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Mine.
Not Declan’s.
Even though he was a teeny-weeny bit.
When he started to wriggle in my arms, I grinned and let him go, only after I’d kissed his temple and told him, “You need a shower, stinky.”
He wrinkled his nose. “This is the smell of honest, hard-earned sweat.”
I arched a brow at him. “What did you do?”
He raised his arm and did a bicep curl. He was still pretty small, but he’d been working out to try to get onto the football team. So far, he was on the squad, just not in the position he wanted to be in.
Something to do with him being too light to be a linebacker, or some crap like that.
I knew the basics of football for his sake, but the minutiae? Not even motherly love could make me embrace that particular game.
My son was a conservationist jock.
I’d done that.
I’d created the next hybrid.
Lips twitching at the thought, I listened in as he explained, “I worked in the garden.”
My brows rose at that, and I peered out of the kitchen window and into the yard I’d just passed. It was dark, though, and I couldn’t see anything in the meager light.
He huffed. “You’ll see in the morning.”
I grinned at him. “Should I be excited?”
“Only that we have a lawn now. It was just behind ten tons of crap.”
I sniffed. “I considered it a work of art.”
“You just hate mowing—”
“You bet your ass I do.” I leaned back against the counter. “You been a good kid for Caro?”
He shrugged. “Pretty much.”
Taking him at his word, I nodded. “Thanks, Shay. I know it was last minute—”
He heaved a sigh. “I’m not a kid, Mom. I don’t need you to explain why you had to go away on business.” He rolled his eyes.
I wanted to sob and smile at the same time because he looked so grown up at that moment, it was heartbreaking.
Worse than that, he looked like Declan.
I mean, I’d have been a dumbass if I hadn’t seen the likeness between my boy and his father over the years. With Declan’s face imprinted on my retinas, a face I saw before I closed my eyes at night, and the first one I saw in the morning? That routinely made an appearance in my art?
You could bet your way to the bank that I thought about their similarities.
But it rammed it all home harder as I took him in now.
In four years’ time, he’d be eighteen.
He’d wanted to go to Harvard. Wanted to be a lawyer, for Christ’s sake. Wanted to change legislation from the inside out—get into politics even.
