His eyes sparkle with amusement as he watches me, trying hard to hold back the smile tugging at his perfect lips. “I’m not big and bad.”
I roll my eyes. “Sorry, cranky and rude,” I correct. That sparkle of amusement extinguishes immediately, a blaze of darkness lighting up his pupils before he lunges himself at me, pushing me backward on the bed and digging his fingers into my sides playfully. I’m writhing immediately, squealing and breathless as he tickles me.
“Take it back,” he orders, his features straining as I giggle and wriggle under him.
“Never!” I cry. He relieves me from the coil of joy wound in my stomach, rolling off to the side and leaning on his elbow as he looks down at me. “Don’t change the subject.”
Colin sighs heavily, his head resting in his hand, the natural smile on his face fading to seriousness. “I didn’t have a lot of friends when I was a kid, so my mother gave me this little stuffed panda. She said he’d be my friend, and that he’d teach me how to make friends, too. She told me that pandas symbolize friendship.”
“Did he help?” I ask, envisioning a small version of this man, sad and alone as a little boy who just wanted to be loved.
He nods absently. Then I ask, “And the dandelion?”
That smile straining at his lips finally pulls off to one side, his cheek creasing as his eyes seem to light up with happy memories. “She picked one for me the next day. Told me to make a wish. I had my little panda tucked under my arm, and I wished that he would bring me friends. That I could be like the other kids who had sleepovers and a group of other kids following them around at recess.” He pauses as happy, and potentially sad, memories flash in his mind. “It was like magic. All I remember next is forgetting I ever wanted friends. Forgetting there was ever a time in my life that I didn’t have any.”
“You don’t seem to have many now,” I observe, tapping my finger onto his nose.
“I’ve been preoccupied.”
“With?”
“My mother,” he says. “And…” He clears this throat, perhaps not wanting to sayI’vebeen a preoccupation of his as well.
I smile softly, staring up at him as his focus seems to come back to my face. “Tell me about her.”
He seems surprised by the change in subject, his eyes searching mine until he rolls onto his back next to me, our heads positioned at the bottom of the bed. I roll onto my side and watch his features tense as he stares at the ceiling. His lips part, but he hesitates, the pause stretching between us until I think he forgot I even asked him a question.
When he doesn’t speak, I prompt him. “She’s sick,” I say, assuming. When he helped me with the deer head, he’d said he was with her for the past year. And he was gone so abruptly, I can only assume it’s because something happened.
He nods. “She has a bone disease.” His throat moves with a swallow, and then the muscles constrict, like it’s aching with tears he’s trying to keep unshed. “She fell a year ago. It wasn’t a bad fall, and she’s not old enough for it to have had as much of an impact as it did, but she broke both of thebones in her arm.” He absently runs his finger the length of his arm between his elbow and his wrist. “I left town to help her after her diagnosis.”
“She’s better now?” I ask, my fingers itching to reach out and intertwine with his.
He shakes his head beside me, swallowing again. “I moved into her place to help out for a bit. But eventually, she needed more care than I could provide on my own. We moved her into an independent living community. She has her own place in the complex, but she has easy access to amenities she needs for her treatment. A pool, an exercise room, doctors. The staff are on-call twenty-four-seven in case she needs help.” Colin flinches as he says the last part, his guilt for leaving her clear as day on his features. That he couldn’t be the one to give her all the help she needs.
I recognize it because I felt the same way about my mother: powerless.
I watched for too many years as man after man came along and stripped her of her independence until she was a shell of the mother I once knew. She was breaking, and I was losing my grip on being able to protect her.
“What about your family?” I ask, watching his face intently as he keeps it turned away from me. This story he’s telling me seems to only feature himself and his mother, and I know from high school that he had a present father and two siblings, as well.
He releases a scoff that sounds weighted with frustration, his jaw clenching so severely I think it will crack. He stays silent, but looks suddenly far away, like whatever happened with his family is flashing in front of his eyes in painful recollections. I reach over and run the back of my finger along his jaw-line, quietly urging him tostay here.
His jaw relaxes as he forces a breath past his lips. “My father left my mother for another woman after I graduated high school.” His words are laced with bitterness, the taste of forgiveness far from his tongue. “I haven’t talked to him since.”
“And your siblings?” I prompt, tucking my hand back under my head.
“My brother is more concerned with his own family.” He pauses. “Which I probably shouldn’t blame him for, but I do, because he’s a shit person who cares even less about his wife and kids than he does about the house that built him.” He hums before adding, “My sister’s an addict.” He doesn’t elaborate, just lets the pain of that fact flit across his features before it’s gone in an instant. He turns to face me, forcing the memories of his life out of his mind. “What about your mother?”
I roll onto my back, mimicking his position as my gaze lands on a yellowing stain of a water spot on the ceiling. “What about her?”
“You keep in touch,” he says, like he’s surprised.
“Of course, I do. Why wouldn’t I?” My eyebrows crease together, eyes tracing and retracing the misshapen circle of damage above me.
“You don’t blame her?”
He flinches when I snap my head in his direction. “Blame her? For doing what she needed to do to protect her family?” I force my gaze back to the ceiling, my own jaw tightening painfully. “Those men…” My voice cracks, remembering all the pain we both endured at the hands of the men who were supposed to love her. Supposed to loveus. “They were bad men, Colin. And if you would have continued your investigation into them instead of taking an easy arrest, you would have known that.” I can’t help the taste of blame from lingering on my tongue. I may be enamored with this man, but he’s still the man who put my mother in prison, and part of me hates him for that. Hates him for not seeing what we were always afraid to say out loud. We needed a savior, and we had no choice but to find one in ourselves.
