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“No, Little Beast, not at all. She couldn’t hate you any more than she could force herself to stop breathing. She loves you with every ounce of her heart,” I say as I take a seat next to him.
“Then why did she send me here?”
Fuck, I wish I knew the answer to that because for the life of me I can’t think of what I have to offer.
“Because I’m family and she thinks we’ll help each other heal,” I say and wrap my arm around him.
“Maybe.”
The knowledge that there’s so much more going through his head and heart eats at me. Eats away at my heart just like all the pain and hurt I’ve buried deep down inside.
“We will, one punch at a time. I’m a big fan of fighting my way through bad shit,” I say and raise my hand up to him, showing him my knuckles.
There’s a lot of scarring on them. Lord knows, I’ve kept my past pretty damn secret, but there was a time I didn’t fight in the legal bouts.
“I thought you had to wear gloves,” he says with confusion.
“Yeah, those scars aren’t exactly the good kind. I fought through just about everything I could to get the hell out of what I was living in,” I say, and I did.
I fought for my daily bread at times when I couldn’t face the prospect of going back home to my dad.
Tommy’s parents took care of me as much as they could, but the law still insisted I went home as much as my dad wanted me there. I was his little welfare check.
I still needed new clothes and sparring gear though when I was hitting my late teens, so I fought in the underground circuits for a couple years. I made quick money for myself, even if Tommy was begging me to go legal. But shit was needed.
No need for Casey to know all my past misdeeds, though. Maybe when he’s older he’ll understand.
“Point is, you and me are the same. We’re going to fight through all the shit and pain we have coming at us. We’re going to punch and kick our way out of this shit, and when we can’t see anything else besides the pain, we’ll be stronger for it,” I say before wrapping my arms tightly around his shoulders.
Sometimes I wonder if I have that magic that Helen had when she’d hug me and I’d feel the strength and will to keep going.
“Promise?” Casey asks.
“I promise, but it’s going to hurt us every single step of the way. Every single one. I wish I was able to lie to you and say it won’t. Can’t though, because working out alone is going to kill us both.”
“Um, why am I going to be working out? I thought you were talking figuratively just then,” he says with a slight groan.
“Cause we both fucked up too much. We need to get back on the straight and narrow.”
“Doesn’t explain why I have to work out.”
Pulling away from him, I spend a long time looking at his eyes and the small features of his face. Am I doing the right thing right now? Am I projecting?
Fuck, I wish Tommy was here just for three minutes. Just long enough to hear his voice tell me what I should do. What his hopes and dreams were.
Did Tommy ever want me to quit fighting? To give up this life and try for something else? Would he want his son to be anything like me? I see so damn much of Tommy in Casey right now. So damn much that I can barely keep my eyes open without fucking waterfalls coming out of them.
Casey isn’t Tommy though, he’s his own self. He’s got a life ahead of him that Tommy doesn’t. One that’s on a path of his own choosing. Should I give a kid his age the choice to be who he wants?
“What do you want to do when you get older?” I ask.
“Huh?” he asks like I’m crazy.
Standing up from the bed, I pull him with me. “What do you dream about when you think of growing older?”
“I don’t know?” he asks and says at the same time, his shoulders rising in a shrug.
Motioning for him to follow me, I head out of the bedroom and back down the hall to the kitchen. “What if I said you could be a fighter like me? Or a teacher? Maybe a computer game designer. Firefighter? Police Officer?”
