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“About having regular sex and beer in the fridge isn’t the same thing,” she said. “Do you miss him?”
“No,” he said so fast her fingers bounced to his chin. “Yes.”
That quick turnaround was revealing. He wanted the answer to be the first, but the truth existed in the second.
“You don’t want to miss him,” Tess said. The tension in his jaw under her touch bunched tighter. “You did fight, didn’t you?”
“No. He wouldn’t give a damn about my opinion even if I screamed myself hoarse. No point arguing with someone like that.”
“I can’t believe he doesn’t care about you,” she said. “Maybe you should call him, see if you can talk it out.”
He wrapped his fingers around hers to move her hand to his chest. “We don’t talk.”
“Never? How do you let each other know what you’re feeling?”
He rolled his fingers into a fist and bumped it against her hand. “If we’ve got a problem, we slug it out.”
“Physically?” she asked. “You fight each other… physically?” Tess sat up in the middle of the bed. “Did he hurt you when you were a child?”
Danny sucked in a breath and opened his arms wide. After a long, loud, exaggerated yawn, he raised his arms up, only to let his hands flop onto his chest.
“You normally sleep like a babe,” he said, opening his eyes wide then letting them relax. “Usually you’re out like a light. You’ve got something on your mind… or you want another round… I’ve got a helluva bedtime story for you.” He patted his upper chest. “Come sit here, baby. I’ll tell it real slow.”
“Danny,” she said. “Please answer me.”
He groaned. “Babe, it’s fathers and sons,” he said, crunching his abs to rise just enough to snag her hand. Yanking her down against him, he wound both arms around her. “They’ve gotta teach us to be tough.”
“No,” she said, laying her fingers on his temple to stroke them down to his chin around the perimeter of his face. “It’s no one’s job to be violent with anyone, not for any reason.”
His dimples were probably meant to alleviate her concern. “I gave as good as I got, babe. Don’t you worry about this guy holding his own.”
She kept stroking his face, admiring every inch of him. “I can’t imagine it… I can’t imagine you hurting anyone… I can’t imagine you that angry.”
“It’s not about anger,” he said. “Not always… Frustration? Sure, but beating something helps… We’ve got to know how to defend ourselves… and those we care about.”
She’d said something like that in the truck, about protecting people. “When I was young, sometimes I’d pretend…”
“Pretend what?”
“Since I was little, my mom always taught me it was important to be strong. Strength comes from inside us. She used to say that every time we think we have nothing left to give, no fight left, our strength is tested.”
“She wasn’t wrong.”
“I used to pretend that I could stop it. When I was a kid, young, you know, I used to lie in the dark imagining I was strong enough to stop it.”
“Stop… what?”
“Whatever my mom was afraid of,” she said. He scooped his fingers up through her hair, pushing it from her face. “I didn’t know about it then.” Tess exhaled a quiet scoff of truth. “I know nothing about it now. But I’ve always known my mom believed in it. She believed something wanted to hurt her, hurt us. I don’t know… I don’t remember thinking about the danger. I don’t remember being afraid. I just remember wishing I was strong enough to take her fear away. That was what made me angry, that something scared her so much. I wanted to make it better. To help her.”
“You were a kid.”
“Yeah,” she said, giving herself another few seconds of reflection before seeking his gaze again. “So were you. When your father was hurting you. It wasn’t a lesson. You shouldn’t have needed to defend yourself, he should’ve defended you.”
“It’s complicated.”
“No, it isn’t,” she said, an odd anger warming her words. “It was his job to care for you.”
“It was his job to keep me alive and he did. Just like your mom did for you.”
