Page 64 of Own the Eights
He glanced at the building, not wanting her to see the shame in his eyes. “I usually drive up and make sure he doesn’t drink himself into a stupor. But with everything going on, I blanked it out this year. This is my uncle’s bar. He’s the one who called.”
“What can I do to help?” she asked with so much kindness infused into the words that alone nearly broke him.
He steadied himself. “Nothing. In fact, just wait here. I’ll go in and get him.”
She unbuckled her seatbelt. “No way. I’m going in with you.”
“I can do it alone, Georgiana.”
She gave him that sweet smile. “Well, tonight, you don’t have to,” she answered, then glanced from the paper cup to the building. “And…I could really use the restroom.”
He chuckled. “All right, but I’ve got to warn you, my dad’s a little rough around the edges even on a good day.”
She pursed her lips. “Jordan Marks, you met Lorraine Vanderdinkle today. If there’s anyone on the planet who can understand what it’s like to have a difficult parent, it’s me.”
He wanted to kiss her. He wanted to forget about his father, press his lips to hers and shut out everything. His hometown. His emerging doubts about Deacon. The contest. If he were a magician, he’d make it all disappear. But he wasn’t. He was just a man who had to bring his long-grieving father home, and the part of him, that awkward kid who’d lived through years of bullying, was glad she was here with him.
“Okay, once we get inside, the restrooms are down the hall on the right. Look for the jukebox, and you can’t miss them. I’ll head to the bar and work on getting my dad to leave.”
“Sounds like a plan,” she said with that same sweet smile.
Here goes everything.
His pulse kicked up as they entered the bar. Georgie left his side and headed down the hall while he scanned the barstools. It wasn’t hard to find his dad. Only a few men still lingered over their lagers, and it was easy to spot his father’s large frame hunched over a beer with a few empty shot glasses stacked in a neat row.
He glanced down to the other side of the bar to where his uncle leaned against the polished counter, chatting quietly with a couple of men, and caught the man’s eye. His uncle gave a furtive look toward his father, then shook his head.
This wasn’t good.
All the bar patrons seemed to have migrated as far as they could to get away from his father. His old man looked like the stereotypical lone wolf, dark, foreboding, and isolated. The door to the restroom slammed shut, and knowing he only had a few moments before Georgie returned, he started toward his father when the man lifted his head, sensing his presence.
“I should have known Robbie would reach out to you,” he bellowed without even turning around. “It’s too damn bad that it takes a call from your uncle to remember the woman who gave birth to you.”
A muscle ticked in Jordan’s jaw, and red-hot anger surged through his veins. There wasn’t a damn day that passed that he didn’t think of her. Her twinkling laugh. Her wide smile. Cuddling in his bed, listening as she read his favorite books aloud. His father had taken the sudden passing of his wife hard. Damn hard. They’d had two weeks with her between her terminal diagnosis and her death. But what the man hadn’t considered, in his unspeakable grief, was that his son was hurting, too.
“Pop, it’s time to call it a night,” he said, working to keep the emotion out of his voice.
“It’s time when I say it’s time, Jordy.”
Jordy.
When his mother used to call him that, it rang with love. With his father, anger oozed from each syllable.
“Come on. Uncle Rob needs to close up soon,” he tried again.
His father waved a hand toward the end of the bar. “I don’t see your Uncle Rob asking any of those sons of bitches to go.”
This mean drunk wasn’t his dad. Sure, the man had become distant and hardened over the last eighteen years. But he only drank like this on the one day that was too painful to face without Jack Daniels by his side.
“Please, Pop,” he coaxed.
“Time to go, huh?” his father replied, and Jordan breathed a sigh of relief. Could it be this easy?
He got his answer when his father sprang up, sending the barstool skidding across the floor, and stood nose to nose with him.
A damn Marks family standoff.
“I’m the one who decides when I’m good and ready to leave,” his father hissed.
