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Kid was shuffling from one foot to the other, glancing around at the houses and street as if he was terrified. “Yeah?”
“You live with your dad?” I asked carefully. Something about his reaction wasn’t right.
He shook his head.
“I see. Well, you come back and talk to me if you need a man’s advice or opinion. I’ll do my best,” I offered.
“Okay.”
“The way to tell if your mama ain’t alright is to see if her tears don’t stop the next day. Then you have to give her one of your best hugs and make it tight. If that doesn’t work, let me know.”
Before I knew what was happening, scrawny arms were wrapping around my waist.
“Thank you, Santa.”
Shit. This kid.
A chuckle escaped my lips. “Better get home and check on your mama.”
He bobbed his head and listened, waving as he ran down the sidewalk toward home. Brown hair curled in little wisps around his face and those big brown eyes locked on my own as he paused before going up the driveway to his front door a few houses away. The light of a nearby streetlamp lit up his features. For a split second, all I saw was Colter.
One night like this, many years ago, another eight-year-old with chocolate-colored eyes and my smile paused in the night and gazed up at the stars before he went to his first sleepover at a friend’s house. I never forgot the way he seemed to gaze at me like I was his entire world. His protector. His champion. The man who would love him until the end of his days and called him son.
Swallowing hard, I saw the same look now except this kid wasn’t gazing at his biological father. He was staring at a lonely, broken old man who didn’t know how to let go of the past. The yearning in the depths of his eyes hit me hard. Kid was trying to outrun his own demons and that shit was difficult to ignore. He had a mama he loved but something was lacking. Only another man could sense what he needed.
Something I couldn’t give away because it was dead and buried.
Something I didn’t have left to offer because I’d had it cruelly ripped away.
A father’s unconditional love.
“Fuck,” I cursed as I dropped the bolt I was trying to replace on the engine of this old hunk of junk and heard it clang on the way down until it dropped out of sight. “Just what I need.”
Leaning over, I tried to dig around but didn’t have any luck locating the missing piece of metal. Out of frustration, I kicked at the front tire as I backed away and pulled a rag from my back pocket, wiping my fingers clean of the grease and grime. To say I was pissed was an understatement. Throwing down the rag, I stomped over to the fridge and grabbed a beer, chugging the contents.
“Fuckin’ shit always happens at the worst time,” I mused aloud, frowning at the hotrod that didn’t give two shits how I felt. “Yeah, you can fuck off.”
That was when I noticed the bolt on the ground beneath the engine. Guess it didn’t get stuck on anything. Sighing, I pinched the bridge of my nose. That restless feeling was crawling around beneath my skin again and seemed to have gotten wo
rse since the pretty little blonde bumped into me at the store. Kept thinking of her often and it was strange.
I was never infatuated with females. Sure, I had needs but relationships? Nah, I didn’t do those.
Plenty of reasons why and I didn’t want to dwell on any of them.
After retrieving the bolt from the ground, I placed it on the workbench and decided I didn’t have the patience to mess with the car today. I’d cussed enough to impress the devil himself and I’d only been in the garage an hour.
I slipped on my cut and grabbed my keys, heading for my Harley. About two feet from my bike, I heard a screech, followed by what sounded like a crash and something slamming hard into the ground. Didn’t sound heavy or loud enough to be a vehicle. I wasn’t too worried until I heard a young voice cry out. The same voice that liked to call me Santa. Shit.
Concerned, I rushed down the driveway and found the little squeaker had crashed his bike into a dumpster. From the looks of it, he got the raw end of the deal.
“You alright?” I asked, running up to the kid and crouching down where he lay twisted with the bike in the street. Gutter was slippery as fuck and probably the reason he crashed. Got slimy when we had rain or people used the sprinklers more often than usual. It was sunny here nearly 285 out of every 365 days in a year. Heard that on the Weather Channel just last week, not that I didn’t know already.
People called this the driest state in the U.S. for a reason.
His lower lip trembled but he didn’t release any tears. Thank fuck. I didn’t want to deal with a bunch of emotional shit. Did feel bad for him though.
“Got a few scrapes,” he announced glumly, “And my arm hurts.”
