He was staring at me.
Things had been tense since the other night when he’d done the most marvelous thing: made his house a home. For us. And little old me, tired and wrecked from the kiss, exploded on him over the small detail of Brady’s sleeping location.
For the hundredth time, an apology welled up inside me. My reaction wasn’t the smart way to handle it. But I didn’t want to apologize for a parenting choice. When it came to that boy’s safety, I was relentless.
And so the awkwardness continued, festering like a poisonous green wound.
“They’re tiny,” Brady observed the miniature deer with his nose scrunched up. “Can we eat them, tatko?”
Ivan scrunched up his nose. My damn heart did another little flip. They were identical, these two. The last five years had revolved around Brady. I knew every look, every emotion that crossed his face. It was surreal to see them naturally occur on the bigger, hardened version of a man.
He’s going to become like his dad if we don’t leave.
That made my heart ache.
Brady was too sweet, too good! How could I let him shape himself into a ruthless monster from the criminal underworld? No mother wanted that for her son. I might not have carried him for nine months and birthed him, but I was every bit his mother.
It wasn’t going to happen.
I wouldn’t let it.
“I suppose if we were hungry enough,” Ivan was saying.
“Not much meat. Now a white tail buck, that’s good eatin’!” Brady chirped.
A smile, small and secret, formed on the savagely handsome face. Ivan looked down at his boy with an appreciative air. “What do you know about white tail hunting?”
“Heeps! Cousin Mikey said I could come out to the deer stand this fall, and in a couple of years, when I get my hunter’s safetycertificate, I could shoot one of them bad boys,” Brady rambled enthusiastically.
“Have you ever shot a gun?” A line formed in Ivan’s brow.
Brady shook his head. “Cousin Theo has shown me some of his. But you never touch one. And always treat them as if they’re loaded. And you never point them at anything you’re not ready to kill. Like humans. You don’t point them at humans. Ever.”
I felt the blood drain from my face. Ivan no doubt had very different views on the matter.
“Look at the horns on that klipspringer!” I said by way of a distraction technique.
“You’re right, Brady,” Ivan said solemnly. “Guns aren’t toys, and you never point them at people.”
My jaw dropped.
Ivan chose that moment to look up at me. “A bug’s going to fly into your mouth if you keep it hanging like that.”
“Have you ever been hunting?” Brady was blessedly oblivious to the sudden shift in energy.
“Many times,” Ivan responded with a nod. “But never for white tail. It sounds a little boring.”
“It’s not!” Brady argued.
“Let me get this straight, you sit in a deer stand and go ‘Here little deer-deer, come over here’ and you wait for them just to stroll by?”
“No,” Brady drawled, as if that were the stupidest question. “You sit in the stand,veryquietly and wait.”
“You’re still just sitting there, hoping one comes by.” Laughter twitched on Ivan’s mouth.
“Exactly.” Brady planted his hands on his hips. “And then you shoot ‘em, clean ‘em, and eat ‘em.”
Ivan couldn’t hold his laugh back any longer. It was a loud boom, rich and full of mirth. “Son, someday I’ll take you to themountains and teach you how tostalkyour prey. It’s much more exciting than freezing your ass off at the edge of a corn field.”
