Normally, comments like that would have hurt. Another rejection. Today, though, he was still too angry to be hurt.
“You’re certainly not helping your case to get that thing off your ankle.”
Hayden rolled his eyes. “Whatever.”
“Hey!” Nick stepped in front of him as Hayden went to push past. “I don’t care what you think about me and my life—”
“Your boyfriend.” More eye rolling.
Nick didn’t let himself react at the mention of Oliver. “You have put your mom through hell. And every time you screw up again, you hurt her more. She needed this weekend away, and we are not going to let her come home to a smashed-up car and this shitty yard.”
“You smashed the car, and the yard was shitty when we got here.” Hayden jabbed the shovel toward him, but backed down when Nick stepped into it, letting the blade poke him in the chest.
“She’ll be back this afternoon. By then, I want this flower bed dug up, and then we’re going to go buy some plants to put in it.”
Hayden gaped at him.
“Do you want some gloves?” Nick held out a pair of heavy work gloves. Hayden stared at them for a moment before turning his back and jamming the shovel into the dirt.
The work was tough, and Hayden moved slowly. Nick tried not to criticize. The point was to get him working, not turn him into a landscaper. Nick hadn’t worked on his yard like this in years. When he and Anya moved in, there had been a pretty little flower garden, but after she’d left, he hadn’t bothered to keep it up. It went to weeds, and eventually he dug it up and filled it with grass.
Undoing his work now felt good. The morning warmed up, and his shoulders ached from the digging. Too late to piece his family back together, but maybe if he brought back this garden, it would mean he hadn’t fucked everything up completely.
At eleven, Hayden threw his shovel down with a shout.
“What’s wrong?” Sweat trickled down Nick’s spine.
“This sucks!”
“So does having your boyfriend’s son wreck your car with a baseball bat. Do you know how much a Porsche costs?”
“So what? If he’s got a Porsche, he can afford to fix it. You can’t make me do this!” He balled his hands into fists and then winced, unclenching them. Hayden kicked the dirt, picking at his palms. They were red and cracked.
“Did you hurt yourself?” Nick reached for him, but Hayden jerked his hand away.
“It’s fine! Can we please stop this?”
Nick grabbed his wrist. Angry blisters had formed on both hands, and a few were torn and bleeding.
“You should have worn gloves.”
He hadn’t meant to hurt him. He hadn’t really been sure what he’d meant to do, but Nick had been so angry and confused ever since Hayden found them. He needed some space, some time, with his son, to sort out what the problem was, and how they were going to fix it. His relationship with Oliver couldn’t be what finally drove Nick and Hayden apart forever. It couldn’t. Because Nick couldn’t face the prospect of letting Oliver go.
Nick loved him.
He pushed the thought away. Today was about Hayden and trying to find common ground again. “Go inside and put some Polysporin on those blisters. I’ll call the probation office and let them know we’re going out.”
On the drive across town, Hayden was subdued. He’d wound his hands in bandages like a burn victim and stared out the window the whole way to the nursery. He followed two steps behind Nick, a sulky shadow answering only in grunts when Nick pointed out plants.
“Do you think your mom would like these?”
“I guess.”
Nick knew as much about gardening as he had about energy balls, so in the end they chose flowers in a few different colors and drove home. Hayden picked at his bandages the whole way back. By the time they pulled into the driveway, he had unraveled them completely.
“We’ve still got some work to do,” Nick said as he turned the car off.
“I know.” Hayden slammed the door behind him and walked into the house, but he came back a few minutes later with fresh Band-Aids over his blisters and a pair of gloves in his back pocket.
