No Perfect Hero(65)

I don’t know how anyone could ever claim to love Haley and then treat her the way that jackhole did. It’s proof enough he never loved her at all.

His loss.

And if I see him in Heart’s Edge again, I’m going to show him some love by throwing him right off our namesake cliff. If flowers going over it will keep you together forever, who the hell knows what a blood offering might do?

I can’t help chuckling to myself.

I’m being damn ridiculous, deep in full caveman mode, I know.

Against me, Hay stirs with a drowsy murmur. “Mm? What’s so funny?”

“I was just thinking about your ex.”

“Well...he is pretty laughable.”

“Yeah. But I was picturing the look on his face when I toss him over the cliff and make a wish—and then I realized I’m being a chest-thumping ape.”

She lets out a short, startled burst of laughter, and instead of me thumping my chest, it’s her small hand that thuds down lightly between my pecs. “I think you scared him enough. You got his suit dirty, that's pretty much like a punch to the face for him. You don’t need to go to jail for murder.”

“No? Well, ma'am, if you insist...”

“Oh, don’t even pretend to have noble intentions now. You’re not some knight in shining armor, Warren. You may have screwed my brains out, but I didn't lose any IQ points.” She lifts her head from my shoulder, propping her chin against it instead so she can look at me with her eyes glimmering bright through her soft tangle of dark brown sex hair. “We've got to be sensible. Even if you did come charging to the rescue...”

I shrug. “Tara was upset. Can’t ignore a lady in distress.”

“Oh, I get it now. You did that for my niece. Not for me. Totally.”

Her saucy grin is irresistible, and I lean in to steal a taste, kissing her lightly. “I did it because if I tried to do it just for you, you’d take my balls off. Least Tara gives you a safe buffer that lets you accept help without really accepting it.”

Haley blinks, going oddly quiet, her smile fading. “Am I that easy to figure out?”

“Maybe to someone who’s just like you,” I say. It’s harder than I want to admit to get these words out. To just calmly package up these old pieces of myself into words and give them to someone else like it’s nothing. “My sister and I grew up without parents. It was just us and Grandma...a single older woman with two kids on her hands, trying to start a business in a backwoods town. She would’ve given anything for us, but we didn’t want to make her. So we tried to need as little as possible, so we wouldn’t be a burden.”

Eyes misting, Haley smiles slightly. “Sounds familiar. My sister and I are kinda like that too. But I don’t think Wilma would ever consider you a burden.”

“Maybe not. Still, so kind that we didn’t want to take too much from her. Grandma was all we had.”

“If it’s okay to ask...what happened to your parents?”

“We don’t know.” I turn my head against the pillow to fully face her, until our words fill the small space between us to make this thread of whispers, connecting us. “They went on a road trip one day and never came back. No one ever found their car. Police never turned up a glimpse of them. Maybe they drove over a ravine. Maybe they started a new life somewhere else. Maybe they just vanished into nothing.”

My chest aches. It's been more than a decade since I told anybody that story.

Damn.

I’d never really thought of myself as anybody with abandonment issues. My parents are just hazy figures. I can’t even remember their faces. I was only four when they disappeared.

My mother, I remember as a tumble of black hair spilling down over me and a scent of lilacs.

My father, the scratch of his stubble and the way his hands were so strong. When he picked me up, he always held a little too tight without meaning to, but I didn’t mind because it meant he had me.

Then Grandma eclipsed all of that. This flood of light and the yellow of the daffodils always in the vase in the front foyer, the silver of her hair and the kindness of her smile, the sharp wit in her eyes and the way she touches everything – from a simple curtain to a clinging, frightened grandchild – with such utter, pure love.

She’s all I’ve ever needed for family. Her and Jenna.

Fuck, no wonder it hurts to think of my parents leaving after all this time. It’s the same, really.

Jenna left, too.

And I won’t have Grandma forever. Her thinking about retirement, getting the inn mixed up with asshole Bress, is one more reminder.

What’ll happen then?

Who will I call family once she’s gone?

Is a man like me even fit to have his own?

I’m pulled from my blank, circling thoughts by Haley’s fingers. She brushes them gently to my temple, then slowly traces backward to my hairline, as if she’s exploring me. Mapping me.

And as her fingers slip into my hair, her weaving it in soft, delicate touches and strokes down to the scalp, I close my eyes. That hard, fucked up knot in my chest loosens like she's taming the most savage of beasts with a sweetness I’d never have guessed underneath that hellion’s fire.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “Sorry you’ve had to live with so many unanswered questions your entire life.”