The Trouble with Tomboys (Tommy Creek #1)(29)

“It’s nothing.”

“Take the pliers, will you?” Tucker held them up. Grady wrapped one arm around the neck of the pump and stretched down to grasp the tool. When his fingers wrapped around it, he said, “Thanks.”

Tucker nodded quietly and shoved his hands

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into his pockets as he watched Grady deftly make a twisty tie out of the thick metal cord.

“Want to come to supper tonight?”

Grady nearly winced as he shook his head. “No, thanks. I…” He faltered when he couldn’t think up an excuse why except that he just didn’t want to. So he settled with another, “No, thanks.”

His father looked a little too sympathetic for his comfort, and he wanted to escape...fast. Finishing his task, he handed the pliers back and wiped his hands on his jeans before he started to shimmy his way back toward earth. After descending four feet, he let go of the beam and jumped down the rest of the way.

“Your mother was saying just this morning how she hasn’t seen you in a while,” Tucker said, hovering until both of Grady’s feet were firmly planted on the ground.

Letting out a breath, Grady leaned over and

started collecting all the spare parts and tools he had accumulated around the base of the pump jack.

“I’ll stop by and say hi on my way home,” he relented.

But that was it. He wouldn’t stay for a meal and allow both his parents to gang up on him as they tried to get a bead on how he was really dealing with his life these days.

“Don’t worry about me, Dad. I’m not digressing again. I don’t need to see a doctor, and I don’t need any kind of medication. There’s no depression and no more insomnia. I’m fine.” Actually, he’d probably prefer the insomnia to the dreams he’d been having about a certain big-mouthed tomboy.

Everything gathered, he lifted his toolbox and started for his truck.

“I know you don’t like my pity, Grady,” Tucker said, falling into step beside him. “But you’re my son, and I can’t stand to see you this way.”

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Grady closed his eyes and fisted his hands

around the handle of the toolbox, wondering if B.J.

had been right in Houston. Did he bring on

everyone’s sympathy by acting so pitiful? “There’s nothing to be done about it, though,” he muttered.

Sometimes, he just couldn’t stop hurting.

“Yeah, well...doesn’t mean I have to like it,”

Tucker answered. “If there’s ever anything you need from me or your mother, we’ll be there—”

“I know,” Grady cut in with a reluctant smile.

He stopped and turned to face his father. “I know you’d die for me, if you had to. But you can’t live for me, Dad. I have to figure out how to do that myself.”

“That’s why this sucks so much,” Tucker

relented as his shoulders slumped. “Because I can’t live your life for you, can I? I can’t get you past this rough patch. God. This has to be the worst part of parenthood.”

Grady wouldn’t know. His child had been born dead, cut out of his wife with a knife.

He busied himself by setting his equipment in the bed of his truck. “I saw him, you know.”

Tucker frowned. “Saw who?”

“Bennett.” His son.

His dad sucked in a breath but didn’t respond.

Grady stared into the bed of the truck, assailed by memories.

“He was bloody and still, curled in the fetal position. The doctor and nurses were so busy trying to work on him and Amy, I don’t think they realized I was still in there, watching the cesarean.” Grady lifted his face and glanced over his shoulder at his dad. “He had a really thick head of hair...just like Tanner.” Though they would’ve only been cousins, the two boys probably would’ve looked like twins.

Tucker wiped at his face and quietly said, “God, Grady. I was wrong. I haven’t lived through the worst part of parenthood, have I?”

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Grady sent him a sad smile. He shook his head, thinking he shouldn’t have said anything. But he couldn’t seem to forget that flight to Houston when B.J. Gilmore had talked about Amy. When she’d told the story about Amy baking Leroy’s porn, he hadn’t felt like someone was cutting him in half. It made him wonder if maybe he was going to get through this after all.

But seeing his father’s sympathetic glance told him otherwise. The despair came rushing back, clogging his windpipe and making it hard to breathe.

He couldn’t understand why he’d been able to share an Amy-story with B.J., a woman he wasn’t all that close to, and he couldn’t bear to mention his son to his own father.

Maybe it was because B.J. hadn’t looked at him with pity or tried to find a way to fix his misery.

Instead, she’d opted to remember a happy time, and she’d actually made him smile over the recollection.

Grady hadn’t smiled from hearing Amy’s name since the day she’d died. But somehow B.J. had given him joy from a simple memory.

He wondered briefly if that was why it’d been so good to be inside her. She was the first person in two and a half years to look at him and see a man...not a widower.