Shake It Up (Man of the Month 8)

His laugh was more of a scoff. "My dad would shove me out of the house in the mornings, tell my mother I needed to go out into the world and be a man, and that I could come back for dinner."

Since she wasn't sure what to say, she didn't say anything at all.

"He disappeared right before I turned nine. We think it was a gang killing--that was the kind of neighborhood I lived in--but I've never known for sure."

"So you were raised with a single mom?"

"Only for about a year. And during that year, the gang life was tugging at me. I mean, really tugging. They knew I'd lost my dad and were ramping up, trying to suck me in."

"What did you do?" She tried to picture him, the honorable man she knew him to be as a child trying to find his way.

"I dodged. I kept my nose clean. I spent more time fighting to keep out of that life than I did trying to figure out my schoolwork. And all the time I kept wishing that I'd find an escape. A way out. Away from the death and the drugs and the bullshit."

"It never happened?" She heard the pain in his voice and assumed that was where the story was going.

"Oh, I got free." His words were sharp with regret. "Be careful what you wish for, right?"

She pressed her lips together, afraid of what was coming.

"A drive-by. One minute my mother was laughing in our front yard. The next she was dead. I was nine. The next thing I knew, I was in foster care."

She reached out and took his hand, hoping that somehow she could draw off some of the pain she heard in his voice.

"I got what I wished for, but talk about a price."

"I'm so sorry."

"She was a good woman. My rock when I was trying to stay clean. She didn't deserve to die. She wasn't even thirty."

Taylor blinked, and an errant tear trickled down the side of her nose. "Your childhood doesn't sound easy." Hers had been hard, too. She understood the hell of growing up like that, scared and feeling alone. "What happened?"

A smile touched his lips. "It got better. Hell, it's still getting better."

"You landed in a good family?"

"The best. I consider them my parents, and vice-versa, a

lthough they never formally adopted me. I--well, I felt it would be an insult to my mom."

"I get that."

"But they gave me a home. An education. A safe neighborhood where the kids think the kind of childhood I had only happens on television, not a few miles away on the other side of the highway. At any rate, things have been getting better. A few bumps along the way, but for the most part, life is looking up." He smiled at her, the kind of smile that warmed her from the inside. "Of course, I've had help. My foster parents. My commanding officer. My partner."

"You have a partner?"

He nodded. "Well, I did. He just retired and moved to New Mexico. That's part of why I took vacation now. Figured I'd take a break before they assign me a new one."

"Thanks for telling me all of that."

"You're welcome." He leaned toward her, then spoke in a conspiratorial whisper. "But you're missing the subtext."

"Am I?"

"You're supposed to share, too."

"I..."

"I saw the look on your face. Buddy Hall. Beauregard Harkness. You think it's the same guy."