That he got his final dig in.
Even in death, my dad wants me to know he’ll still be there. He’ll still be around. That I should still fear if what’s in him is in my blood. Is in my son’s blood.
I don’t want to ruin his perfect.
I refuse to take his bait.
I refuse to let him leave this world thinking that he was successful in planting that thought in my head.
Instead, I take a few seconds to look at a man who used to strike fear in me. Now all I can feel is pity.
He’s just a man. Just flesh and bones.
He is not me. I am not him. I’ll never be him.
How could I ever think otherwise?
I shake my head and lean down close to his face. “You know what? I came here thinking maybe the fact you’re knocking down death’s door might have made you want to say things, make amends, right some of your wrongs . . . fuck if I know. But it’s clear you don’t. It’s clear you’d rather die alone with your anger than with a clear conscience.”
“Vin—”
I can see the fight in his eyes. The spite, and I cut him off before he can spew it. “I look at you and feel sorry for you. Nothing more. Nothing less. You wasted your life being bitter and brutal, only feeling good about yourself when you were tearing me down. Well, guess what. It didn’t work. Not your abuse—look who I became. Not your deception—look what I now get to love. Not the groundwork you laid for me—because I’ll never be like you.”
His stare is hard. His jaw is set. Even in death the fucker won’t bend.
Well, neither will I. Over the years, I’ve bent enough for him. Bent so much I thought I was fucking broken.
Not anymore.
Never again.
“Goodbye, Dad. I’m sorry it couldn’t have been different. I’m sorry you couldn’t find it in yourself to love. Just know that when you take your last breath, I made it. I’m everything you said I could never be. I’m everything I ever wanted to be. And I’ll never be like you.”
I walk to the door without another word.
Tears well in my eyes. Not for the man he was, but for the man he could have been to me. For the man I needed him to be but never had.
I’m not angry at him. The past is the past. A phrase I’ve been saying a lot lately. But I resent him for the opportunities he robbed me of.
It’s his degradation and abuse that had me walking away from Bristol at age nineteen.
It’s his lies that possibly stole eleven years of time that we could have been together.
But it’s him who pushed us all together. And that’s the greatest fuck you to him I could ever hope to have.
CHAPTER FIFTY
Vince
Hawke’s resting his ass against the rental car when I walk out of the house. I told him I didn’t need him to come with me. I played it down and told him there was no way he wanted to come to this hellhole town. But did he listen to me?
Of course fucking not.
Instead, he sat next to me on the flight. He listened to words I didn’t speak and then held a one-sided conversation with me where he answered all the questions I’d been asking myself.
If you think that you’re like your dad, how is it so damn easy for you to love Jagger?
How many times over the past few weeks have you wanted to tell Jagger what a worthless piece of shit he is? How many times have your hands fisted and you felt like throwing a punch at him?
I’ve never whipped my eyes up so fast in my life as that moment. But I was met with a shit-eating grin and a lift of his eyebrows—my reaction to him an answer in and of itself.
Of course, I haven’t felt that way. Not even fucking close. But Hawkin, in his shock value, got the point across.
I’m not my fucking dad.
I never have been. I never will be.
And when I walk out of the house and see Hawkin standing there, I’m glad he didn’t listen to me.
“You good?” he asks from where he’s no doubt studying me from behind his sunglasses.
“I will be.”
He nods in response and then climbs into the driver’s seat. I stop for a beat and look around one last time at a neighborhood I will forget and a town I refuse to come back to.
The only lasting thing Fairfield gave me was Bristol.
Other than that, it can burn to the ground.
“I think a drink or eight is in order,” Hawke says. “Tell me where to go.”
I give him directions to a bar near our hotel and try not to read too much into how much this feels like old times. Hawke. Me. A car. A bar. Or maybe it’s the fact that he’s sitting beside me.
My best friend even when I don’t deserve him.
We drive past places I used to take Bristol. A park where we used to make out in my back seat. A movie theater where we’d skip from theater to theater on a single ticket to beat the heat. The burger joint where we’d sit and drink milkshakes way after her curfew because I didn’t want to go back home and she sensed the unspoken reasons why.
Bristol.
The need to call her all week has been there, but never more so than it has in this moment. I did it, Shug. I slayed the dragon. I’m free to be the man you think I can be.
But I hold tight to the promise I made myself.
I have one more right to wrong before I can talk to her. Before I can hold her. Before I can strike the goddamn match for the final time.
“Wanna talk about it?” Hawkin asks after we take a seat at the bar.
“Not really.”
“Did you say what needed to be said?” he asks, being the only person other than Bristol who knows the real Deegan Jennings.
“Yeah.”
“Do you feel better for it?”
It’s a good question. One I mull over as Hawkin motions the bartender over, talks him down from the shock of who is sitting at his bar, and orders our drinks.
“I said what needed to be said. I said what I would have regretted had I never had the chance to say it. Feeling better is beside the point.”
“Fair enough.” He nods and then lifts his chin to where the bartender is lining up two rows of five shots each. “The jet’s slated for takeoff in two hours.”
“And you plan for us to be shitfaced before then?”
“No. I plan for us to be right again before then.” He picks up a shot and places it in front of me before grabbing one himself. “We’re celebrating.”
“Celebrating what?”
“Five things.”
“That’s very specific,” I joke. “Care to tell me what they are?”
“Yep.” He nods and taps the first shot against mine. “For letting your dad go.” He holds a finger up to correct himself. “I should say for finally letting go of the choke hold your dad has had on you.”
I stare at the shot and nod before downing it and then cough over the burn.
“Hurts like a motherfucker,” Hawke croaks. “At least we know we’re fucking alive.”
“Amen to that,” I say as he scoots the second shot toward me. “Whoa. What’s with the breakneck pace?”
“When it comes to you, the path of least resistance is to get you drunk fast.”
I laugh. God, it feels good to have him sitting here beside me. To have him here when I need him because he just knows.
He lifts number two. “For finally pulling your head out of your ass when it comes to Bristol.” I stare at him. “Down it, Vin.”
“Who said anything—”
“You’ve loved the woman your whole life. I know it. Rocket and Gizmo know it. You even know it. Now down the shot like a good boy and admit she’s it for you so you can move on like a mature fucker and make an honest woman of her.”
“I’m working on it,” I say to which he throws up his hand and cheers.
“You’ve been working on it for eleven years. Why don’t you work a little faster? Cheers, fucker.”
The second goes down smoother, with a bout of laughter and a sharp pang in my chest.
I miss her.
Fuck, I missed her the minute I left the house. But I needed this distance to clear my head. To work and to realize how much better it would be to have her to go home to afterward. To have a piece of normal amid my crazy. To just have her.
“Number three—”