No Gentle Giant (A Small Town Romance)

Every time I hear that name, I remember he’s the one who gave it to me.

When I hear it now, some small, scared part of me demands to know why.

Why Dad had to evaporate and leave that walking cadaver who just had his name, his face, barely alive...until he wasn’t even barely anymore. He was gone without answering that question that hurts so very much.

It’s several bleary seconds before I can bring myself to say anything, blinking my eyes until my vision clears. The wavering blur eases. I manage not to break down crying here in the middle of Brody’s.

Alaska helps.

Because he’s there at my shoulder, resting one big hand almost possessively against my back. I know it’s part of the boyfriend-girlfriend act, but it’s also saying everything I need.

I’m here.

I’m here, I’ve got you, and you’ve got this.

Swallowing, I muster a smile.

“No. No, he didn’t deserve it. I never got to talk to him the last few days he was alive, Flynn. But I’ve heard some people say you did. That you were the last person to see him alive.”

Flynn instantly goes tense.

“Yeah, well...maybe so,” he admits slowly, and for someone who’s three sheets to the wind he suddenly looks entirely too clear, one eye on the door. “What’s it to you? I already told Langley I didn’t do shit.”

“I know you didn’t. Dad was your friend. You’d never hurt him.” When they weren’t hurting each other, that is, telling each other one more drink would be okay. “But I just...I don’t understand some things. I was hoping you might have answers. Because I can’t let Dad rest in peace until I get why he slipped, Flynn. Why he went from over a year clean to dead behind the wheel, full of so much junk it’s like...” The words stick hard in my throat before I push them out. “It’s almost like he wanted to die.”

That’s what guts me right down the middle, I realize.

Wondering if Dad actually wanted to die.

If it wasn’t an accidental overdose, wasn’t foul play, wasn’t anything but my father crumbling under the weight of his addiction and choosing to surrender to the void.

“Hell no!” Flynn snarls. “Your old man had so much life in him. So much goddamned fight. Maybe he fell off the wagon for a bit, but he was gonna get back on it. He was fighting to get back on. Fighting for you, but he—well...”

“Well?” I prompt softly.

Flynn looks uncomfortable, his bony fingers rattling against the tumbler, then tightening.

“Look, your old man got in tight with some bad folks. Dude was desperate, trying to figure out how to make ends meet when most people don’t wanna hire a former junkie. So he was doing their dirty work and getting paid, okay? And those people, they started wanting more out of him. But he had his limits, nothing that’d hurt his family, and he told ’em to fuck off. Until they started talking about going after you and your mom.”

Whatever I’d been about to say splits right off my tongue.

Holy crap.

I really am my father’s daughter, huh?

Doing whatever I have to, taking whatever punishment’s necessary, to keep people I love safe from Paisley.

Even if it means endangering myself.

Will I share his fate?

Struggling to protect my mother, and all I get for it is a nice case of the deads?

Brute memories howl up inside me. Too many memories of that strange, haunted look on my father’s face, how tired he was all the time, and me trying my damnedest to do something.

Anything to bring back the man I knew and loved.

I remember when I made him a cup of coffee mixed up real special the way he liked it with a touch of honey and cinnamon, and the way he smiled. When his lips curled up and he finally had this faint shine in his eyes that almost resembled the old dad, I—

No. Nope. Stop it.

I can’t afford this trip down memory lane when the price is bawling here in the middle of Brody’s, and especially not in front of Flynn when he’s leaking useful info.

So I force a smile so intense it hurts my cheeks.

“He gave up a lot for us, didn’t he?” I say, and that sets him off all over again.

“Oh, little lady, you have no damn idea.” Flynn’s getting louder, and if I don’t want him giving things away to half the bar, I need to figure out how to bring him back down. But he’s barreling on, loose-lipped and worked up, waving an arm out so sharply he almost smacks me. “Telling you, he was gonna do right by y’all. Those snakes fucked him over, and he was gonna fuck ’em right back. If you knew the big ol’ heist he had planned...”

My heart stops—if it ever even restarted again after a thousand and one shocks tonight.