Page 46 of Over & Out (Redbeard Cove #3)

Hopper

I ’ve never really understood the saying “my blood ran cold.” But I get it now, as ice traverses its way through my veins.

My dad stops on the path. “Hopper.”

It’s not a greeting. Just my name. Stated. Like he’s been practicing.

Mostly, I’m stunned that he’s here. But I’m also shocked at how old he looks since I saw him last, at Mom’s funeral four years ago.

His hair has grown more silver, and deep-set wrinkles cut along the sides of his mouth and nose.

He had the cane last time I saw him, but now he looks like he really needs it.

“How did you find me?” I ask, proud of how steady I’m able to keep my voice.

His eyes droop, like he’s tired of holding them open. He looks thin. Maybe he’s sick. Good.

I should feel guilty about that, but all I feel is a deep, incandescent rage. That old rage and grief from when Mom was sick. Why her? Why the parent who loved and cared for me and told me I could leave all of this behind any time I wanted?

But then I see that notch in his nose. The misshapen dent in his left eye socket. A scarred stretch of skin across his jaw. My stomach turns like it always does when I see his face.

“I just want to talk,” he says. His voice sounds strange. He’s sober, I realize. The last few times I’ve heard him, it’s been over the phone. Slurred. Threatening. Pissed off. Now he’s sober, and his voice is eerily calm.

This is bad. Very bad.

“I’m going to ask again,” I say, moving to the top of the stairs.

“How did you find this place?” My voice is loud now.

Angry. Aggressive. It’s my knee-jerk reaction to him and the threats he brings.

It’s the voice of the man who smashed a wall at a hotel.

Of the man who, within an hour of Mom’s passing in that hospice bed, went outside and drove a car over a cliff.

The tabloids don’t know about that one. I drove hard and fast on the empty freeway at two a.m., then took it off-road.

I jumped out right before it went over. Then I watched as the car smashed into tree after tree before landing in a gully.

I hoped it would burst into flame, even though I, of all people, know things like that only happen in the movies.

Mabel took care of that little incident, just like she takes care of everything.

We chalked my injuries up to me doing my own stunts.

“Does it matter?” my father asks now. He takes a step toward me, but I hold my hand up .

I guess it doesn’t matter. “You can tell me whatever it is you came here to say from right there.”

A wind blows then, lifting his thinning hair from his forehead. He was so vain about his hair when I was a kid. He got the hair people on set to do his too so people could snap “candid” pictures of us together and remark on how I got my looks from my father.

I hate that about myself. I hate that I look like him.

He moves like he’s going to fold his arms, but drops them straight at his sides again. He keeps his eyes on me. “I wanted to tell you that you can stop sending the money, Hopper.”

My stomach plunges. There’s only one reason he’d do that.

Because he thinks he’ll get a bigger payday somewhere else.

Mabel’s speculation about him gearing up for a lawsuit must be true.

He has a case, Hopper , she told me. We didn’t properly sever our relationship or the contract he had some shady-ass lawyer draw up.

He was entitled to a large portion of my earnings we never paid him.

But it’s not the manager business where his strongest case lies. It’s with something else. Something that’s hung around me like a disease. Something that could easily end my career. Worse, something that could rip Chris away from me.

“So why are you here? Why aren’t I being served right now?”

“Because—” he starts. But he’s interrupted by the sound of an engine.

My already heavy stomach bottoms out as Chris’s car pulls into the driveway .

“Fuck,” I say out loud, the word choked. My heart thuds in my chest, beating painfully, like it’s already bruised. “Go now. I’ll find you.”

He’s going to tell her. He’s going to tell her and she’s going to leave me. Then he’s going to serve me. He’s not warning me. He’s driving the screws in first.

“Please, just fucking leave,” I say, hating the pleading in my voice. “You can do whatever you need to do. Just let me talk to her first.”

My father’s eyes snap to mine. I see a muscle in his jaw twitch.

Chris pulls up in the little car she won’t let me replace. She slams the door as she gets out, smiling at my father. “Hi,” she says in her sweet, cheerful voice. She doesn’t know who he is. Her smile drops when she comes within a few feet of him.

She looks at me. Then at him. Then her eyes widen as she understands what’s happening. “You must be Hopper’s father,” she says, her voice neutral.

“Carl,” my father says. He reaches his hand out.

“No!” I boom. “Don’t you fucking touch her.” I run down the steps, grabbing Chris’s hand.

She opens her mouth as if to argue, then snaps it shut again as I plead with her with my eyes. Please, sweetheart. I’ll tell you everything. Even if you hate me, I’ll tell you everything. Just stay far, far away from him.

“I’m not diseased, Hopper,” my father says, his tone sounding more like the one I remember.

“Yes you are,” I say. “You’re a fucking scourge.” I’m shaking. Sweating .

“Hopper!” Chris says. I’m holding her hand too tightly.

“I’m sorry,” I say, chest tight.

Chris reaches up and gives me a hug, surprising me. In my ear, she whispers, “ Breathe .”

She thinks I’m just upset about being in his presence. I am. But she doesn’t know the rest.

She’ll have to.

I need to do it in a better way. I thought I had more time. My heart twists. I know if I tell her I don’t need her, she’ll insist. So I have to do something I don’t want to do.

“I don’t want you here,” I say, unwrapping her arms from my neck. The words are hard. Final. “Just go inside, please.”

Hurt skips over her features. I’ve never talked to her like this.

At least not since we were still at each other’s throats.

The look in her eyes makes me sick. Especially because, after this, I’m going to cause her a lot more hurt.

But Chris wouldn’t be my Chris if she went quietly, would she?

She wouldn’t be her if that hurt wasn’t replaced by a flame of anger.

“No,” she says.

Not now.

“I’m asking you, Chris?—”

“And I’m saying no. You can’t trick me into leaving when you need me.”

I press my hands to my temples, both furious and devastated by her empathy. My heart is a pulpy mess. Fuck, I love this woman.

I clench my jaw. Then I turn on my father, who’s been watching all of this like it’s a fucking tennis match .

“I have given you everything you wanted,” I say. I should stop there. But I don’t. I can’t. Because I’ve never said these words to him. Not all at once. “You pimped me out.”

My father opens his mouth, but I keep going.

“I gave you everything I made. Every cent. You took my childhood and used me like a fucking ATM. You—” My words crumple in my throat.

I try again, because this is the worst offense of them all.

“You kept my mom from me. You lied to her, told her I was happy. You changed her number. You forged our fucking letters! Do you know how sick that is? All while you were fucking everything that moved right in front of me.”

“First of all,” my father snaps, “I did not do that.” He looks at Chris, as if he wants her to know that most of all.

“Oh, no?”

“No. I was always discreet.”

I laugh then. It’s a maniacal sound. One I’ll probably be ashamed of tomorrow. “Right. You got your own hotel rooms. My fucking bad.”

“At least I didn’t hire thugs to beat up my own flesh and blood!” my father roars.

The blood drains from my face. Because there it is.

I turn to find Chris still beside me. She never left my side. I was an asshole, and she didn’t leave. My throat threatens to close. “Chris,” I say. “It’s not like he says.”

Her eyes meet mine. They’re alarmed, but she says nothing.

My father sticks his chin out, looking wildly over at Chris. “Guess he didn’t tell you that, huh?” He shakes his cane at her. “It’s why I use this fuckin’ thing and I’m not even sixty!” Spittle flies from his mouth.

“Stop,” I say, my voice heavy with a thousand-pound weight.

But he doesn’t stop there, because of course he doesn’t.

He’s breathing hard. He’s not drunk, but he still doesn’t know how to control that temper.

“He didn’t tell you a lot of things, did he?

Like how he got that bitch Mabel to cover that up.

How he got her to cover up that other thing too.

He put a girl in the hospital. Did you know that?

Knocked her off a motorcycle just this summer.

Broke all her fuckin’ bones and walked away. ”

Mabel was right. He found out. It doesn’t matter how.

I truly thought I knew what hurt felt like. I really did. But I’ve never known anything like the pain I feel when Chris’s eyes flare even wider, her mouth falling open as she puts the pieces together.

“Did he tell you that?” my dad rants.

She looks at me, needing to verify it. Needing to see the truth in my eyes.

“You were in California,” she whispers. “I saw the photos.”

“Mabel…diverted the press with some old pictures.” Those were Mabel’s words, because she never actually came out and said “cover-up.”

Chris looks like she’s going to throw up.

“I’m sorry, Chris,” I say softly. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

If there’s one small mercy in all of this, it’s that finally—finally—the truth is out there.

My father’s twisted version of it, anyway.

If there’s another, it’s my dad, looking between the two of us, realizing who Chris really is.

He didn’t mean to blow it up quite so badly.

The wind seems to deflate from his anger. He looks down, leaning on his cane.

I open my mouth to tell him once more to leave. That he can send his lawyer and a court summons and whatever else he has up his sleeve. But it’s not my voice that rings out. It’s Chris’s. “You asked me,” she says, whirling on him, “if Hopper told me any of those things.”

My father looks deeply sorry he asked now. I’ve never once seen that. In the past, he always doubled down when he knew he’d done wrong. Dug in his heels like the narcissist he is. Now he seems sorrowful. Pathetic.

“He hasn’t. Yet,” Chris continues. “But you need to know that I trust he will, in his own time. And in his own way. That’s because I know who he is.

He’s a good man, despite you ripping his childhood from him.

He’s a kind soul not because you raised him, but in spite of your version of fathering.

If you came here to break him, you won’t.

You can’t. Because he’s not on his own anymore.

And he’s stronger than you’ll ever have the privilege of knowing. ”

That weight lifts, just the tiniest bit. Like someone’s taken a car jack to a corner of it. Because she’s seen me. She’s not storming out.

She trusts me .

She just might not ever forgive me.

“Now,” Chris says. “If we’re done here, you can leave. And if you don’t, I’ll call the cops to have you removed.”

She turns and heads for the stairs. Shaken, I watch her go. I should follow .

But I’m not finished. I turn around, because I need to tell him I don’t ever want to see him again unless it’s in a courtroom. But my father has his hand up. It shakes.

“I didn’t mean for this to happen,” he says to me, his voice sounding pained. “It’s not why I came.”

“Then why did you come?”

He meets my eyes for what feels like the first time since he arrived. “I came to apologize. I’m in a program and…well, yeah. I fucked that one up real bad.”

I’m too stunned to speak.

“I’ll be staying at the inn in town for another week…”

He says more words, but I don’t hear them properly. Then, in a sweep of low headlights, he’s gone.

I head back up the stairs in a daze. But just as I reach for the door handle, the door swings open. Chris’s eyes are red, and I feel sick that it’s my fault. But she doesn’t look away. I prepare for her to yell at me, but that’s not really her style either, is it?

“Chris, I?—”

“I’m just going to head out for a bit.”

I reach for her hand. “It’s not like he says.”

“I’m sure it isn’t.” She pulls her hand away, and a knife twists in my gut. My hands drop to my sides.

“I just need a little time,” she says. “I’ll be back in an hour—if you wouldn’t mind being gone, please.”

My heart feels like it’s been thrown into a blender, pulled out, and tossed back in. I run my hands over my hair, panic corkscrewing my insides. I can’t lose her. I can’t.

“Is that it, then?” I croak. “Is this the end?”

“No, Hopper.” Heat drips into Chris’s cheeks. “ That’s not it, and fuck you for thinking that. I just need space. So give me some space.”She enunciates those last words.

Then she slips by me, heading for her car.

I stand on her porch, gripping the railing with two hands as she gets in. I want to run after her. To jump in front of her vehicle and then supplicate myself on my knees in front of her, begging her not to leave. I want to tell her she doesn’t need to forgive me, but please, please don’t leave.

But she meant what she said, and that would only make things worse. So I stand there, my heart bleeding out, watching her taillights as they disappear around the corner and out of sight.