Page 172 of Sticks and Stones
The last thing he wanted was a freaking heart attack.
“I love you, Alice, but if you pace behind my bar one more time, I’m sending you home—but only after tying you up so you can’t try to get to Corbin.”
She stared at him.
“What did I do?” she asked.
He told her.
“You’re worrying and making me twitchy. Corbin is fine. If they broke him out of the hospital and to their condo, he’s not in as bad a shape as you’re envisioning. He’s awake and alive. We have to pick the victories on this one.”
She stood her ground.
“John, he was assaulted!”
He moved closer, and kept his voice low.
“And the last thing he’s going to want is a pity party. Do you know our son? The reason he’s refusing to see us is because you’re going to make a big deal out of it.”
She gasped.
“It is a big deal!”
And that was what he meant.
It was a big deal, but it wasn’tTHEIRbig deal. Corbin was a grown ass man, and he had a right to his privacy. Alice tended to hop, skip, and jump over that line drawn in the sand.
If they wanted to see him ever again, she needed to make this easier on him.
Not.
Harder.
“You have to calm down, and let him have this. He’s twenty-five years old, not ten. He’s in a relationship and serious about him. He’s a cop, and trying to get out from under your shadow. Choking him with pity is going to make him leave our family and resent us. He’ll cut himself off, even more, and we’ll never see him.”
She closed her mouth.
“This is his boundary, and Ethan was right. If we push ourselves over this, he’s going to stop seeing us. Then what? Take all the notes and bullshit you snuck into that food back out, and listen to the Fed. He knows our son, and he’s not holding him hostage. He’s protecting him from more pain—from us.”
She stared at him but didn’t move.
Well, he could do that too.
“I mean it. I will walk out of here with his food, dump it in the garbage, and go buy him fast food before I’ll let you sneak in notes asking if he needed help.”
When she rolled her eyes, he laughed.
Yeah, he’d nailed that.
“Alice, Baby, I love you, and you’re the toughest woman I know. He gets that from you. Now, let him show us how tough our son is. We did our job. We raised him, made sure we taught him what he needed, and gave him the tools to survive this.”
“Aren’t you worried?” she asked.
“Absolutely, but I’m more worried about losing our son than I am about him being hurt. I have to choose my battles, and he will overcome this. I have faith in his tenacity, and when he’s better, we’ll be here for him. He wants it kept quiet, so we’re going to listen for a change. Do what he wants so we don’t have to apologize forever. One day, he might get married and have a family. I’d like to see it. If he marries Will, and they adopt kids, I want to be a grandpa. So knock it off.”
She considered it.
He wasn’t wrong.
