Page 31 of Tempting the Goalie (Riverside U #5)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

L uc

Over the past week I’ve been working up the courage to speak with Papa.

Mr. Thorne told me he saw him at The Frosted Mug every day this week when he was making his rounds around town.

When I asked him how Papa could afford to keep going there, he told me he receives disability payments from the government.

It was the first I was hearing of it. Apparently, Papa served in the Canadian Armed Forces for a few years.

He was never deployed but he was stationed at CFB Gagetown, New Brunswick.

During a routine training exercise on base, Papa was participating in a simulated obstacle course designed to test agility and endurance.

While maneuvering over a high wall, he slipped and fell awkwardly, severely injuring his lower back and spine.

Despite immediate medical attention, the injury caused chronic nerve damage, resulting in permanent mobility limitations.

Due to the severity of his injury, he was medically released from active service before ever deploying overseas.

That’s when he decided to become a plumber.

The story didn’t add up to me. Why would someone with nerve damage in their back become a plumber?

It was a job that required a lot of bending.

The thing is, I needed to face Papa. I had this picture in my head of who I thought he was, which was a weak alcoholic but good at heart.

Instead, he seemed like a con and a drunk.

Yet, he was my papa so what did that make me?

On a logical level I understood I was nothing like him, but on an emotional level I was scarred by life.

If I was going to be able to move forward in my relationship with Isabelle, I would have to figure myself out because if there was one thing I knew, it was I wanted to see her happy.

I wanted to give her the world on a silver platter.

It was a little much, but both of us had a rough start to life.

We both deserved happiness, and my girl was blossoming before my eyes.

She was becoming more confident every day and fighting the demons of her past. I had to do the same for her.

With my shift in the orchard done for the day and Elyna getting ready for a shift at the Maple Valley Microbrewery, I asked Izzy to watch Braden so I could finally confront Papa.

Now I was walking over to my family property.

Seeing it with a set of new eyes was mind opening.

Papa never did take care of this place. I wondered how a woman like Mom got caught up with a man like him, but maybe he scammed her into believing he was someone else.

I went knocking on the door. When Elyna and I moved out of here we took all our belongings, knowing this time we would never be returning.

He had threatened Braden and acted like a madman, and we were both done.

I turned the rusted knob on the door to check if the door was unlocked because he usually left it that way, and it was.

I walked into the house and called out to him, but there was no sign of him.

All I saw was a stinking dirty mess that made a cold shiver run down my spine.

Since he wasn’t here, I walked out to the front of the house and headed back to the Thornes’.

It was possible to take a cab from the airport to Val-Du-Lys, but finding a cab to take me anywhere in town was going to take hours I didn’t have.

Mr. Thorne told me to help myself to any of the cars in his garage.

I hadn’t taken him up on the offer until now.

I went to the garage and grabbed the keys to one of the pickup trucks they owned.

They were all black and had the Maple Valley logo on the side of the door.

I went straight for town, knowing The Frosted Mug was Papa’s bar of choice.

I felt a rush of adrenaline knowing this was something I should’ve done long ago.

In order to know where I was going in my life, I needed answers. I needed closure, dammit.

I had my window open, and it whipped the hot summer air into my face and had my hair windblown. I pulled up to the Frosted Mug and headed inside.

A bunch of people I knew from high school were sitting around a table drinking beer. It was wishful thinking to hope I wouldn’t be spotted.

“Luc Chabot, is that you?” a girl named Cherry calls out.

I wave and smile. “Uh, uh, you get that cute butt over here,” she continues. I want to roll my eyes, but I hold my smile and my friendly demeanor and walk over to the table.

I fist bump some old friends and people I could do without in my life.

“You’re heading to the NHL,” my friend Mathias says.

“Not yet, but that’s the plan,” I reply.

“At least you’re making it out of this town.” Etienne smirks.

“How is that friend of yours?” Clara asks. “What was her name? The good girl. We haven’t seen her around.”

“Her name is Isabelle, and she’s my girlfriend now,” I state, feeling my jaw clench. Izzy wasn’t friends with this crowd. They were cliquey and mean and up to no good.

“You’re joking,” a girl name Camille snorts.

“I’m serious as a heartbeat. Izzy is the love of my life,” I say, knowing it is the most honest thing I can say in this awkward situation. Some of the group begin laughing and muttering all kinds of comments that I don’t care to hear.

“Well, I better be going. I have someone to see.” My eyes land on Papa, and I wince.

I didn’t know how drunk he was, but trying to find him sober wasn’t a reasonable request. I hate that all these people from my past are here to watch the interaction, and I’m sure they’ll watch because they love getting into other people’s business.

From a few feet away I see Papa is watching a baseball game on TV at the bar. I walk up and sit on the barstool beside him. We are far enough away that I hoped my old friends, if I could call them that, wouldn’t hear our conversation.

“Hi, Papa.”

Kammy came up to me. “What can I get you, Luc?”

“I’ll have a Coke, please,” I say to her.

“Sure thing,” she replies with a wink, sliding a glass in front of me and filling it from the fountain, spray hissing behind the bar.

“Why are you here?” Papa mumbles.

“Come on, that isn’t a nice way to greet a son.” I can’t help the sarcasm dripping from my tone. He is just so unwelcoming.

“I thought you and your sister were gone for good,” he says, and he takes a large gulp of beer.

“How did you meet Mom?” I ask him. “Did you love her?”

His gaze cuts to the left where I’m seated beside him. I must have his attention now.

“What kind of question is that?” he snarls.

“An honest one. Pierre Thorne just enlightened me that you had been a soldier. I never knew that about you,” I say to him.

“The army is where people go when they want to get away from their families and they don’t have a penny to their name,” he explains.

“You always said they were dead.”

“They were dead to me. Dad died when I was young, and Mom had a bunch of shitty boyfriends who thought I was their punching bag.”

I can’t help but feel for him, even after all his bad behavior. “Is she still alive?”

“Maybe.” He shrugs. “I escaped that life. You’d know nothing of it.”

“I grew up with a drunk for a dad. You may not have been violent, but you never did anything to help us either,” I say to him.

“Better than what I had,” he sneers, and takes another gulp of beer.

“Why did you marry Mom? Did you love her?” I ask.

He pauses and watches me, his gray eyes, so much like mine, look vacant and bloodshot. “Your mom was too good for me. I knew it and she knew it. She thought she could make me into a better man, but I’ve always fought my demons. I let them win,” he says and downs more beer.

“Then why lose your shit when you find out she’s having an affair?

” I ask. It’s ballsy of me but I am trying to understand him.

The more he speaks I understand that he was abused.

That he was weak. That he probably wasn’t taught how to deal with his emotions.

Every lesson he’s learned was the hard way.

Lucky for me I had a good mom, the best. She loved with all her heart and poured that love into Elyna and me.

“I don’t like knowing I was betrayed, boy,” he snaps. “Your mom was a stupid whore. I should’ve never married her.”

His words feel like a sword to the chest. If it were someone else speaking that way about my mother, I would’ve punched them out.

But he’s a worthless piece of shit. I don’t even need to ask him why he doesn’t care about Braden because I see the hate in his eyes when he looks at me, his own son.

What I think it boils down to is that he hates himself.

“Have you ever thought of getting help for your drinking?” I ask.

He’s staring straight at the TV screen above the bar. He turns his head and looks at me. “Oh, you’re still here?”

Okay, I don’t know why I needed to confront him, but I do feel a sense of closure. This man may have made me, but I could never behave the way he does. My instinct is to protect those I love, not bring them down.

I leave a ten on the bar for Kammy. She sees it and walks over to me.

“Nice seeing you, Luc. Take care of yourself.” She smiles, and she eyes Papa like the no-good asshole he is.

“Thanks, Kammy, you too.”

“There’s nothing for you to come back here for. I’m donating the land in my will and the house is worth shit anyway,” he declares.

“You know what, old man? I always tried to see the good in you. I always made up excuses in my head because you behaved the way you did. I was worried that some part of you was in me, but now I see that isn’t the case.”

He smiles at me and then asks Kammy for another beer. She shrugs her shoulders and serves him. I guess he’s a paying customer.

“That injury you had in the army. Was it real?” I ask. “I don’t remember you having a back problem.” He’s got a lot of booze in him but he’s also still coherent.

His smile is a razor’s edge: sharp, cold, and filled with quiet cruelty.

“Boy, you need to learn how to get by in life. I met someone who gave me the idea of joining the army so I wouldn’t be on the street, but there was no way I was deploying.

Fighting wasn’t my thing. And, hell, disabilities get paid well. ”

That’s what I thought. I don’t have any more words for him.

My insides have soured from the sight of him.

Kammy heard every word and looks at me with sympathy I don’t like.

I shrug at her and turn to leave the bar.

Luckily the table of my so-called old friends left because I’m not in the mood to be social.

I head out to the truck with the Maple Valley logo and remember there are good people in this world.

People who care and do good by others. There’s no reason for me to carry around the load this piece of shit has made me feel most of my life.

We may share genetics, but that’s where it ends.

I have to stop basing decisions in my life because I’m scared of turning into him.

Ironically, I’ve done everything the opposite of him.

Fear of turning into him made me work hard in hockey.

I knew I wouldn’t be able to afford a college education.

Hockey was my key to all good things, and I worked my ass off to get this far.

I wasn’t like the man at the bar. He was a selfish bastard with a sad past. He made his life choices, and I was going to make mine.

I turn on the radio and open the windows.

“Born To Run” by Bruce Springsteen blasts on the speakers.

It isn’t a song I know well since it isn’t from my time.

Mr. Thorne must like this oldies channel.

I take in the words, and they feel like a call to break free from the shadows of my past. Every lyric feels like a challenge to the life I’d been handed, a promise that I could outrun the weight of my father’s failures.

I slam the volume higher, letting the anthem wash over me like a storm, wild and unstoppable.

The open road stretches out before me and for the first time, I don’t feel trapped or defined by where I came from.

I feel alive, electric, and ready to race toward a new future I choose for myself. I am heading for Isabelle Thorne.