Page 6 of Carry On

But man, the fucking fantasy sounded like a nice alternative to my reality.

I watched how he paced back and forth, talking with someone on the phone. He looked mad. Upset? Something in his twisted expression made me wonder what was wrong.

It stirred something deep inside me. Something I long thought dead. The fixer part of me. The protector. The part of me that once would’ve swept in to solve the problem.

I couldn’t fix Lincoln’s problem. Hell, I couldn’t begin to imagine what his problems were. Still, a part of me wanted to help him.

You’d fuck it up. You fuck up everything,that voice reminded me.

Yeah, that part was true.

But it clashed with the fixer part of me—the part that wanted to know why he was upset and how to fix it. Or even just be the person he talked to about it. The conflicting nature of both things frustrated me to no end.

A throat clearing caught my attention and dragged me back from the ledge of wallowing and fantasy. I rotated slightly to find a very well-dressed woman standing rigid on the sidewalk. She carried her dog while she stared at me, the disdain on her face clear as day.

“Ma’am,” I greeted, trying my best to keep my voice pleasant. I didn’t need the cops called on me. Most of them never did shit. They just told me to move along, and that was it. Some were real assholes, though, and I didn’t feel like dealing with that kind of shit tonight.

Her gaze swept over me once more, and her mood soured further. Fuck.

She sees you for what you are,the voice commented.

“This is aprivatepark,” she told me. In other words, I didn’t belong in her corner of the fucking world.

“Message received loud and clear, Ma’am,” I said and shouldered my stuff. Her glare damn near burned a hole in my back as I walked away in search of somewhere else to put up for the night.

And obsess over why Lincoln Cassidy had me thinking thoughts a man like me didn’t deserve to have.

CHAPTER 05

LINCOLN

Itookalongdrinkas I steeled myself for the phone call I knew I had to make. There was only one person I knew that I could ask about Nash. Unfortunately, that person and I were barely on speaking terms, meaning this call was going to be a fucking disaster.

My uncle had wanted me to stay in Pine Creek and be a small-town lawyer. He wanted me to help the people who had been there my whole life. I didn’t want that. I enjoyed the challenge of bigger cases that could only happen in a big city. I also wanted the money that came with a career like that. Small town life didn’t suit me, nor was it the life I imagined for myself.

I didn’t suit my uncle as a result.

It wasn’t as bad when my aunt was still alive. She was great at smoothing things over between us and keeping his opinionated commentary in check. But when she passed away, all that went right out the window.

The rift between us had deepened to the point where we talked only once a year. I called him to wish him a happy birthday; he never called to wish me the same. My gift to him was letting him rip me a new one about abandoning the town that had taken care of me.

I wasn’t an unreasonable man. I understood where he was coming from. But I also didn’t believe that I owed anyone anything.

I didn’t owe anyone anything because my father had convinced my mother not to have an abortion when she found out she was pregnant.

I didn’t owe anyone anything because my mother had walked out on us when I was six months old.

I didn’t owe anyone anything because my father had dropped me off at my uncle’s house when I was seven and never looked back.

I didn’t owe anyone anything because they had decided to help me as I grew up.

I didn’t owe anyone a goddamn thing because I was just a kid when it all happened. I was the oddball out with that thought process, though. It was as if somehow all of that was my fault, and I needed to make up for it for the rest of my life. My uncle and I would never see eye to eye on the matter, which made calling him out of the blue a pain in the ass.

Bracing myself, I downed the rest of my whiskey while the phone rang. I was tempted to hang up, but I knew if anyone would have answers about what had happened to Nash after I left, it’d be Beau Cassidy.

“You’re calling,” my uncle answered, his voice gruff yet not at all surprised.

“Yes, that’s what phones are for,” I clipped back.