“I’ll give you money for a cab once we get there.” I rushed Hannah out of the woods and into my car without a word. Only when I was racing toward Boulder did I explain. “My dad is dying.” My hands gripped the steering wheel so tight my knuckles turned white. “They’ve taken him to the hospital because he’s in liver failure.”

She reached over, pried one of my hands loose from the steering wheel, and held it in her warm palm.

“I’m so sorry, Decker. What can I do?”

“Nothing, Hannah.” She didn’t deserve the sharpness in my voice, and I softened my tone slightly. “I know it’s in your nature to fix things. You can’t fix this.”

“No, but I can stay and support you.”

“Don’t waste your time.” I was spiraling into a dangerous place where I pushed back and away to become an island. Erected the walls. Put up the barbed-wire fences. Drank myself into numbness.

“You’re not a waste of time.”

My head snapped in her direction just in time to see her mouth stretch into a thin line.

“You don’t know what I am,” I said with less anger and more resignation. “But I do, and I’m probably a waste of your time.”

“I should get to choose,” she murmured loud enough for me to hear.

The silence following swallowed us. The closer we got to Boulder, the tighter my chest felt. The weight of a thousand failures pressed down to suffocate me. This whole date was a mistake. I liked Hannah—a lot—but I didn’t deserve her. She needed someone who could be there, and that wasn’t me. My entire life after Dad’s death was already mapped out, and it didn’t have room for a blonde slip of a girl with big blue eyes and kisses that could bring me to my knees.

I swallowed several times to soothe my sandpapered throat.

The glow of the harvest moon hid behind the clouds and cloaked the once bright sky with darkness. A single parking space sat open as if waiting for me. I pulled to a stop. The engine cut, and I took off with Hannah chasing after me.

The scent of antiseptic and death assaulted me the moment I entered the lobby. John sat in an industrial blue chair, weariness etched in his drawn, pale face.

“It doesn’t look good,” he said. He rubbed at the shadow of whiskers on his face.

An employee of Riley Realty, John had been around longer than I had. It had occurred to me more than once that the man Dad depended on for everything made a better son than I. John never disappointed anyone. He was born to serve, and I was born to sever. How funny that the same letters could be used to create such differing meanings.

“Is he going to die?” I asked.

John’s silence told me more than his words could. Dad wouldn’t walk outside again. He wouldn’t inhale the scent of freshly mowed grass. Smell the crisp first snow. Feel my mother’s lips against his.

A hand rubbed lightly at my back. “Everything will be okay.” Hannah leaned against me, and I wrapped my arm around her shoulders.

“Nothing will ever be okay.” She had no idea the turn my life would take the minute Rip Riley took his last breath.

I reached for my money-fattened wallet. Money I’d made selling the properties Dad demanded. His words galloped through my brain: In the end, son, he who has the most, wins. I wondered whether he felt the same now. Dad had everything. He had money and property and a devoted woman by his side, but money couldn’t stop death. Would he trade it all for one more day? Probably, but he’d use that time to make more money. That was his way.

John interrupted my thoughts. “You should go to him. Hannah can stay with me. It’s family only.”

I pulled several twenties from my wallet and folded them into Hannah’s palm. “Call a cab. There’s no reason for you to stay here.”

She opened her mouth to respond. The little I knew of Hannah told me she’d argue and want to stay, so I spun around and walked toward the ICU.

I inched toward the room that had Riley written on the dry-erase board. Mom sat in a chair next to Dad. Her teeth worried the flesh of her bottom lip. Her hands cradled one of his.

He lay like a corpse wired for sound. His skin took on the look of a spray tan gone bad. Machines chirped and bleated nonstop. Colors flashed across the screen like a video game on steroids, but there would be no winner here.

“Decker, you’re here.” The calmness in her voice didn’t deceive me. The dullness of her eyes told me everything. A piece of her was dying with my father.

She leaned forward and tucked the bed sheet below Dad’s chin. “They gave him something for the pain. He’s been sleeping ever since.”

I dropped to my knees in front of her. In this position, we were face to face. She’d aged twenty years in the past one. All her worry had been kept inside because Rip Riley allowed no weakness and wanted no pity. Mother suffered alone because, like my father, she was stubborn. She refused to burden anyone with her woes. The woman in front of me was a fixer like Hannah. She took care of everyone and asked for nothing in return.

“How are you, Mom?”

She smoothed the wrinkles from her skirt. “I’m fine, honey.”

“You’re not fine.” I rose to my feet and yanked a chair to her side. When I sat, the wooden legs creaked under my weight. “You don’t have to plaster on a face for me. I’m your son.”

She mothered my hand with a pat. “This was inevitable.” She looked at my father and shook her head. “Stubborn man.”

“I’d say it’s a family trait, threaded through our DNA.” We sat without words. The only sound was the constant beeping of machines that ate at my nerves.

“I’ve been a huge disappointment to him,” I finally said.

“He loves you, Decker.”

“He has a funny way of showing it.” I wanted to yell and scream at the unfairness of life. How could I be born into a family with everything and feel so empty?

“He showed it the only way he knew how. He took his weaknesses and turned them into your strengths.” Tears collected in her eyes. A tilt of her head sent them back from where they came.

Dad stirred, and a weak cry left his lips. He opened his yellowed eyes and gave me a sad smile. “Decker,” he groaned.

I leaned forward to hear him better. Gone was the hardness normally fixed to his expression. In its place was gut-twisting pain suppressed with a half smile.

“I have to tell you something.”

Was this the moment where he’d tell me he loved me? The moment when he’d say I’d been a good son? By all accounts, I’d inherited his virtues and vices. I was strong and determined but weak when it came to substances. If we measured apples to apples, I’d succeeded where he’d failed. He drank himself to death, and I’d sobered myself up to live. Maybe he’d finally acknowledge my successes rather than focusing on my failures.

I leaned in closer, making sure I didn’t miss a single word.

Rasping for each breath, he said, “The Conlin contract isn’t finished. You need to get the closing documents to the bank by nine.”

His words hung in the air like shards of glass ready to pierce my heart. All he cared about was work.

“Honey.” Mom brushed the sweaty hair from Dad’s forehead. “This isn’t the time to talk about contracts. Don’t you have anything else you want to tell Decker?”

His face turned from hers and zeroed in on mine. “Don’t look at me like I’m dead. I’m not going until I’m sure you’re not going to run the business into the ground. This is your time to prove yourself. I know you have it in you.”

Sad but not surprising that some of his final words were about work. Sadder yet that they were the most positive thing he’d said to me in years. On the surface, they were proof that he believed in my ability to succeed. But underneath those words were the ones he really wanted to say. The ones I heard in my head all the time: Don’t screw this up.

I couldn’t take Dad’s pain away. I couldn’t cure his cancer. But I could allay his fears about the company. His last days on earth didn’t need to be stress filled. I alone held the power to make it so. I hated real estate, but I’d learn to love it if it made Dad’s final days easier. Right then, I made a pledge to be more the type of son my father wanted and needed me to be, even if it killed me.

I swallowed my regret and stood tall, shaking the weight of his disappointment from my shoulders. “I’ve got it.” A fake smile spread across my lips as acid flooded my gut.

My lips pressed to my mom’s cheek. “I’ll see you both tomorrow.” I left the room with my head held high and my back as stiff as rebar. Hopefully, there would be a tomorrow.