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Now that his thoughts were clear, he didn’t want this. Gabriel was probably out in the hallway snickering, planning his next attack. Hunter pulled the gauze away from his head. “I’m fine.”
She grabbed his hand and put the gauze back. “Shut up and take some mothering for five minutes.”
It shut him up, but not because she said so.
Because a memory hit him right between the eyes.
Not his father this time, but his mother. He couldn’t remember how old he was, probably ten or eleven because everything in the memory looked bigger. He’d come home from school with his first split lip and a cut over his eye, and he’d been more scared of how his father would react than of all the bullies in the county.
His mother had dressed his wounds and given him a Popsicle and promised that she’d make sure his father wouldn’t be hard on him.
He couldn’t remember how that had turned out.
But he could remember trusting her.
Hannah was removing the backing from a butterfly bandage. “Doing all right?”
Her fingers were gentle when she pressed the adhesive strip against his forehead, and it was harder than it should’ve been to shake off the memory. “Yeah. Long day.”
“Tell me about it.” She pulled another bandage out of the box.
He’d assumed she was older than Michael, what with the kid and the job and the don’t-take-any-crap attitude, but now, sitting this close to her in the dim kitchen lighting, he realized she wasn’t very old at all.
“How old are you?” he asked.
“Twenty-two.”
“But you have a son,” he said, before realizing that made him sound like a moron.
She must have thought the same thing because she gave him a look and said, “Oh, so they’re not teaching sex ed anymore?”
He felt heat color his cheeks. “No. Sorry—I shouldn’t—”
“It’s fine. People ask all the time. I got pregnant my junior year of high school.” She shrugged. “It happens a lot. I’m lucky.”
“Lucky?”
She put a third bandage across his forehead. “Yeah. My parents are great. I can work and go to school part-time, and they help with James.”
“You go to school? But you have a job.”
“I’d like to be a full paramedic. I’m just an EMT now.” Her hands went still on his forehead, and she met his eyes. “You and Gabriel weren’t fighting over a girl, were you?”
Michael came through the doorway. “Jesus, I wish it were that easy.”
Hunter glared at him around Hannah’s hands. “I told you I’d end up punching him in the face.”
“Yeah, thanks. You left out the part about destroying the foyer in the process.” Michael stroked a hand down the back of Hannah’s head, then squeezed her shoulder. His expression gentled when he looked down at her. “You still want some coffee?”
She turned her head to smile up at him. Her voice softened. “That’d be great. Thanks.”
Hunter watched this exchange and instantly felt like a third wheel.
But he also felt envious, similar to the way he’d felt watching Noah Dean with his mother.
He’d seen his parents like this before, this gentle consideration for each other. Hunter had always believed it, until his father had destroyed everything, dropping a bomb about using women, and every personal relationship being a means to an end.
It meant that there’d never been anything honest about his father’s relationship with his mother.
