“The doctor wore a white coat when he’d . . .” Diesel filled his lungs and held the breath for a few seconds, hoping to quiet his racing heart. He wished he could knit and sign at the same time. His hands were itching for his knitting needles. “When he raped me.”

Michael flinched. “Oh.”

“Oh,” Dani echoed from her hiding place. “I get it now.”

He’d figured she would. He sighed loudly. “So after that, Father Dyson never wore a lab coat when he was teaching class. He asked the sister school for their girls to make us smocks for when we did labs. The girls made it a class project. Dyson made it a party and we all gathered together to help. The girls made similar smocks for their own chemistry class, so no one knew that he’d done it for me.”

“Wow,” Michael voiced softly. “That was nice.”

“It was. And I got an A in chemistry.”

“Did you go to college?”

Diesel nodded. “I went to college after the army, yes.”

“Why did you join the army?”

“Because I’d waited too long to get serious about school and my grades weren’t awful, but not good enough for scholarships. I joined the army to get money to go to college. Ended up meeting Marcus O’Bannion on my very first day in boot camp.”

“And you became friends.”

“We did. And then I met Stone, and when Marcus came home after his tours, I came to work for him at the Ledger. My grandfather had died by then, and my mother was an only child, so I didn’t have a family. The O’Bannions sucked me into theirs. And I love them.”

Michael smiled. “I’m glad.” He looked away, his cheeks pinking up at his show of emotion. Or maybe at Diesel’s. It didn’t matter. Diesel was going to make sure this boy had a family, no matter what happened between himself and Dani. He was going to make sure this boy knew that somebody loved him. “What did you go to college for?” Michael asked, changing the subject.

“Majored in computer science and physics. Minored in religious studies, because Father Dyson had. And I worked construction to keep my body strong, because I never wanted to be weak again.”

Michael looked thoughtful. “Can you teach me? To have muscles?”

“We can work out. You might not be as tall as me, or as big, but we can make your body its strongest, whatever that is. Don’t measure yourself against other people, Michael. Just be the best you that you can be. Be kind and take care of the people around you. That’s what being a real man is.”

Michael gave a quick nod, but the flicker in his eyes said that he’d understood the words. “What happened to Father Dyson?”