When You Were Mine (Stone Lake 2)

Gavin

“Are you drunk?” Dern asks.

My back is to him, and I’m facing the bar and the pretty little bartender who is nice enough to just leave me the bottle with my shot glass. He’s not who I want to see right now, but I don’t really want to see anyone I know. He’s just at the top of the list. It’s not even a large list. Mostly because I don’t have anyone in my life who would give a fuck if I disappeared…

Not even my son.

“Not yet,” I tell him, sparing one last glance at my bottle which sadly isn’t quite half gone yet. “But I’m getting there.”

“I’ve never seen you drunk. Hell, I’ve rarely seen you drink at all.”

“I figure one drunk is all our team can take,” I tell him, landing my barb nice and strong, I think. Dern has been nothing but a drunk for years. I’ve kept him alive on the force for a lot of years, even getting him transferred out to Montana with me so I could watch over him. My goal is to make sure his drinking didn’t jam him up so much he was fired before getting full retirement.

I’ve been a fool.

“Damn. Turns out you’re a mean drunk. Wasn’t expecting that,” he says, making the mistake of sitting beside me.

“You don’t want to do that, right now, Dern.”

“Do what?” he asks, not moving.

“Sit beside me.”

“Shit, I don’t care if you’re a mean drunk. With any luck I’ll be so drunk soon that I won’t notice.”

“Don’t do it, Dern. I’m sitting here getting drunk out of my fucking mind instead of hunting you down and killing you. My advice is to get the fuck out of here, maybe even head back to Washington or Montana. I don’t care, just stay the fuck away from me.”

“What in the hell has gotten into you, Gavin?” he asks.

My head drops down. I study my drink, letting my finger move over the rim of the glass thinking about all of the shit I’ve discovered today, rethinking every last fucking choice I ever made. I keep asking myself all these questions and I hate every fucking answer I seem to come back with.

I kept all of the papers that Luna gave me. I grabbed them and carried them out with me when I left. When she asked me what I was doing, I didn’t answer—mostly because I had no idea what in the hell I was doing. I went straight to my hotel room and my brain searched through reasons I could have signed a paper and not ever have looked at it before. Then, I looked at the date I ‘signed’ the paper giving up my rights and began to piece it together. I thought back to what was going on in my life while Luna was in the hospital with our son. What was I doing, when what should have been the best day in my life was taking place without me?

There’s only one person I came back to. One person I was close to, one person I trusted during that time in my life.

One person I thought of as a father… a real father.

My fingers reach out and touch the folded document in front of me, placed there beside my glass so I could stare at it and let the betrayal burn me the same way the whiskey was burning me—only deeper and more lasting. I slide it over to Dern with one solitary finger, not bothering to look at him as I empty my glass one more time.

“What’s this?” He asks, sitting beside me despite my warning. He orders up a drink and my hand tightens on the glass so forceful that I’m surprised it doesn’t break.

“That’s the reason you should get the fuck off that stool and the fuck away from me. It’s also the reason you should leave Stone Lake and make sure I don’t see you for a very long time.”

I want to hit him, slam my fist into him repeatedly, until some of the anger leaves me. To distract myself I pour my glass full again.

“Gavin, I can explain—”

“Before you say one fucking word, you get one warning.”

“Gavin, I didn’t—”

“Don’t lie to me. I’m barely stopping myself from killing you now. If you lie to me, I won’t remember that I once thought of you as a father. I won’t remember a fucking thing you once did for me.”

“What do you want me to say?” he asks finally.

All this time I haven’t turned to look at him. I wasn’t sure I could stomach it. But, with that last reply I’m forced to look at him—mostly because I can’t believe that is what he would say. Reality hits me like a fucking freight train. Until this moment, I had held out hope I was wrong, that somehow it wasn’t the one man I trusted who twisted the knife in my back.