Ask Me If I Care (SWAT Generation 2.0 4)

“Ares,” I corrected him. “I think you mispronounced my name.”

Hayes squeezed my hand and tugged me sideways to miss a mother on her phone that wasn’t paying attention to where she was walking, or where her toddler was walking.

The toddler went under Hayes and my conjoined hands, and I just barely missed hitting the mother with my shoulder.

Instead of leading us to the bleachers, though, Hayes took me to the hill that was clear across the stadium. Alec and Kincaid went to the seats in the stands, and I couldn’t say I was upset by this. Especially not when he pulled me down between his thighs and wrapped his arms around me, my back to his front.

We watched the game like this until halftime when I went to gather drinks and popcorn.

When I got back it was in time for the man holding the gun that shot the shirts out into the crowd to walk up aiming his pipe toward us.

The gun went off, and Hayes jerked like he was shot for real, and not just shot at by a t-shirt.

I pulled the t-shirt into my hands and turned to Hayes with a smile on my face. That smile quickly dropped off my face when I saw him looking glassy-eyed down at his hands.

“Hayes?” I asked, patting his leg. “What is it?”

He blinked a few times, his eyes coming back into focus, and said, “I…nothing.”

I swallowed, worried now that something had happened that I had no clue why it was important.

But I knew it was.

Whatever had happened, wherever he’d gone? It’d been somewhere I didn’t want him to be.

Which was why I started talking about stupid stuff—babies.

Not that babies were stupid. The idea of having one right now was stupid.

“I knew from when I was a young girl that I wanted to have babies,” I said. “Eventually, I’d like to quit my job and be a stay-at-home mother.”

His body loosened infinitesimally behind me, letting me know that my talking was working.

“I want ten kids.”

He drew in a deep breath, then released it, his hot breath blowing against the back of my neck.

“Five boys and five girls,” I continued.

He bent down and rested his forehead against my shoulder. “Why ten kids?”

I snickered. “I don’t know. I guess I just always had a nice, even number. And ten seemed like the perfect amount.”

He pressed a kiss to my shoulder.

“I was lost just a second ago,” he murmured. “Thank you.”

I smiled as I watched the second half kick-off.

“They should really be careful about where they were aiming that sucker. What if it’d hit me in the face? My nose bleeds easily,” I teased.

He chuckled and moved until his chin could rest on my head.

“Did you ever get that checked out? It’s not normal for a nose to bleed like that,” he murmured.

“I had some arteries in my nose cauterized when I was younger because it was so bad. But even the slightest bump now still causes massive bleeds,” I said. “Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and I look like a murder victim.”

He hummed something that sounded like ‘son of a bitch’ but I didn’t ask him for clarification.

I enjoyed where I was sitting until the very end of the game.

When I went to sit up, fireworks started to go off above my head, and I gasped.

“Oh, look!” I pointed.

But the body behind my back was gone, and when I looked back, it was to find Hayes on the ground with his hands covering his head.

Literally, the big man was burying his face in the grass as his shoulders tensed.

Everyone around us, instead of watching the fireworks, were looking at the huge man now cringing and trying to disappear into the grass.

People were starting to point and whisper, gathering Hayes more and more attention.

And with each fucking firework that went off, his shoulders would tense more and more and more.

I didn’t really know what I was doing, but I saw that he was scared, and not in the right frame of mind.

So I dropped down to lay on the grass with him, my eyes on the side of his face as he squeezed his eyes tightly shut.

“Hayes,” I said softly, not touching him because I wasn’t sure whether he would welcome touch just yet. “Hayes, look at me.”

His shoulders went a little less stiff, but he didn’t open his eyes.

That stiffness once again ratcheted up when another firework went off.

In desperation, I reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone, keying up the latest audiobook I had downloaded on my phone.

It was one of my favorites. One I listened to on repeat when I didn’t have enough money to buy more credits, or when I was in a reading funk and just wanted something that I knew would be good.