“It’s tough moving every few years for half your life.” His finger brushed the shell of my ear and I felt a zing go up my spine. “I was ready to settle down. My retirement isn’t bad, and I like working with my hands. I always did. It isn’t fancy, but I like doing physical labor. It helps me sleep at night and pays the bills. I couldn’t handle working in an office. It would drive me nuts. I’m done with uniforms and small spaces.”

He likes working with his hands. I wasn’t going to make that statement into something more. Nope. No way. I also wasn’t going to imagine him in that cute white hat and collared uniform I’d seen men in the navy wear. So I changed the subject. “And you came to Austin because you have family here?”

“Yeah.”

“Miss Pearl?”

He hummed his yes. “We’ve always been close, and it worked out that the house I’m in now went on sale about six years ago, and I got it for a dime.”

“I had no idea you were related.”

“Forty-one years,” he murmured, sounding amused and sleepy. “I never thanked you for cutting her hair and helping her with her water heater a while back.”

“You don’t have to thank me. It wasn’t a big deal.” I yawned. “Do you see her often?”

“I’m over there all the time. We have dinner together almost every night.”

Shit.

“We watch some TV, I do things for her around the house, play some poker, and I go home at nine most every night we don’t have baseball,” he explained. “Once a month, I meet up with this guy I work with sometimes at Mayhem, and I go visit my family back home a couple of times a year for the weekend, but that’s my exciting life. I like it.”

He did things for his grandma around the house, played poker, and watched TV with her. Fuck. My. Life. In. Half. I had to squeeze my eyes closed because I didn’t want to watch myself lose my shit on the floor of my dining room.

Didn’t he know he wasn’t supposed to be this damn… perfect?

I wanted to cry at how unfair the world was. But I already knew that and I didn’t have any business being surprised by it.

“Your brother doesn’t go over there with you?” I asked him, fully aware he’d already mentioned to me in the past that his nana had had enough of his shit, and how he was the only one left who Jackson still had.

“No. About ten years ago, he got in trouble with some motorcycle club in San Antonio and he…” Dallas blew out a breath like he didn’t want to tell me, but he did anyway. “He stole some of Nana’s jewelry. She’s never forgiven him since.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah. Fuck.”

No one had a perfect family, but that was something else. All right. I needed to change the topic. “Where does your mom live?” I paused. “I’m so nosey, I’m sorry. I’m falling asleep and just trying to get you to keep talking to me so I don’t keel over.”

His laugh was soft behind me, more warm air over my neck. “You’re keeping us both awake. I don’t have secrets. My mom moved to Mexico a couple of years ago. She met this man old enough to be my Pawpaw. They got married and moved there. I see her once every couple of years. More now than when I was in the service.”

Something about that made me snicker. “As long as she’s happy….”

“She’s happy. Believe me. She busted her ass for us. I’m glad she’s found somebody. Old as fuck, or not.”

“He’s really that old?”

“Yeah. His name’s Larry. He has a grandson Jackson’s age. My ma asks for grandkids from time to time, and I have to remind her she already has a few,” he said, amused.

“You don’t want to have kids?” I asked before I could stop, immediately wanting to slap myself in the face.

His fingers brushed the shell of my ear again, and I had to fight the urge to scratch my scalp. “I want a few. I like ‘em. Can’t have them by myself though.”

“Your wife didn’t want any?” I blurted out.

It was that question that had him clearing his throat. Except for the time in the restroom, neither one of us had ever brought up his marriage, but fuck it. He was combing things out of my hair. We were pretty much BFFs by this point. “She already had one when we met.”

I waited. I already knew this information courtesy of Trip.

“Her ex had been in the navy, too. I didn’t know that when we started seeing each other. She didn’t like to talk about him much, but I figured they’d gotten off on bad terms. It turned out he was on the same base as I was.” He sighed, moving more of my hair.

Something close to anger flared up in my belly, and I fought the urge to glance at him over my shoulder, but I asked anyway, in practically a whisper, “She cheated on you?”

There was a hesitation. A hum. “No. Not then. We’d met through a mutual navy friend. She worked at the PX on base, and I liked her—”

I would die before I ever admitted to getting jealous that he’d liked the woman he eventually married. But I did.

Oblivious, he kept going. “She was nice. We… fooled around for a while. I was being deployed. About a month before I was set to leave, she told me had found a lump in her breast and that she was worried. She didn’t have insurance, her aunt had had breast cancer…. She was scared.”

Why did my stomach start hurting all of a sudden when it wasn’t jealousy-related?