Hudson chuckled low under his breath. Then in a voice meant only for me, he whispered in my ear, “She learn that from you?”
I elbowed him in the gut, my first true smile of the day coming out at his jolt and muttered, “Oof.”
“I don’t know why you get such a kick outta tellin’ this story,” Rory said.
“Um, maybe because she’s a little badass? She did exactly like I taught her and didn’t even blink.”
“Wait, this wasyourdoin’?” I asked, pointing at Nash.
Rory had come a long way from the epitome of perfection she used to be, but I couldn’t imagine my sister had been happy to sit down with Tommy’s parents in the principal’s office. Especially considering Tommy Junior picked up his ways courtesy of good old dad. And to know Rory was doing so thanks to her boyfriend probably meant a tense night—or several nights—in their house.
“Yep,” he said, completely without remorse. “And I’d do it again in a heartbeat. She told me the little shit—pardon my French—” he tipped his head toward Momma and Gran “—wouldn’t leave her alone at recess. Even after she’d told him to stop. Even after she’d mentioned it to the teacher.” He sat back, his legs outstretched in front of him, arms crossed over his chest, looking like he’d just won the world’s biggest pissing contest. “So, you’re damn right I taught her how to throw a punch. I’d do it again without hesitation.”
“Still can’t believe you did that,” Rory mumbled.
“Gonna teach Ava too,” he said with a definitive nod. “We’re not gonna have any of thisboys will be boysbullsh— ’scuse me, bullcrap in our house. Those girls are gonna know what to do if someone doesn’t heed the warnin’ when they say no.”
“You did the same thing for me, do you remember?” Nat turned to face him and tugged on his shirt sleeve. “When Jonah Loflin kept tryin’ to peek up my skirt in seventh grade?”
“Why don’t I remember that?” Momma asked, her brow furrowed.
“’Cause I never told you.” Nat shrugged in a way that said there was a whole lot of shit she kept from our momma, and it was best for everyone that she not venture down that path.
Momma—no doubt well used to this sort of thing with her youngest child—simply exhaled a heavy sigh and shook her head.
“I’m not sorry about that either,” Nash said. “They both deserved to get some sense knocked into their brains.”
“You know one of them is a seven-year-old, right?” Rory said dryly, though there was no mistaking the fondness in her voice.
Nash shrugged. “I don’t care if he’s seven or sixty-seven—it’s never a bad time to remind a man how he should be treatin’ a lady.”
Conversation flowed around me, naturally transitioning into tales of when our daddy was young and had to be guided back onto the right path. By the end of the stories, we’d managed to find some laughter, but a few tears had fallen—though I had kept most of mine locked down tight.
Rory’s arms were flying as she entertained everyone with an animated story of Ella attempting to make pancakes—unsupervised—one morning, when I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. I glanced over in time to see Nash poking Nat in the leg, then lifting his chin to something down thecorridor. I twisted around to find a tall, male figure striding toward us, and I turned back just as Nat stood without another word.
My sister practically ran down the hall and straight into the man’s waiting arms. Asher, I realized, when I could make out his distinguishing features. His dark hair, longer on top, was unkempt—his jaw, too, the scruff on it about thirty-six hours past a five-o’clock shadow—as if he hadn’t had time to even glance in a mirror before he left.
Asher held Nat while she clung to him, her hands bunched into his coat as he leaned down so their cheeks were pressed together. He must’ve whispered something in her ear, because she nodded, and then he turned them down a side hallway and out of sight.
A gasp had my attention drawn to the nurses station where Patty—one of the nurses who’d been keeping us updated—sat, her mouth agape.
“Do you know who that was?” Patty said to the woman sitting next to her behind the nurses station. “That wasAsher Mc?—”
I stopped listening and rolled my eyes as I twisted back around. I hadn’t ever really gotten used to the whole Asher being semifamous—at least in our pocket of the South—thing. It was weird trying to reconcile the boy I’d known his whole life with how his fans saw him now.
“That your doin’?” I asked Nash with raised eyebrows.
He inclined his head, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
“That was real sweet of you,” Rory said and kissed him softly before muffled squealing in the direction of the nurses station snagged everyone’s attention again.
Rory huffed and pursed her lips as the nurses continued going on and on—Asherthis andAsherthat.
“They’re bein’ a little ridiculous, don’t you think?” she asked, her voice low. “It’s Asher for heaven’s sake, and they’re actin’ like he’s God’s gift to women.” She scoffed and rolled her eyes, settling back in her chair with her arms crossed over her chest. “Please…I used to change that boy’s diapers.”
A hush fell over everyone sitting around, and then Nash simply lifted an eyebrow in Rory’s direction.
It took her a minute, but when she understood what she’d just done—comparing her same-age boyfriend to the boy whose diapers she used to change—her face went bright red, and she sputtered. “Well—I… I didn’t?—”
