Fireside Susan Wiggs (best free ebook reader for android .txt) 📖

filled his mug. Two sips later, he felt almost human. “Look, we talked about this. It can’t be avoided. You have to go to school, same as any other kid.”

“I’m not the same as any other kid,” AJ stated, his voice quiet but still obstinate. “Who cares if I go to school or not?”

“I care.” Bo’s words came out sounding testy. Well, hell. He was testy. Working on autopilot, he fixed AJ a glass of juice, handing it to him. “And you’re going. You don’t have to like it—you probably won’t. But it won’t be the end of the world, either.”

“Not for you, it won’t be. And you don’t care if I go to school. You only care if I stay out of your hair so you can go away to Virginia.”

“That’s bullsh—baloney, AJ, and you know it.” Bo held up two different boxes of cereal. AJ picked the one in his left hand, and Bo filled two bowls. He peeled a banana and started slicing it, then noticed AJ had fallen silent. “What?” he asked.

“Nothing.” AJ took a seat and waited.

Bo set down the cereal bowls, then sat on a counter stool next to AJ. “Eat something. You need breakfast.”

“I’m not hungry. I feel sick.”

He probably did. He sure looked a little green around the gills.

“I get butterflies real bad when I’m up against something new,” Bo said, digging in. “I’ve even thrown up, a time or two. That’s what happened before I had my first game in a farm-league team when I was just out of high school. I got cut right away that season, and I always blamed it on nerves. Looking back, I think I was distracted, too.”

AJ took a bite of his cereal. “Distracted by what?”

“Honestly, by your mother. By that time, she’d moved from Texas City down to Laredo with her folks, and I couldn’t stop thinking about you, even though there wasn’t technically a ‘you’ yet, since you hadn’t been born.”

The boy took another bite. “But you still managed to blame me for messing up your career.”

“C’mon, AJ.” Bo reminded himself not to get defensive. The kid was clearly looking for buttons to push. At least he was eating his breakfast. “You want the honest truth? I was a dumb-ass kid pretty much on my own, and I was scared I’d mess you up. But that didn’t stop me from thinking about you all the time.”

The boy shoveled the cereal steadily now. “Don’t you have a family?”

“My mother—her name was Trudy—passed away five years ago. And my big brother, Stoney. He works offshore, on an oil rig. I bet he’d like to meet you one day.” He refilled AJ’s juice glass. “I wish I didn’t have to go,” Bo reiterated.

“Yeah, right,” AJ said. “I’m sure you’re just dying to stay here in the snow and babysit me.”

He hated that the boy’s accusation did have a ring of truth to it. And that look would haunt Bo—an angry expression, underscored by the deep hurt of betrayal. It was an expression Bo hadn’t seen in a very long time, but he remembered it well. He used to see that same face every time he looked in the mirror. And it bugged the heck out of him, because he knew just what AJ was feeling.

“I didn’t say that, either. I’m supposed to go to Virginia for this special program. It’s business, AJ.” It’s my life. “While I’m away, you’ve got Dino and everybody else here to keep you company. I’ll be back before you know it.” Even as he spoke, Bo could imagine how that sounded. AJ’s mother had gone to work one day, too. And she’d never come back.

On one level, they both knew this was different. The INS or Homeland Security was not going to catch Bo in their dragnet. But on a deeper level, this was one more person abandoning AJ. In his short lifetime, the boy had lost his grandfather, and his grandmother had moved south of the border. He’d lost a stepfather and, most devastating of all, his mother. Now Bo was planning to take off. He didn’t fool himself that he meant all that much to AJ, but this was probably the last straw.

“Everybody goes to school,” he said. “No exceptions. You’ll get through the day. Hell, you might even like it. Be who you are, because you’re a hell of a kid. Make some friends—”

“I’m not going.”

To Bo, AJ’s defiance felt like being confronted by a weasel or a wolverine—startling and threatening. You didn’t know how to handle it. He felt like a fool, being intimidated by a kid, but he couldn’t quite get past the discomfort. How the hell did people do this?

“I don’t want to fight with you about this,” he said, keeping his voice even. Reasonable. “You need to get your stuff together. You don’t want to miss the bus on your first day. Unless you changed your mind and want me to give you a ride.” Bo had offered him a lift earlier, but AJ had declined, horrified by the suggestion.

“I didn’t change my mind. I’m not riding with you,” AJ muttered. Then, to Bo’s relief, he shrugged sullenly into his parka, stuffed his feet into the warm snowmobile boots Bo had bought for him and tugged on his gloves.

Encouraged by the air of cooperation, Bo asked, “Got everything you need?”

“Yeah, sure,” AJ said. “No—wait.” He ran back to their room, feet thudding on the stairs, and came back down, zipping his photo of Yolanda into a pocket of his backpack.

The gesture made Bo wish he could give the kid a hug, tell him everything was going to be all right. But the kid didn’t want hugs from Bo, and nothing was right, so Bo kept his mouth shut. Starting at a new school was hard for any kid. Bo of all people should know. He’d lost count of the times in his own boyhood when he and Stoney had been in charge of getting