Page 36 of Grin and Bear It

He scratched his fingers across his chin, his stubble making a raspy sound.

“At some point it just got too hard.” He met my eyes finally, as if daring me to look away. “I’d open my eyes only to close them again—”

Because when you’re asleep, it doesn’t hurt, I finished for him inside my head. I knew that feeling well.

“And then I’d wake up to find half the fucking day had gone, so there was no point in getting up then. People would come to my door, the boys would, and I’d…” He shook his head, and moved back to the door to set the hinges against it before using new screws to attach them. “And I’d sleep through that, too. I was there when they were hurting the first time. I turned up. I held the little buggers as they cried like babies, but then…”

He stepped back and consulted his work, but I was pretty sure that wasn’t what he was seeing.

“Then I was the one that hurt them, by checking out.”

He moved fast now, hoisting the door up with more emphasis than was needed, chocking it up before attaching the it to the new hinges. Nash pulled the door back and forth and the hinges didn’t make a sound. Then he shut it completely, leaving me just staring at the back of it.

Until I reached out and opened it again.

No sticking, no forcing it open, it moved smoothly and Nash noted that with a small nod, as if there was some satisfaction to be gained from that.

“I fucked up, Ellie.” His fingers played with one of the old screws, rubbing his thumb across the thread. “I fucked up and I hurt those boys and—”

I reached out and took it from him, sucking a breath in. Because when we touched I felt it again. The wash of pure warmth, flooding into me like liquid energy, easing the pain in my body, letting me relax muscles I didn’t know I was holding tight. But I didn’t focus on that, just him.

“So, do you plan to keep checking out?” I asked.

“No.” He stepped closer, seemed to lean towards me then straightened up again. “No, and that’s why I’m here. I want to do right by them. I want to fucking step up, like I always intended. I want to honour what my brother and my sister and brothers-in-law intended, and get those kids through school, have them grow into successful adults.”

“You will.” I pulled away then. “And thanks for fixing my door. It’s been pissing us off for ages.”

“Don’t you get it?” He moved in, taking the space between us, but stopping short of touching me. “I could work all day on a place like this without a worry in the world. It's just paint and glue and nails and screws. Easy as fucking breathing, but you…” His breath was coming in noisy pants. “Maddox went and did that science poster last night. Knox was still fucking pissed, but you… We sat with Mads and helped him as best we could. We told him how fucking proud we were of him.”

“Keep doing that,” I said. “Over and over, keep telling him that.”

“And he shoved his work to one side and said it was all fucking trash.”

I smiled then, just a little, feeling something lighten inside me. I was tired still, but this, this was familiar territory. There was nothing stronger and nothing more fragile than a teenage boy. They were being told every day by society and their community to step up, to be a man and, unfortunately for them, there wasn’t a whole lot of leeway for failure. I saw it with my boys every day in class, when they tore out pages of their book because they made one mistake, when they refused to even try a task, because if they did, then they’d know. That they were average or below average or even good, but not excellent. Much better to not try at all and avoid having your worth determined by one task.

“They’ll do that, a lot,” I told him. “You want to step up? It’ll mean dealing with that over and over. If you win, you ‘da man’, but if you lose…? I can’t claim to understand what it takes to be a guy but, yeah, boys are really sensitive about those things. In his head there’s a million self-critical thoughts going on and we were the ones that made him deal with that.”

“See, that.” He was intense now, his eyes boring into mine. “I want that for my boys. If I take him to some random tutor, then how can I guarantee they’ll know how to cope with all of that? How are they going to get the boys to trust them? I’ll do anything, Ellie. I’ll fix every damn inch of this house, if that’s what it takes, but I need someone who gets them to be the one who helps them.”

“Say yes.” I turned to find Coll standing in the hallway, three plates full of food in her hands. She smirked then. “You know you can never say no to kids, so stop the fucking foreplay and say yes.” Her focus shifted to Nash. “And if this is a straight trade of tutoring for jobs around the house, I’ve got a list for you. Say, just out of interest, you shouldn’t get an electric shock every time you turn on the lights, should you?”

“Jesus fucking Christ…” he growled, then stared at me. “Can you at least let me fix the dangerous shit? My dads would kick my arse if I left a couple of women in a death trap of a house.”

This wasn’t a smart idea. I was getting in too deep, letting the Walker family get under my skin, but I was beginning to realise that it was already too late to backpedal.

“You have to be careful about giving your heart away too much,”one of my mentor teachers had told me.“They’ll move on, take it with them. And you? You’ll never get it back.”

Wise words, I knew that, but somehow I never could follow them.

“OK,” I said with a slow nod. “Yes.”

Chapter19

Lin

“And where the fuck are you going?” Tyson asked, as I looked into the bathroom mirror.

I had a nice clean button down shirt on and had tucked it into my pants. I gave the front crease a flick and then ran a brush through my long hair. Freshly cleaned it was looking as smooth as silk, so I twisted the length up into a man bun and then worked some wax into my beard.

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