“I can see that.” Mom cupped his cheek for half a second because she had never met a boundary she couldn’t mother her way across. “And I’m keeping the right to be relieved about it.”
Cade’s mouth barely curved. “You’ve earned it.”
I muttered, “Mom.”
She glanced at me. “What? I loved him through a phone screen while he recovered. Let me have my moment. He survived, and I’m allowed to hug him about it.”
Cade recovered, his eyes faintly amused. “I know when not to argue.”
Mom smiled wider. “Good. I like men who know when not to argue with a tired woman.”
“That should be all men, if they’re smart.”
Ryan leaned against the counter with his coffee, his tattoos dark against warm brown skin and his dark eyes watchful beneath the brim of his Flint Frost hat. He had his mom’s Hispanic coloring, his white dad’s sharper features, and the kind of hard life that made people see the threat before they saw the loyalty.
Mom had clocked all of that through FaceTime three years ago and immediately decided Ryan Decker was dangerous-looking and precious, which meant she flirted with him every time he appeared on my screen or came to town just to make me regret having friends.
The second she spotted him, her whole face lit up. “There’s my boyfriend.”
Ryan’s mouth barely moved, but his eyes warmed as he set down his coffee and let my mother hug him. “Hey,señora.”
“Don’t ‘hey,señora’ me like you didn’t break my heart by graduating and running off to Flint.”
“I play hockey there. I didn’t flee your affection.”
“You play on the Frozen Lake team, right?”
“Flint Frost,” Ryan corrected, hugging her back carefully.
“That’s the one. I knew it involved suffering weather.” She pulled back and looked him over with shameless approval. “I bet you have girls lining up from here to Flint, Ryan Decker. All handsome and tattooed, still looking like you scare the piss out of people in parking lots.”
Ryan glanced at me, saw my jaw tighten, and winked at my mother like the traitorous bastard he was. “Sí, señora.Only when necessary.”
Mom fanned herself with one hand. “Useful skill. Handsome and practical.”
I pointed at him. “Shut the fuck up and stop flirting with my mom to annoy me.”
Ryan lifted his coffee, his eyes warm with the kind of amusement that made me want to take his skates and hide them somewhere inconvenient. “She started it.”
“I’m finishing it.”
Mom patted Ryan’s chest once. “Ignore him. He’s been bossy since birth.”
Ryan turned those dark eyes on her and spoke in Spanish, low and smooth enough for the whole kitchen to notice even if half the room didn’t understand a damn word.
“Su hijo es un buen hombre, señora.”
My head snapped toward him. “What did you say?”
Ryan smiled into his coffee. “You’ll never know.”
I looked at my mom because she spoke Spanish as a second language after too many years of hospital work, half her favorite coworkers, and a stubborn belief that patients deserved to be understood when they were scared.
She was already grinning.
“Mom.”
She cupped Ryan’s cheeks like he had handed her flowers instead of a sentence designed to make my skin crawl. “Graciaspor ayudarme a poner incómodo a mi hijo. Eres un regalo, Ryan.”
