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“I was aiming for your mouth,” Leo says, then aims the gun at his mouth and sprays some liquid into it. He swallows. “And it’s whiskey, dumbass. Why would I squirt piss at you? I know you’re getting old, but that’s out of pocket, even for you.”
“Leo.” Cash growls it out and storms across the kitchen.
Leo lets out a demonic cackle and disappears from sight.
I laugh.
Jesse and Leo have a similar sense of humor, but Leo always takes things to the next level. Jesse would tease and mess around, but Leo would do that and more. He once put an open can of tuna fish underneath Cash’s bed and left it there for weeks. Nobody knew what the hell the smell was until Mom made Leo confess.
She was good at that. She was kind and gentle with him, where Dad was all about tough love with the boys.
June and I head out of the kitchen together, chatting about her week, and how she’s adapting to Cash going on tour.
We enter the living room and find Dad and Ganny chatting on the sofa. Savage is seated across from them, a can of Coke in hand. His gaze drifts up to meet mine, and heat floods my entire body.
I have the strongest urge to go over to him and kiss him, but I don’t. He taps his fingers on the soda can and maintains eye contact with me.
“There you are June, honey pie,” Ganny says. “Now, darlin’, I’ve been meaning to ask you when I’m going to get another great-grandchild?”
June chokes beside me and nearly does a spit take, wine glass clutched in hand.
Dad turns to Ganny and pats her leg. “Come on, now, Mama, she’s not a prize cow. She can’t just pop out babies because you want her to.”
“Just saying, I want more great-grandkids,” Ganny continues, her eyes glimmering blue and focused on June. “And given that?—”
I don’t hear the rest of what my grandmother is saying because I excuse myself and move out into the hall, past the family pictures that peer down from the walls. I run upstairs to the guestroom and shut myself inside, taking deep breaths to calm myself down.
Relax. She didn’t mean anything by it.
But it’s difficult to feel that way when I’m one of the grandchildren who will never give her what she wants. Sweat breaks out on the back of my neck and I sit down on the edge of the queen-sized bed, picking at the snowy white comforter. Outside the window, our favorite tree, complete with the treehouse Grandpa built us, stands like a solid reminder of my childhood and my life.
It feels like the pretty cream walls are closing in around me, like I’m trapped and?—
A knock taps against the bedroom door, and it opens. Savage enters and shuts the door.
He doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t have to. I get up and take two steps into his open arms.
Thirty-Six
SAVAGE
She has to know how amazing she how much of a woman she is.
Hannah doesn’t need to have babies to be the perfect woman. Her value isn’t intrinsically tied to that, no matter how much she feels it is, but there is no good way for me to say that without sounding like an ass. I have no idea how she’s feeling. It’s an emotion I’ll never be able to comprehend. I lost a baby, but I can’t imagine what it must be like to want kids and not be able to have them. To feel like you are less because of it.
“It’s not your fault,” I say, and cup her cheeks in my hands, stroking my thumbs across that smooth skin. “Hannah, Princess, look at me.”
Her eyes flicker down and then up. Her lips part on a breath, and the tears are a continuous stream.
“It is not your fault,” I say.
She presses her lips together and nods. “T-Thank you. I shouldn’t cry. It’s ridiculous.”
“It’s not ridiculous. You have every right to feel how you fucking feel.”
“Man, that therapist is really doing a number on you,” she whispers.
I chuckle and tuck her hair behind her ears. “Don’t give her all the credit,” I say. “I’m taking small steps to get there, and I could not have done any of this without you. You are all woman, Hannah. Strong, intelligent, proud, capable, independent.”
