes a face like he’s as confused as I am.
I hold my breath as he reaches me. He smells of sweat and diesel fuel, and there’s something entirely hot about that.
My fingers itch to touch him, but I’m still not sure where we stand with all that. It depends on the day, he said. But every day would be a touching day if it were up to me.
He leans forward, his lips hovering over the shell of my ear. “You look so damn good that it’s hard not to put you on that island and bury myself inside you.”
“Stop it,” I whisper.
He plants a kiss behind my ear. “I think today is a fun day.”
“What’s that mean?” I bend away from him so I can see his face.
“That means when you’re done doing whatever it is here, we have plans.”
“Doing what?”
“It’s a surprise.”
I’m not sure how I feel about a surprise, but I know how I feel about that look on his face. And that second, much longer kiss behind my ear? Almost has me salivating.
Gibson Boys Box Set Page 116