Page 41 of Leading Conviction

The little half answers Tommy gave forced Hawk to hold back a grin. He might not be quite like his dad in that respect, but Tommy reminded him a hell of a lot of his own awkward reluctance growing up. The ol’ man had worked on it though, pulling back Hawk’s layers every time he got in his own head.

If Tommy needed that kind of encouragement, well, then Hawk had learned from the best, so he knew what to do. Hell, if they threw the ball the whole time, he could do it all day.

After a few more throws back and forth, Tommy finally spoke again, “You like my mom, don’t you? I’ve seen the way you look at her. You don’t smile much but you do around her.”

Out of the mouth of babes… whelp, no use in denying it.

Hawk chuckled. “You caught that, did you?”

“Yeah, it’s pretty obvious.” Tommy nodded before sighing dramatically. “Hate to break it to ya, but you can’t like her.”

“Oh, yeah?” Hawk tried not to laugh at the protective little man. “Why’s that?”

Tommy shrugged. “Cause she’s in love with someone else.”

“Wh-what?”

Tommy’s lazy throw came barreling toward Hawk’s head as he stared in stunned silence. At the very last second, Hawk absentmindedly threw his glove up into the sky, barely catching the baseball.

“Yup. Sorry.” Tommy shrugged again, evidently his go-to gesture. He readied himself to catch, like Hawk wasn’t now gripping the ball for dear life, on the verge of a heart attack.

He shouldn’t have been surprised. Hannah was perfect. It was naive of him to assume she was single, but it’d never crossed his mind that she was with someone else.

Then again, it never crossed my mind that my best friend would sleep with her, either.

Hawk cleared his throat, trying to regain some composure. “Do you… um. Do you like him?”

Tommy lifted his shoulders once again. “I dunno. Never met him.”

“What? You’ve never met him?” Hawk couldn’t hide his frown.

Tommy didn’t seem to notice as he answered, “Nope. All I know is that she loved him before she had me. I used to think it was my dad, but she only ever called him Thomas or Eagle. Mom calls me little bird, but that’s not near as cool a nickname as all you guys.”

“Tommyhawk’s pretty cool, though,” Hawk countered.

“Yeah, I guess so.” The boy tried to hide a smile as he shrugged again. “Anyway, I found the painting she did for him, too. That’s when I knew shelovedhim, loved him.”

Hope fluttered in Hawk’s breaking heart. “A painting?”

“Yup. Here, I’ll show ya.”

Tommy tugged off his glove and put it under his armpit before running toward the duffel bag he’d brought to the roof. He knelt in front of the bag and shuffled through it. After a few seconds, Hawk began to seriously wonder if he was sweating because of the heat and his long sleeves or because he was having to wait so long to see evidence that the love of his life loved someone—

“Here it is! See, look.” Tommy gingerly pulled out a carefully folded canvas and handed it to him.

Hawk knelt beside him and accepted the canvas with trembling fingers. His heart thudded harder and harder in his chest as he unfolded it and recognition sank in. By the time he’d laid and flattened the canvas out on the asphalt roof, his chest had tightened to the point of pain.

Gorgeous and rich reds, yellows, blues, purples, and greens rolled together to make layers of the most beautiful Appalachian sunrise he’d ever seen. And the most familiar. In nearly a decade, not a day had gone by that he didn’t think about it. He’d made sure of that.

The tenseness in his muscles eased the more he recommitted the stunning landscape to memory. It’d been forever since he’d seen the painting in person. When he found the single, pretty white dove soaring through the sky, he couldn’t stop himself from caressing it with the lightest of touches.

“See here?” Tommy asked as he pointed lightly to the dedication Hawk already knew was at the bottom right of the canvas. “That’s how I knew she loved him.”

“Para mi cielo,” Hawk read out loud, trying to hold back the emotion rioting through him.

“It means—”

“For my sky,” Hawk finished for him.