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But I wasn’t someone who did things on the notion whether they were a good idea or not.
“You’ll excuse me for my ignorance or if I offend your sense of national pride or patriotism or whatever the fuck,” I said, stroking Boo. “But I don’t understand why you did it. Why you volunteered to go to a war and fight for a country that’s much more complicated than freedom and liberty.”
It wasn’t a question, not exactly. And it was one coated in land mines. Veterans were highly regarded in this country, and patriotism was paramount in a way those of us from the Southern Hemisphere could not entirely understand. I didn’t want to belittle his service. I just wanted to understand it. Especially why he continued it after he had a wife and child.
Kip let out a long sigh that was much older than his three and a half decades. He sounded like a man old and gray, who’d lived a long and hard life.
Then again, he’d fought in a war and lost his wife and child. That would age you more than enough for three lifetimes.
“I can only speak for myself and a handful of men I was deployed with,” he replied, still rubbing my feet. “But sometimes, people are running from so much shit that war is the preferable option to dealing with that shit.” He shrugged. “Other times, they think war will make them into a man. Or it’s truly because they come from shitty situations and there’s no other way out that offers healthcare, housing, food, salary, and free college afterward… if you come home alive and intact enough for higher education.” He sighed again. “A small few go because they want to kill, want to hurt other human beings, and they want the justification to do so. And then there are those who go because they’re noble and want to do right by what their country stands for.”
“Why did you go?” I asked him, almost whispering.
“Because I was a cocky, rebellious kid who hated my dad and wanted to get as far away from his expectations of me as I could,” he answered.
“Ah, the daddy issues,” I muttered.
Kip smiled cheekily at me, though his eyes were tinged with melancholy. “Caught them, did you?”
“Just a smidge,” I replied. “And like knows like. I’ve got a boatload of my own.”
He raised his brow in question.
“Nuh-uh.” I wagged my finger at him. “This is your turn.”
He pursed his lips, his expression pensive. Though he was obviously thinking, he never stopped rubbing my feet. I really appreciated that.
“My dad is an asshole,” he stated blandly. Or blandly on the surface. I could hear the underlying hatred there.
Not resentment. Full-on hatred. It burned underneath his breath, was in the tightness of his limbs, the shuttering of his eyes.
I’d been dealt a shitty hand on the parental side of things, but even I couldn’t say that I hated them exactly. I resented them for what my childhood was, but I couldn’t bring myself to hate them.
“My first memory of the man is him yelling at my mother,” he said, looking at me but not seeing me. “I’ve never seen him say a kind word to her, never seen any kind of inclination that he loved her.”
My eyes burned with tears already. Deidre. The sweet woman who positively leeched love and light, who was gentle and kind, how could she not have a husband who doted on her? And how had she had someone unloving for so long and not let it turn her bitter and hard? I found a newfound love for my mother-in-law. And sorrow.
“Yeah,” Kip said quietly, gauging the expression on my face. “It takes a special kind of asshole to treat a woman like my mom the way he treats her.”
His grip tightened on my feet, almost to the point of pain. I restrained my wince.
“He’s never laid hands on her,” he continued. “No way would I have let him get away with that if he had. He’s smart enough to know that, maybe. And to know my mom would leave him if he did.”
He kept rubbing my feet with a little too much pressure to be enjoyable. I bit my lip.
“I’ve tried to get her to leave him a bunch of times,” he explained. “My sister less so because she lives for my father’s approval,” he scoffed with obvious disgust.
That solved the mystery as to why I hadn’t met his sister or heard him talk about her. I knew she existed because Deidre had told me all about her, showed me pictures of her and her children.
She was pretty. Dirty-blonde hair just like Kip’s, delicate bone structure like her mother. She didn’t look like she would be similar to Kip, though. In all of the photos, she was wearing expensive, pressed clothes, not a hair out of place. Same with the children and the stiff-looking husband.
“Mom will never leave him,” Kip sighed. “And I hate him for that. For sentencing her to a life where she isn’t treated like she deserves,” he said bitterly. “But of course, it’s not just that. It’s because he wanted a son who would obey him. Who would fall into line, go into the family business, put a stick up my ass.” He shook his head, letting go of my feet only to grab my calves and pull me gently closer to him so he could lay his hands on my belly.
It was something that calmed him, I’d learned. And it calmed me too.
“We butted heads a whole fucking lot,” he said. “More when I got older. I retreated to Rowan’s place often. Fuck, I damn near lived there for my last year of high school.” He sighed. “His father was more of a dad to me than mine ever was or will be.”
He looked at my stomach as the baby kicked against his hand, making him soften that harsh and angry expression.
