I couldn’t believe this, and more, I couldn’t believe Raiden was so matter-of-fact about it.

My heart hurt and my stomach was clutching, but I forced my mouth to say, “I’ll be sure to remember that.”

Then I focused my attention on finding my flip-flops, mostly because I didn’t know what to do with all the feelings I was having, none of them good, and I had to focus on something.

“Hanna,” he called as I found my flip-flops and was shifting them with my toes so I could slide my feet in. I looked back at Raiden. “A long time ago and better with him gone. It was worth it. That shit didn’t mark me. He was gone, instant happy for all of us, even if things were tight.”

I nodded, not feeling mollified even slightly and looked back to my shoes.

“Honey,” he called again and my eyes went to him. “Not bullshitting you. Rache, Mom and me, we’re close. Him gone, we were happy.”

“Okay,” I replied.

“You say okay, but your face says something else.”

“What does my face say?” I asked, but I knew. I never played poker because I didn’t know how and also because I’d suck at it, mostly because I had no clue how to keep my thoughts from showing, nor, until then, had I had any reason to.

“One of two things, can’t tell which. Either you’re pissed or you’re about ready to cry.”

I turned my full attention to him. “Both, I guess.”

“Right, then, like I said. No need for that emotion because it was and is all good.”

“I can sense that, considering the matter-of-fact way you’re discussing it, sweetheart,” I told him. “But I don’t like that you went through that or that things were tight for you guys or that you had to get in your Dad’s face to get him to do something to help take care of his own kids.”

“It happened, but it’s been done for nearly twenty years.”

“I still don’t like it.”

He grinned. “I’ll give you that ‘cause it’s cute, but you got until we get to your house to get over it.”

To that, I returned, “My Mom and Dad love each other and they loved me and Jeremy. My grandparents loved us until they died. My great-grandmother dotes on me. All of my life, I had love and safety. Life didn’t touch me until I decided to start living it, and the worst thing that’s ever happened to me was what Bodhi and Heather did, and that’s on them, not on me. I never had what you had. I don’t know what to do with knowing you had to deal with that. I don’t like knowing you had to deal with that. And I just learned about it so it may take longer than the next twenty minutes for me to get over wanting to reenact the boot to crotch maneuver on your Dad. Because you’re an awesome guy, Raiden Miller. Your Mom and sister love you because they have reason. You’re a gentleman. You’re a kind neighbor. You’re even a hero with the medals to prove it. And you deserve a Dad who taught you how to be that. Not a life that led you to being that despite having a massive dick for a Dad.”

I made my stupid speech and shut up.

Only then did I feel the room and fully take in the look on his face.

Both made me take a step back, because the former was pressing on me like a weight I instinctively felt I had to escape, and the latter was reeling me in on a lure so strong it was a wonder I didn’t fly across the room and into his arms.

The intensity of both scared the heck out of me.

“You need, right now, to walk down to your car, Hanna,” he told me.

That was so weird, I stammered, “I… sorry?”

“I’ll be there in a minute.”

“But—”

The air in the room got heavier right before he ordered, “Go, Hanna. You don’t, we won’t. Do you understand me?”

I didn’t, not fully.

What I did understand was that I needed to walk down to my car.

So I gave him one long, last look, memorizing the look he was giving me and the way it made me feel: terrified, but at the same time warm and happy.

Then I walked across his crazy pad and unlocked the door, moved through it and descended the steps to get to my car.

* * *

Two hours later…

I woke up when my pillow started shaking.

When I did, I saw I was in church and had my head on the navy blue fabric of Raiden’s suit-jacketed shoulder.

A Raiden who was silently laughing.

I bolted straight.

“Sweet Jesus, forgive her,” Grams, who was sitting on the other side of me, murmured to the ceiling. “Pastor Wright’s sermon is far from inspiring, you hear that, Lord, but still. My precious girl’s got better manners.”

At this point Raiden’s body started shaking so hard the pew started shaking and people started staring.

I turned to him and hissed under my breath, “Stop laughing,” to which he kept shaking but raised his brows at me.

I gave up on him and turned to Grams.

“We went to the double feature last night, Grams,” I explained on a semi-fib in a low voice, doing this out of the corner of my mouth.

“My recollection, it was a triple,” Raiden muttered. I turned to him and shouted, Shut up! But did it just with my eyes.

Raiden took this in, and of course it made him swallow down an audible grunt of hilarity.

I rolled my eyes to the ceiling and asked for forgiveness for a variety of things.

“Mm-hmm,” Grams mumbled noncommittally.

“Shh!” Mrs. McGuillicutty, sitting down from Raiden, shushed us.

Loudly.

So loudly, Pastor Wright’s eyes came to our pew and narrowed, though he didn’t miss a word of his sermon.

I looked at my hands that I was folding in my lap and felt about eight years old.

“Shush yourself, Margaret,” Grams shot back. A Grams, I’ll add, who often acted eight years old, and now was clearly going to be one of those times. “God likes laughter,” she finished.

“Grams, let it go,” I told my lap.

“Some of us are trying to listen,” Mrs. McGuillicutty snapped.

“Then listen and keep your nose outta other people’s business,” Grams returned.

I turned my head and bent into her. “Please, Grams, just let it go.”

Grams settled back on a wiggle, grumbling, “Shushing my granddaughter. Who does she think she is?”

Not one ever to leave the last word, or in all honesty to be nice most of the time, Margaret McGuillicutty didn’t let it go either.

“I’m a churchgoing woman who wants to listen to the sermon,” she retorted to Grams.

I was too exhausted and riding a high of being with Raiden to do anything about it, but I just knew when Grams chose that pew and Mrs. McGuillicutty was in it that we should have found an alternate seating arrangement.

I was right.

Grams leaned across me to say to Mrs. McGuillicutty, “No one’s stopping you but you.”

“And perhaps our choir can have all of your attention as they sing their next hymn,” Pastor Wright suggested into his microphone, but the comment was clearly directed at us since he was staring straight at us. I knew he loved Grams and me (Mrs. McGuillicutty was up for debate), but he didn’t look all that happy.

Raiden lifted an arm and wrapped it around my shoulders. He tucked me tight to his side and dropped his lips to my ear.

“Let ‘em battle it out. You’re just makin’ it worse.”

I clamped my mouth shut and my eyes on the choir.

Grams and Mrs. McGuillicutty exchanged a few more barbs before Grams sat back, muttering, “I love this hymn and no McGuillicutty is gonna make me miss it.”

Thus letting Margaret have the last word with, “Boudreaux, think they own this town.”

Though Grams did get in a, “Humph!”

We successfully made it through the final prayer and communal hymn without incident, but hostilities reengaged after Pastor Wright released us.

“Falling asleep and whispering in church like it was a Boudreaux bedroom and kitchen. Shameful,” Mrs. McGuillicutty remarked loudly to no one, and all in the vicinity looked away like they wished they could whistle.

This, of course, meant Grams said to her, but directed her remark at me. “Need you to get me a cane, child. Not to walk with it, so I can beat Margaret over the head with it.”

Raiden chuckled.

Margaret gasped.

So did I, before I hissed, “Grams, we’re in church!”

She waved her hand in front of her face, “God’s forgiven me for a lot over ninety-eight years, that’s the least of it.”

“We gonna get breakfast or we gonna have a smackdown in pew three?” Raiden asked, sounding amused.

Grams didn’t miss a beat. “Breakfast. Need my vittles to perform a successful smackdown.”

Then she turned and toddled off slowly down the pew.

I leaned around Raiden and said to Mrs. McGuillicutty, “I’m sorry, Mrs. McGuillicutty.”

“As you should be,” she fired back. “No excuse for rudeness. And falling asleep in church? Appalling.”

I gave my apology, therefore did my duty to good manners. She could be ornery. She had to answer to God for that, not me.

Therefore, I was going to let it go and get out of there.

Raiden had other ideas.

He turned his big, tall frame Margaret McGuillicutty’s way and looked down at her.

“One, Hanna apologized. The right thing to do is accept, not throw it in her face. Two, Miss Mildred can take care of herself and she’s too old to give a damn what you think. Obviously, Hanna cares or she wouldn’t have apologized when she had no need to. Now what you gotta know is, if I’m standing next to her or not and I just hear you were rude to her, I’ll take it as you bein’ rude straight to me and I think most folks in this town know you do not want to be rude to me.”

She stared up at him, lips parted while I processed what he said and the fact that any of this was happening at all.

She snapped her mouth shut to hiss at Raiden like he was twelve, not thirty-two, “Well, I don’t believe it. I’ll be having a word with your mother, Raiden Miller.”

“Have at it. She won’t give a flying mostly because she thinks you’re as foul-tempered and aggravating as everyone else in town,” Raiden fired back.

A couple people heard and tittered, proving him right.

I decided we were both done so I grabbed his hand and yanked him down the pew.

Fortunately, he followed me.

We made it to Grams, then we followed in what felt like suspended motion as she made her slow way out of the church, her snail’s pace hindered further with the need to call a greeting to everyone she knew, which was just plain everyone.

Raiden made a break for it at the doors, mumbling his excuse of, “I’ll go get the Jeep.”

Fortunately, this meant when we got to the end of the walk at the front of the church Raiden was there.

Like we had when we came, I climbed into the back and Raiden held Grams steady at the waist while she latched on with a bony hand. He mostly lifted her into her seat, but in a way where it made it seem like she put her foot to the edge of the door herself.

We were on our way when I decided a debrief was in order.

“I don’t believe that happened,” I remarked.

“Believe it, chère. Margaret has always been a sourpuss. Makes it worse, she had her sights set on your Granddaddy and never got over losin’ him to your Grandma.”

This was news.

And made the whole situation even more unbelievable.

“Seriously?” I asked. “That had to be fifty years ago, and sorry, Grams, but they’ve both passed. Holding a grudge when there’s no one left to hold it against?”

“Lost love, precious,” Grams replied, turning her head to look out the side window. “Stings like a wasp bite that never fades.”

This made me pause for reflection, especially the knowing way Grams said it, but Grams wasn’t done.

“Probably didn’t help, my boy’s beautiful granddaughter sittin’ next to the town hunk. History, in a way, repeating. Salt in the wound.”

My eyes went to the rearview mirror, caught Raiden’s and they rolled.

When they rolled back, his were back on the road but they were smiling.

We hit the Pancake House, all pancakes, all the time, (no kidding, they had nothing but pancakes, sausage and bacon on their menu); a weird restaurant that did booming business about fifteen miles out of town up the foothills. It had a fabulous view and the best pancakes I’d ever eaten. So good Grams and I never went anywhere else for Sunday breakfast, and this continued the tradition of Dad and Mom taking us all there every Sunday up until the Sunday before they moved to a different state.