It might mean moving twice in a year, which would suck.
It might mean settling in, but even if it didn’t, it gave them more time to find what was right instead of them moving into another place that was going to be wrong.
“Three bedrooms, two full baths, one in the master, on the top floor,” he shared. “Living room, dining room, half bath, big kitchen on the ground level. Refinished basement where Shaw will be with his own bathroom and a massive family room.”
“Sounds like my place,” she noted.
“Your basement refinished?” he asked.
She nodded.
“You need to give me a tour,” he told her.
She tipped her head to the side. “You want that now?”
He shook his head, pushing up from his chair. “I want a beer now.”
“Hix, I can get it.”
He stopped and looked down at her.
“You got a problem with me in your house, baby?” he asked softly, with genuine interest.
“Of course not, but I like . . .” her teeth came out to score her lip before she finished, “looking after you.”
And fuck, but he liked that.
“How about I get my beer tonight, and after tonight, we’ll go from there.”
She shot him a grin. “Works for me.”
He gave himself a moment to fully take in her grin before he asked, “You need more of that?” and he tipped his head to her mug.
She shook her own.
“Right. Be back,” he murmured, went in, got himself a beer and came out, doing it giving himself his first chance to really take in her space.
It wasn’t only the kitchen that was nice. The rest of it was too. All redone. Big, old-fashioned, kickass table in the dining room with one side having a bench instead of chairs. Huge couch in the living room with lots of woodwork on it, scrolled arms and massive pillows for the back in a print of some fancy, subtle cream and beige swirls.
The couch was ornate but it still looked comfortable.
A lot of her stuff was his style. He liked it. Even if it wasn’t, it worked and he liked that too. It was pretty phenomenal.
It was also confusing.
He knew women paid a lot of money to have their hair done. He knew how much it cost for Hope and the girls for theirs. They were in rural Nebraska, it might cost more in big cities, but even as it was, it wasn’t anywhere near what Hix paid for him and Shaw to go to the barber.
But it wouldn’t set Greta to rolling in it.
He went back out and saw her waving at something, so he looked that way as he moved to her and tipped up his chin at a woman who was walking her dog in front of Greta’s house.
The woman threw him an enormous beam through the dark as he sat his ass back down with his beer.
He stretched out his legs out and crossed his ankles.
He did this as he tried to remember how to do the getting-to-know-you portion of being with a woman you’re interested in.
It seemed strange, all that had gone down between them, like she’d been a part of his life a lot longer than she had.
But she hadn’t and he barely knew anything about her.
He started it with, “How’s your nose?”
“Better today, thanks, Hixon,” she answered.
“Your brother?” he asked.
“Good, thanks, baby,” she said softly, this how she talked whenever she spoke about her brother, when she wasn’t laying shit out for him after he’d been a dick, that was.
Hix sucked back some beer and then asked, “You figure out what you’re gonna tell him?”
“I think I’m gonna say I had a fall.”
Hix was surprised she was going to lie so he looked from the dark night to her. “Yeah?”
She let out a big breath she aimed at the night and said, “Yeah. He . . .” she turned to him, “he can be unpredictable. Most of the time, he would be able to process what happened, understand it, understand the guy was caught and he was going to be punished and he’d be upset for me, but he’d see that I’m okay and he’d deal. Other times . . .”
She didn’t finish.
“Other times what, sweetheart?” he prompted gently.
“Other times anything can happen. He could get so upset and frustrated at not being able to do anything, he could get violent. He could regress to the point he’s like a little kid and stick in that zone for a while, which is harder to cope with for the staff because dealing with a young man with a brain injury is one thing. Dealing with a young boy who has tantrums or can turn sullen or uncommunicative is another.” She shrugged. “So I think I have to lie. For him. There’s nothing he can do anyway, it’s over. To keep him safe, I’ll give him an alternate version of events that doesn’t harm anything. No one would tell him. He won’t find out.”
After she gave him all of that, he whispered, “I don’t know how you do it.”
She genuinely looked confused when she asked, “Do what?”
He lifted his beer in a circle to indicate everything. “All of it. Work. Look after him. Handle what happened. Keep on keepin’ on.”
“I have no choice.”
He transferred the bottle to his other hand so he could reach out and take hers.
“If one of the kids—” he began.
“Don’t,” she said quickly. “Don’t think about it. It happened to us. But it doesn’t happen a lot so don’t think about it. Not with one of your kids. Not with anybody.”
“What I’m tryin’ to do is get in your headspace so I can be in a place of understanding with you,” he explained.
When he quit talking, she looked at him like she’d never seen him before.
So he gave her fingers a squeeze. “Greta?”
“I’m, like, really, really glad I unblocked you, Hixon,” she declared.
And after she gave him that, Hix leaned into her and pulled her hand to his mouth to touch it to his lips so he wouldn’t do something else, like pick her up and carry her into her house and touch his lips to other things.
He relaxed in his chair, put their hands back between them and remarked, “I still don’t know how you do it. This is a nice house, sweetheart. And I’m in the position to know how nice it is, bein’ in the market for my own. You work. You look after your brother. You dress great. You made this a great space. It’s like you can make miracles.”
He could have gone on but he didn’t because she’d returned her gaze to the street and lifted her mug of tea up to her mouth, both in what he read as an attempt to hide her face.
“Did I say something wrong?” he asked, twisting their hands so their fingers were facing up and he could run the tips of his along the insides of hers.
Her head turned again so her eyes could light on their hands before they lifted to him.
“Keith gave us this.”
His fingers quit moving.
“Keith?”
“My ex-husband. Keith. He’s . . . um, very wealthy. I didn’t, uh . . . want it, but he impressed on me that I needed to take it so the divorce settlement was exceptionally comfortable. For me. And for Andy.”
Hix just stared at her.
“He was . . . we were . . . we were dating when Andy got hurt. They were close even before. He, well, he always took care of Andy,” she shared. “He still does, kind of. And me. Well, just in the sense the settlement bought my house.”
Shit.
“And my car.”
Christ.
“And my furniture.”