Page 29 of Long Shot

I think. “Okay, yeah. I like peanut butter on toast with bacon.”

“Hmmm. Interesting.” She taps her fingers on the console between us.

I glance down at her hand. Long, slender fingers with short, unpainted nails. She wears a simple silver ring on her index finger that’s oddly . . . sexy. “That doesn’t gross you out? Everyone else thinks it’s disgusting.”

“Hey, I’m not judgy. I bet the salty bacon and peanut butter tastes pretty good together.”

“It’s fantastic. I also like to put ranch dressing on my pizza.”

She nods thoughtfully.

“When I was a kid, I was the one who did the cooking,” I find myself telling her. “Sometimes there wasn’t a lot to choose from so I had to get creative.”

She turns now, looking at me for the first time since we got in the vehicle. “Why did you do the cooking?”

“My mom took off when I was fourteen.”

“Oh, no.” A sideways glance catches the downward slope of her eyebrows. “That’s awful.”

“It sucked. But honestly, I couldn’t blame her. My old man was a drunk. She got tired of putting up with his bullshit and looking after two boys.”

“Oh, no. No.” She shakes her head. “A mom can’t do that. Not to her sons.”

“She did,” I say matter-of-factly. “Yeah, I was pissed off at her for a long time. But you gotta do what you gotta do. I had a little brother and we had to eat, so . . .”

“And probably not just eat.” She eyes me. “You probably did everything.”

“Pretty much.” I don’t want to sound like a martyr. “My dad was useless. If he wasn’t falling down and breaking things, or trying to whale on me or my brother, he was passed out on the hall floor. Or on the street. There were a lot of nights the cops dragged his drunken ass home.”

“Oh, God.” She touches her fingertips to her mouth. “That’s awful.”

I’m not sure why I’m telling her this. I confessed this shit and more to Beck and Marco during one of our first drunken nights on leave, but I don’t usually tell people all the crappy details about my past. I grew up with people feeling sorry for me and I fucking hated that. It’s what made me so loyal to Beck and Marco—even when they knew the truth about me, they never pitied me.

“Hmmm.”

I glance at her at the sound. “What?”

“Nothing. So do you have any contact with your parents?”

“My dad’s dead.”

“Oh.” Again her fingertips go to her mouth. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. It was pretty much a foregone conclusion that he was going to drink himself into the grave.” Again, I don’t bother mentioning the guilt that ate away at me after I left home to join the Navy. Even though I hated my dad and at times wanted him dead, deep down inside I was just a kid who wanted a father who would be there for us. For years I tried to save the guy in the hopes that would happen, but . . . well. I know exactly when I finally gave up.

“Well, I’d say your brother was lucky to have an older brother like you.”

Nope. Not even close. I failed my little brother in the worst way possible. Not going there, though. “How about you?”

“What about me?”

“What kind of family did you grow up with? Nice, normal, middle-class family with two kids and a dog?”

“Well. Yeah.”

I grin.

“I have a sister. And we did have a dog. I don’t know if we were really normal.”

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