Page 70 of Late Nights & Love Lines
Even though my breathing hitches and sweat dots my upper lip, I pick him up and hold him on my hip but arch away from him a bit. This kid might be part spider monkey.
I’ve been this way around kids since my last long-term nanny position with a little girl named Lucy—she nearly killed me when I had to leave. I’d known I was becoming attached, but leaving her affected me as though I’d cut off my own arm. I vowed to never feel that way again. Before her, I’d only have a visceral reaction to affection around adult men, or the occasional overly huggy female.
“Your huggers are broken,” Kade says, staring at the gap between his body and mine.
Sebastian drops his spatula, and it bounces off the pan in front of him with a clatter. “Kade,” he scolds. “That’s not a kind thing to say.”
“But look,” he says, pointing to the space I’ve created between our bodies.
“Kade,” Miles whispers, trying to tug on his leg to pull him down. “Not everyone’s huggers are the same. It’s not nice to say that.”
The mortification I felt not three minutes ago is quickly overridden by a six-year-old’s blunt observation.
Sebastian is quick to my side, attempting to pull Kade away, but there’s a big thorny pit in my throat, and the pain of it makes me cling to Kade. I shake off Sebastian and stiffly carry Kade to the table and place him on the wraparound bench of the kitchen nook that overlooks the ocean.
“Maybe my huggers are broken,” I say sadly, sliding in beside Kade.
“Rowan,” Pappy says from across the table. I attempt a small smile for him, but it’s forced as hell, so I angle my body toward Kade.
“Want me to teach ya?” Kade says, flapping his hands together in front of him like a seal waving its flippers.
“What made you think my huggers are broken?” I ask him. And unfortunately, I really want the answer. I thought I’d been doing so well hiding those pieces of myself.
Kade grins wide, then stands up on the bench. “Because, silly. When you hug, you’re supposed to do this.” He wraps his arms around himself and jerks around with the grace of a wacky waving inflatable tube man at a car dealership. “But when you hug, you do this.” The kid holds his hands out in a half O-shape and is as still as a freaking statue.
Intuitive little shit, isn’t he?
He pats my head, then sits beside me. Squished up against me, not leaving a centimeter of space between us. “Don’t worry, Row. Daddy’s the best hugger ever. We’ll teach ya.”
The way his eyes crinkle when he’s happy is the spitting image of his father.
Kade holds up his hand. “But we can still high-five if ya want, too.”
Sebastian drops a plate of pancakes a little too forcefully onto the table, then slides them over to his youngest son.
He uses the gentle scraping sound, and the appearance of leaning over the table to whisper, “He’s six.”
I nod, but it’s evident that everyone in this room has had the same thoughts as Kade.
“Gram wasn’t a hugger,” Pappy says after a sip of coffee.
I frown but drop my gaze to Kade’s plate and busy myself cutting his pancakes.
“She really wasn’t,” Sebastian chuckles. “She was a cheek pincher.” He reaches over me again and playfully pinches Kade’s cheeks. It’s made easier because Kade still has a little of the baby chub in his cheeks that he’s sure to outgrow soon.
A wave of sadness hits me when I realize I may not see him outgrow his baby face, and I focus on the pancakes again.
“I don’t remember that,” I grumble. Miles stands at my side, silently asking me to scoot down the bench, so I slide Kade over, then myself, and Miles slips in next to me.
Sebastian and Pappy continue discussing Gram’s “spunky” side. They make her sound grumpy, but that’s not how I remember her. She was always so…perfect.
Miles ducks his head away from the table and into my space to whisper, “Your huggers are not broken, Rowan. Daddy said being different isn’t the same thing as being bad, and I don’t think being different means you’re broken either.” He smiles, and it’s not the practiced one he wears all damn day.
This is the smile of a little boy who isn’t hiding or making sure everyone else is okay.
His little fist raises, and he gives me a fist bump that might just be the catalyst for my undoing.
Sebastian eyes me curiously, sandwiched between his two sons who both managed to obliterate my walls in under five minutes. “You okay?” he mouths over Pappy’s head.
