Chapter 24
LUCKY
I couldn’t believe it.
I couldn’t fucking believe it.
How did he find me? Why was he there? What business did he have staring at me like that?
James was off the table in an instant, and he was pulling me with him. “C’mon,” he urged me. “We’ll go. We’ll get the fuck out of here, Lucas. You don’t have to see him if you don’t want to. You’re an adult. You owe him nothing.”
When I got off the table, Quinton slapped my back. “You were hot up there, you go-go dancer freak, you!”
“Guys, we gotta go,” James said right away. “Now.”
Duncan lifted his head. “Why?”
“Lucas’s father,” he answered.
Duncan sobered up at once. “I’ll take care of the tab.” Then he headed for the bar.
Through the crowd of heads, I could still see him. He wasn’t moving. It was like someone had cruelly made a wax statue of him, a perfect likeness, and set it at the exit to the bar like a scarecrow to fuck with my mind.
“Lucas.” James was trying to get my attention. He tugged on my arm. “Lucas, c’mon. Let’s go.”
“I’ve been running,” I murmured, deadpan. “All this time.”
“Lucas …”
“I’m not fucking running anymore.”
“Lucas, don’t.”
I pushed past them, cut through the crowd, and came face-to-face with my father, who stood there in front of me in his fancy suit with his perfectly parted blond hair and icy eyes.
I hadn’t seen the man in almost two years. He looked eerily the same, like a ghost.
He was a ghost. He was dead to me the day I left home, the day he chose Countess Cunt over my mother and me, the day he told me never to call her a cunt again.
Over his shoulder, I saw her standing in the lobby. Strange, how the first thing I saw before recognition dawned on me was the glitter of her cocktail dress. My eyes literally had to fish her mousy, plastic face out of all of that gaudy glitz.
“What are you doing, son?”
It wasn’t exactly a greeting. It wasn’t exactly rude. I couldn’t even tell if he cared what my answer was. He already presumed I was pissing my life away. That much, I could tell just from the way his half-lidded eyes regarded me.
“I’m living my life without you,” I answered coolly.
“Do you know how long I’ve been looking for you?” He tilted his head, his voice low, almost gentle. “Do you even know what sort of stress you put me and Chri—”
“Cunt,” I corrected him before he even had a chance to say her name.
His cold eyes narrowed. “Enough with that childishness.”
“Cunt,” I repeated, lifting my eyes defiantly to him. “Maybe I should ask you what you’re doing. And what Mom would think of you right now, what you’ve made of things. Would she be proud?”
I might as well have brought up the weather for as little as the subject of my mother affected him. “You need to come home.”
“Why? Are you actually about to admit feeling guilty at all? To having a conscience about what you did to Mom?”
“Lucas, you have wasted enough of my time and resources.” A flicker of irritation passed over his face. “Haven’t you had enough fun on my dollar? Running off into the city with your … friends? Acting out like a petulant child?”
“On your dollar? I didn’t take a cent from you when I left. Any money I have, I fucking earned. I had to survive out here because Countess Cunt didn’t—”
“Lucas,” he warned, his eyes turning into slits.
I carried on, heedless. “—didn’t want me around. She couldn’t stand having anything in her life that reminded her of the better woman she’ll never dream of replacing. You’re the one having fun on your own damned dollar, buying yourself a whore to fill your bed because—”
“If you call her one more name other than her own—”
“—because you can’t face the memory of the woman you lost.” I stepped right up to him. “Maybe that’s the reason you turned your back on me. Your only son. Maybe it’s just too painful to play the what-if game when the last thing on Earth that Mom gave you is standing right in front of you.”
My father lifted his eyes to the four people who stood around me. Lewis on my left, James on my right, and Quinton and Duncan flanking them.
My father let out a sigh, then nodded at the others. “Who are they? Men you pleasure for cash? There’s another name for that.”
Lewis’s eyes flashed. “Oh, no, he didn’t.”
“I can take being called a man-whore,” mumbled Quinton to himself. “I can own that.”
“And this one,” my dad went on with a nod at James. “Is he your sugar daddy? The one you were dancing so obscenely with?”
James took a step forward. “I think it’d be best if you leave.”
My father seemed to find that amusing, regarding James like a bug that just landed on his arm. “I have just as much of a right to stand here as anyone. Just as much a right to speak.”
Funny. I recall saying those exact words when that fucker at Alberto’s tried to run me off from the front of his restaurant.
“What do you hope to accomplish, exactly?” asked James, his voice even and, I daresay, polite. “All I hear are words of vitriol. I don’t hear the concern of a father. I don’t hear the compassion of one, either. Aren’t you concerned about Lucas’s wellbeing?”
“I don’t have to answer any of your questions.” He eyed me. “Lucas. End this charade. Come home, where you belong.”
But James wasn’t finished. “Does it even cross your mind the amount of time your son has been on the streets?” James took yet another step toward him, standing between us now. “Did you even lose a wink of sleep at night wondering whether your son was in an alley starving, or being mugged, or freezing to death? We had a record-setting winter last February, if I remember correctly.”
“And what’s your point?” My father didn’t return the polite, mature tone that James gave him the courtesy of. “That you can be a better father to my son? I know who you are. My associate Brian saw you in a bar in Little Water with Lucas. Letting him drink, no doubt. Buying him pretty things so he’ll sleep in your bed. How dare you even speak to me. That’s who you are, isn’t it?” His voice gained conviction as he glared acidly at James. “You ought to be ashamed of your perverted self, having your way with my barely-legal, eighteen-year-old son.”
“I’m nineteen now, you fucking ass clown,” I spat back.
He flinched at those words. “What did you just call me?”
“And James is taking care of me, like a decent human being. If you want an example of a pervert buying someone pretty things so they’ll sleep with them, turn the camera your way, Dad.”
I had just touched the precious subject of his new wife in a way that truly hit close to home. Now, at long last, I had gotten him angry. His eyes burned with a fury I couldn’t even measure.
But it didn’t faze me. I wanted to be finished with him. I said goodbye to him long ago and promised never to look back. This was my opportunity to keep that promise. At least someone in this family could stick to their word and prove their honor other than my departed mother.
I walked right up to my father’s face. He stood his cold ground and stared me down, his eyes like steel. “If you really want me back home to deal with your guilt, that’s on you. Find a therapist, and let them lead you down the road to your own self-redemption. You have my full support as your son, and in the future, after you’ve finally come to terms with what you are, maybe I can come to terms with what you’re not. Until then, you can stay the hell away from me and enjoy your time with Countess—”
“I warned you,” he stated so low, his words were like blades. “I warned you that if you called her that word one more time …”
“That it would be over. I remember your promise fondly, Dad. Maybe this time you ought to learn to keep your promises.” I got right in his face. “You and Countess Cunt.”
My father stood there, emotionless, for the longest period of time. I didn’t know what was going through his mind. Had I finally reached him? Did he see the pain in my eyes? Or the truth?
Then my father did the worst thing he possibly could. His eye twitched, his lips pursed, and then he said, “I love you, son. And I always will. But this …?” He gave a microscopic shake of his head. “You disappoint me, Lucas. And you disrespect the memory of your mother.” His eyes went cold. “You are better than this.”
I had no response. My eyes merely reflected the ice in his.
I knew my mother. I saw her face every single time I blinked. I felt her spirit every time my heart beat whenever I was angry, or impassioned, or just plain happy. She was my companion so many nights on the streets when I feared it might be my last night.
And my father’s words were a dark sword of doubt that struck through all of that light.
Unbelievably, I felt the sting of a tear in my eye. Don’t you dare, I scolded myself. Don’t you fucking dare. Not in front of him. Not like this. Stop it. And yet the sting worsened. It wanted release.
My face as still as a glass figurine, I parted my lips and hissed my last words to my father: “If you ever speak about Mom like that to me again, as if you knew her, as if you know what she’d think of me, as if you even have a right … I will end you, and you’ll never say a goddamned thing again.”
I shoved past him, making my way for the door. James called out at my back, but I couldn’t hear it, not even from him. The darkness was closing in, and nothing could dare to touch me.
Nothing except my father’s cruel words, which followed me like the ghost of my mother: You disappoint me. You disrespect the memory of your mother.
You are better than this.