I’m uncertain how long we sit like this, simply drinking each other in with the warmth of the fire in front of us and the quiet presence of each other.

“I was a good kid growing up,” Gunner says and breaks the comfortable silence. “Then I wasn’t.” His chuckle is self-deprecating. “My dad left for deployment when I was ten. I remember giving him hugs outside the depot, him making me promise to take care of my mom while he was gone, and then . . . then the car pulling up to our driveway. The knock on the door. My mom’s shrieks as she fell to the floor.”

“Gunner.” His name is a mixture of apology and understanding. I squeeze him tighter but don’t say anything else.

“I was ten without a dad and around kids who picked on me. I turned to baseball and who knew? I was really good at it. At that age, it was easier to be at the field than at home watching my mom grieve. That and it was the place where kids started to respect me instead of tease me.”

“You found your coping mechanism. Your thing,” I say gently, earning a look from him as if he’s not used to someone understanding that concept.

“Yes. Little did I know how important that would be to me later in life.”

I want to ask what he means but just nod and snuggle back into him, ready to hear his story.

“My mom remarried twice. None of them were nice to her, and the promise I made to my father to take care of her always weighed heavy on me. No matter how many times I tried to get her to see it as abuse, she refused to. And then Sal came along,” he says with a foreboding sigh that has me closing my eyes and picturing a younger version of him trying unsuccessfully to be the man of the house. “He was stepdad number two, lover of alcohol, keen on control, and prone to use his fists to make sure his stepson knew his place in the pecking order.”

Oh God. It’s one thing to lose your dad, but to be hit by a man who should care for you? Why didn’t his mom do more? How could she?

“I’m afraid to even hear more.”

He shrugs with an indifference only someone who has been through something like this can. “Baseball was my escape. I spent more and more time on the mound—”

“You were a pitcher?” I ask, feeling like a hypocrite.