Page 42 of Colt
“Yes, I did.”
“He could cause trouble. Call the school board, the police—”
“He won’t.” I kept my voice calm. “Men like that are only brave when they think they’re facing someone weaker. He came here expecting to bully you. Instead, he found me.” I shrugged. “He’ll go home, tell his wife some story about how he ‘handled it’, and he’ll make sure Tyler never bothers Luca and Knox again.”
Lilac was quiet for a long moment. Then, she stepped forward and wrapped her arms around my waist, surprising us both.
It took me a second to respond—we hadn’t touched, not since those early days when I’d grabbed her arm too hard. But then my arms came up around her, pulling her close, and I pressed my face into her hair.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
I pulled back slightly, just enough to see her face. “You okay?”
“I should be asking you that.” Her eyes searched mine. “You looked like you wanted to murder him.”
“Only a little.” The words came out before I could stop them—dry, dark.
A surprised laugh escaped her—short and startled. “That’s not reassuring.”
“Good thing I’m better at restraint than I used to be.”
“Are you?”
I cursed myself for saying something that would make her fear me, but then I realized there was no fear in her words. Might have been curiosity, or maybe recognition of the man Graham had told her about. “I’m trying to be.” I let my hands settle on her waist, careful not to hold too tight. “For you. For them.”
I looked up to the window where the boys were now watching from. “I’ll always protect them.” My voice went rough again. “You. The boys. Always. No matter what.”
She studied my face for a long moment, and I let her see everything—the violence I was capable of, the gentleness I reserved for her, the desperate love driving it all.
“I’m starting to believe that,” she said, and this time when she stepped back, she was almost smiling.
?
That night, after the boys were supposed to be in bed and Lilac was helping Betty with dishes, I found Luca waiting for me on the back porch.
He was sitting on the steps where I’d sat with him after Knox’s crash, his legs swinging in the darkness.
“Hey.” I lowered myself next to him. “Shouldn’t you be in bed?”
“I heard you,” Luca said. “With Tyler’s dad.”
“You were supposed to be inside.”
“I came out in case mama or you needed me.” He looked up at me, and in the dim light from the kitchen window, his green eyes were luminous. “You really scared him.”
“He deserved to be scared.”
Luca nodded slowly. “He came here to yell at Mama. I heard him say I was a thug.”
“He’s wrong.”
“I know.” Luca was quiet for a moment. “But, nobody ever stood up for us like that before. When I got in trouble before, at our old school, our teacher would yell at me and say I was making him look bad.”
My hands clenched on my knees. I wanted to find this teacher and make him pay for every moment of neglect. “That’s not what daddies do,” I said. “Daddies don’t care about looking bad—they care about making sure their family is safe.”
“Is that what you did today? Protected us?”
“Yeah, kid. That’s exactly what I did.”
