“I'll check on him,” I heard myself say. “After the garage.”
Evan nodded slowly. “Good. That's... good.”
“Don't read into it.”
“I'm not reading into anything.”
“You're reading into it right now. I can see it on your face.”
“This is just my face, Dad.”
“Your face is doing the thing.”
“What thing?”
“The thing where you think you know something and you're being smug about it.”
Evan's mouth curved into something that was definitely a smile now. “I have no idea what you're talking about.”
“Liar.”
“Learned from the best.”
I shoved his shoulder as I passed him, heading for the sink to rinse my mug. “Finish your coffee. We're leaving in ten.”
“Bossy.”
“I'm your Alpha.”
“You're mydad. There's a difference.”
“Is there?”
“Yeah.” Evan's voice softened. “One of them I actually listen to.”
I turned back to look at him. My son, grown now, sitting in the kitchen where his mother used to make pancakes on Sunday mornings. Where she'd taught him to read and helped him with homework and held him when the nightmares got too bad.
She would have been so proud of him. Of the man he'd become.
“Your mother,” I started, then stopped. Swallowed. “She would have liked Nate.”
Evan's eyes went bright for just a second. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. She always said you needed someone who could match your stubbornness. Someone who'd push back when you needed pushing.”
“Nate definitely pushes back.”
“Good. You need it.”
We stood there for a moment, the morning light slowly filling the kitchen, the weight of old grief and new hope tangled together in the space between us.
Then Evan cleared his throat. “Ten minutes?”
“Ten minutes.”
He nodded and headed upstairs, probably to grab his work boots and whatever else he needed for a day of wrestling with Henderson's disaster of a truck.
I stood alone in the kitchen, listening to the house settle around me. Claire's yellow curtains still hung over the sink. I'd never been able to take them down.
