AllFreeNovel
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One of her dark brows rises in challenge. “Maybe I like boring.”
Storm laughs from where she works on a pan of baked ziti. “Since when?”
Skye’s eyes cut over to her sister then back to me. “Since the twins turned thirteen. They’ve been hellions, especially Atlas. I swear to God, that kid goes looking for fights. I could use some boring.”
Nana glances over her shoulder, where she’s working on assembling the lasagna. “I told you two, you never should have brought him to that boxing gym.”
Oh, no. Here we go again.
“Ma”—I turn back to her—”he has a talent for it. We all saw it at a young age with him. I know you don’t like boxing…”
She stiffens slightly, then returns her attention to the task at hand. “Boxing took Sam from me.”
A moment of heavy silence hangs in the kitchen, and Storm walks over to her and wraps an arm around her mother’s shoulders. “A freak accident in the ring took Dad from you. It’s not going to happen again.”
Antonia shakes her head. “You can’t promise me that Atlas won’t get hurt if he sticks with this.”
Skye walks over and joins them, rubbing her mom’s back. “No, we can’t. But as we all know, there are other dangerous things in this world besides the boxing ring. We can’t protect them from everything.”
No one needs to specify what she’s talking about.
I lean back against the counter and watch the Hawke women huddled together. Even after all these years, I can still feel the palpable pain of losing Star in the accident that almost took Savage from us, too. And even though Storm has found happiness again with Landon, the loss of Ben continues to tear at her and always will.
The agony we all suffered and the changes that happened to the entire family because of those events will reverberate through all of us forever.
It makes guilt at her worry over Atlas claw at my chest. As a father, I always worry about my kids, but I also know my son well enough to understand he won’t stop, even if we try to make him. He’s a born fighter, who definitely inherited that from the grandfather he never even met. Ignoring his natural ability would be trying to suppress a part of him. The ring calls to him in a way we can’t brush aside.
I rub at my nape, trying to release some of the tension suddenly there. “I’m making sure he’s careful, Ma. Savage and I are working with him, sometimes Stone, and you know he has a great coach.”
The same man who once coached his grandfather…
Antonia glances over her shoulder at me but doesn’t say anything. She just returns to her work as the girls move away from her.
No one wants to ruin a holiday with this dark, heavy talk, which is why we’ve kept the full truth of what happened to Jude from the matriarch of the Hawke family. If she knew the depths of the depravity he’s had to suffer during the mere ten years of his life, she wouldn’t be able to keep it off her face when she meets him.
My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I glance at it—a text from Savage, who’s just in the other room and could have come in here and spoken with me easily, which means it’s something he doesn’t want to say out loud.
SAVAGE
Luca and Byron are on their way with Jude. They got everything squared away with HSD.
I push off the counter and grab a beer from the refrigerator, then pop off the cap and take a long, cool pull from it. Skye watches me carefully, and I incline my head to indicate that she should follow me out of the kitchen.
Her eyes widen slightly, and she glances at her mom and Storm before she wipes her hands on a towel and follows me into the dining room, where Caroline, Nora, and Dani work on resetting the table.
I drag her into the corner and wrap my arms around her the best I can with the beer bottle in my hand.
“What?” She looks up at me.
“You’re not really mad, are you?”
She shoves at my chest playfully. “Of course not. What’s going on?”
“Luca and Byron are on their way with Jude…” For a split second, I consider not telling her about what Luca did until later, but everyone’s been twisted up about this poor kid. She’ll want to know what happened as soon as possible. “And the father is no longer a problem.”
Her eyes widen slightly. “Okay, good. I mean, that’s good.”
I nod. “It is.”
