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twenty-eight
“Will you dance with me?”
Tabitha’s lips parted in surprise. She looked around herself, like a stupid girl wondering who the cute boy was talking to. Rhett and Red had already paired up and were pressed close. Delaney and Lily were in an animated conversation in a far corner, away from the speakers, Clementine was at the punch bowl and Victor sat by himself at the table, gaze flitting around like a bouncer at a club. Hobbs’s warm hand closed over her own, snapping her attention back to him.
“Um.” Tabitha looked down at Trinity, who was patiently putting up with the party music and crowded room. “Go to Fezzi.” She spied Red’s old pit bull over by the food table and pointed at him. Trinity knew Fezzi well from their many massage visits, so she trotted over and pushed him down, flattening him beneath her weight. Tabitha covered her mouth with her hand, stifling her laughter. “Trinity is giving Fezzi deep pressure therapy. It was my command.Go to Fezzi.”
Fezzi didn’t appear to be struggling, though. He lay happily beneath Trinity’s weight and started to lick her face.
Hobbs smiled back. “They’ll figure it out.” He drew her in, sliding an arm around her waist, the other cradling her hand in his palm. Hobbs took her around the room, his feet surprisingly graceful. Tabitha had learned proper dancing from Auntie El and could hold her own, but she found herself distracted by Hobbs’s warm body and sweet scent. He still smelled like his buy-one-get-one-free bodywash, but riding atop the delicate lilacs was his aftershave, spicy but not overbearing. Unlike his brother, who’d worn jeans and a flannel shirt, Hobbs wore a pair of dress slacks, a crisp white shirt and a necktie covered in curvy Betty Boops in elf hats.
“I was hoping you’d be here tonight.” Hobbs’s breath tickled against her ear, making Tabitha go so weak in the knees she almost tripped. “I’ve been moping around like a total jerk until I saw you walk in.”
Oh, yeah?Tabitha wanted to say,Why is that?But she couldn’t speak. She had no voice. She’d worked so hard with Lily to dress like a confident, powerful woman who was in charge of every single one of her emotions and here she was, reduced to muteness as soon as Hobbs had her in his arms.
The arm around Tabitha’s waist tightened as Hobbs slowed his steps and edged her into a corner, where the music was softer and they had more privacy. He pulled back to face her. “Were you hoping I’d be here as much as I was hoping for you?” His expression was open, prepared for anything she might say.
Tabitha swallowed down the lump in her throat, the one created by the sweet smells of his body and the strength in his arms, holding her up. “You’re the only reason I’m here,” she admitted, deciding to go for broke. “I wore all of this for you.” She watched the surprise ripple in his eyes and pressed on. “I took up half of Lily’s day and left my auntie asleep in her armchair just to wear this outfit, and I did it all hoping you’d think I look pretty. Because I just can’t get you out of my head. I mean...” She drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I just can’t get you out of my heart.”
The smile that had been playing around Hobbs’s lips fell, but his grip on her tightened. “Tabby Cat,” he whispered. “Will you go for a walk with me?”
Tabitha waited out back with Trinity, snow rolling from the sky in big, wet flakes that looked like a feather pillow had exploded under the Christmas lights. Her body was too warm to worry about shivering in the cold, her head full of Hobbs’s scents.
“Hey, I’m here.” Hobbs appeared by her side, shutting the door behind him and closing out the sounds of the party. “Sorry about that. Victor saw me heading out and told me he’d drive Hannah home. She’s tired and he volunteered to do it because he saw me drinking a beer. I’ve had exactly two sips of a beer, but Victor doesn’t mess around with alcohol.”
They headed down Sunny’s flagstone path, lit by colored lights that edged into the trees. They passed the building that housed the rescues, Roger’s quarters and the puppy playground, and when they got to the gate, Hobbs unlatched it and they continued their walk into the woods that ran beside the cabins. The snow made a pattering sound on the leaves of the trees, and as their path darkened, Hobbs slipped his hand into hers.
“Your brother is a teetotaler, isn’t he?”
Hobbs’s pace slowed. “You noticed, huh? We each had different reactions to my father’s alcoholism,” he said. “Victor won’t touch the stuff. I refuse to let my father’s problem dictate me.”
Tabitha squeezed Hobbs’s fingers, which were warm and thick.
“I think it was the Fourth of July that got him,” Hobbs said, his voice dropping an octave.
Tabitha stopped walking and turned to face him. Trinity’s nails stopped clicking on the flagstones as she settled next to Tabitha.
“See, Victor had started drinking a lot, too, by the time he was a teenager. It was always available, it was all he’d ever seen and it was a coping mechanism—even if it was a bad one. I was fifteen, which means Victor was eighteen. He’d been moved out for some time by then but had come home for the Fourth. To hang out with me. I’d begged him. I’d scored these great fireworks from Missouri and was going to set them all off at night. As usual, my dad was drunk. He was never a fall-down drunk. His tolerance was too high. He could drink all day. Make his buzz last all day by just never stopping. The more he drank, the meaner he got.”
Flakes of snow fell on Tabitha’s upturned face as she watched Hobbs’s eyes change in the moonlight.
“So there we were, setting off fireworks, having a grand old time. Even Hannah was having fun for a while. She was about seven, but she was mine by then. I took care of her all the time. My father kept losing jobs and Mom was the one paying the rent, which meant she was never home. Pops had been drinking all day but at some point he sobered up enough to come find out what all the racket was. He saw Victor, which set him off. By then Victor was like six-two, two-twenty-five, and Pops couldn’t really pick on him anymore, which he hated. But Victor was so drunk he’d passed out. Which, you know—” Hobbs shrugged “—left me.”
Tabitha’s throat tightened up and the chill she’d been warding off began to seep inside, giving her a hard shiver.
Hobbs got quiet for so long Tabitha thought he was going to stop the story there. But then his voice came thick from the snowy dark. “There was this stray that showed up one day at the house. Our land butted up to several farms and she just popped into the yard one day when I was throwing the football around. I switched to a baseball and she liked to chase it. She kept coming back, as the days and weeks went by, probably because I fed her, so I named her Gemma. She’d come and go. I have no idea where she went, but it was clear she was a stray. She looked a lot like Gracie does, but way more scraggly.” Hobbs paused to swallow. His hand tightened on hers. “I have no idea where Gemma came from that night. She wasn’t around when we were setting off the fireworks. Maybe once they’d quieted down she popped out. But suddenly, there she was.” Hobbs stared into space, like he was reliving the moment in his mind. His expression was blank and joyless. “Gemma didn’t like the fact that my father was beating on me. He had me on the ground, whaling on me. She went at him. Was on his back, biting at his neck.”
Tabitha’s hand tightened on Trinity’s leash. She had the urge to lean down and hold the little pittie, but she restrained herself. She didn’t want to do anything that would stop the story flowing out of Hobbs.
“He threw her off,” Hobbs said, his voice gravel now. “Then my father turned his attention on her. I was on the ground, nose bleeding, ribs bruised, but he was hurting Gemma. I heard her yelping. I...” Hobbs trailed off. He stared at the sky, flakes falling on his face like they could cleanse him. “I snapped.” Hobbs faced Tabitha again, his eyes steely. “Pops had come into the yard with his shotgun. He’d laid it down to beat on me. That was his mistake.”
Tabitha sucked in her breath. Her lungs went tight.
“That was my limit, Tabitha.” Hobbs looked her square in the eye, as if this was a moment of truth for him. “I watched my father beat on my mother for years. I watched him beat on Victor before he got big. I had endured my father beating on me for as long as I had memory. But when I saw him hurting that stray dog, who had done nothing but try to be my only friend, I lost my mind. I picked up that rifle and I cocked it. Aimed it right at him. The noise made him freeze. He turned to me. Looked me in the eye and said, ‘Christopher. You don’t want to shoot your old man, do you?’” Hobbs, who’d been staring off in the distance, like he was watching the memory happen all over again, slid his gaze to Tabitha. “And then I fired.”
Tabitha’s brain was racing with Hobbs’s words. She’d been so prepared for Gemma to die she hadn’t expected to hear what had happened instead. She felt no sorrow for the man who got shot, but the trembling of Hobbs’s hands in hers forced her to think about how that action had affected the boy who’d pulled the trigger for the rest of his life.
“I didn’t kill him, obviously.” Hobbs’s voice was colder now, like he’d borrowed some false courage from his cache of tricks. “Got him in the shoulder before the kickback knocked me on my ass.” Hobbs touched his right shoulder. “It was enough to stop him. Gemma limped away. Victor woke up. Literally sat on my father, letting him bleed and scream, until the police arrived. Hannah had run into the house and called 9-1-1.”
