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People wanted a reason.
Hobbs knew the truth, even if nobody else did, because Hobbs was the one Pops liked to come after the most. Victor got too big, stayed too quiet, wasn’t enough fun. Pops had never laid a hand on Hannah because apparently hitting girls under the age of twenty was outside his accepted form of sadism. But Hobbs—nothing but a skinny kid waiting for a face full of sand—was not only fair game, he was the favorite game.
Hobbs wasn’t that weak kid anymore. Despite having grown a little taller, a lot buffer, served in the USMC and done a tour in Iraq, Hobbs hadn’t really been sure of that fact until right this moment. He didn’t want to hide. Didn’t want to run away. He wanted the old man to get healthy, stand up and try to come after him now. Hobbs wanted to win a fair fight. Clearly, that wasn’t going to happen. Hobbs wasn’t going to get the fist today, so he wanted the look.At least give me that, old man. Give me that.Hobbs leaned in so close he could feel Pops’s breath on his face. He waited as the look in the old man’s blue eyes, paler with age, changed. Cleared.
Yes. Hobbs saw it now. The look. The sentience.
The old man saw him. Hesawhim.
And right after Pops saw him, he said it. The same words he’d said twenty years ago.
“Christopher.” His voice was rough, like the turn of a rusty, outdoor faucet. “You don’t want to shoot your old man, do you?”
Hobbs’s eyes narrowed. His fingers twitched, like he still held the rifle. In his mind, he heard the ghost of fireworks, exploding in the sky. The dark night split with a fountain of reds, greens, blues and golds. “Bang,” Hobbs whispered.
Pops’s eyes grew bigger. “Christo...” His voice garbled over Hobbs’s name until it morphed into a gurgling sound, like a partial choke.
“What’s the matter, old man?” Hobbs waited, ready. Ready for the old man to apologize (that would never happen), tell him to go to hell (very likely) or gurgle his way back to a semiconscious demented state (most probable). Hobbs was ready for anything.
Except for what came next.
Pops gave a great gasp, tipped his head back deeper into the pillow, then went completely still.
Like he’d been waiting for Hobbs to come home just so he could die.
