turned again.
“Please stop kicking my seat.”
The mother sighed loudly.
“Can you just watch the movie?”
“I’m trying.”
“He’s nine. What do you expect?”
“I expect you to ask him to stop.”
“I already did.”
“Three times,” an older man behind them said.
Everyone looked back.
The man adjusted his glasses.
“He’s been bothering our row too.”
Ethan’s father finally looked up.
“Stay out of it.”
“It became my business when soda landed on my wife’s purse.”
The father rolled his eyes.
Then Ethan kicked my chair again.
Hard.
Normally, Owen would have said nothing.
That was who he had trained himself to be.
The man who tolerated.
The man who absorbed discomfort.
The man terrified that speaking firmly would somehow turn him into Frank.
I didn’t expect him to intervene.
I didn’t even want him to if it was going to cost him emotionally.
So I faced the
