by Aiden Bates
Rusty King had his own life and problems to worry about, and I had mine. Namely, my daughter who was once again scribbling on her homework. Not on the back, but in the margins, this time.
“Lissa.” I clucked my tongue at her as I put Rusty’s notes into my back pocket. “Come on, sweetheart. Let’s get this homework finished up. Time to focus, okay?”
“I hate it, though.” Lissa frowned at the letter she was meant to be tracing, a lower case E. “They keep moving around on me!”
“Let’s pin them down with your pencil, then.” I curled my hand around hers, guiding her pencil back to the letter’s outline. “You’ll feel really good when you’ve got all of these done.”
“Were you good at homework, Daddy?” Lissa’s voice sounded suddenly tired. “I think I suck at it.”
“Don’t say suck. But…yes, I think I was.” I didn’t want to sound patronizing. I just wanted her to have as much confidence with her school work as she did with her art. “You come from a long line of Rasners who were very good at homework. It only makes sense that you will be, too.”
“I’ll try, then.” Her shoulders heaved with a sigh.
I laid a kiss on the top of her head. “I’m always proud at you for trying. That’s all you ever have to do.”
That night, I told Lissa her favorite story. It was a high-action tale of fantasy and adventure about a pirate captain named Melissa who roamed the seven seas with her magical pencil in hand, tracking down squiggly-wiggly stray letters and capturing them by tracing their shapes. She giggled at the funny parts, squealed at the exciting parts, and held her breath through the scary parts—I was always careful to include a few.
When she finally slipped off to sleep, I headed to the kitchen and considered a cup of tea. A nice, hot cup of chamomile usually helped me relax after my own stressful days…but this one had been a little more stressful than most.
Wine, then, I decided. A Cabernet, just the one glass.
After seeing Rusty King again after all these years, a glass of wine was the only thing that really made sense.
But when I sat down with it in the living room to put my feet up, I heard a strange crinkling noise. Right. Rusty’s notes were still in my back pocket, tucked away. Out of sight, out of mind.
What I’d told Lissa earlier echoed in my head as I pulled the notes out again. She’d worked hard on her homework after I told her about how good I’d been at mine. And if there was any chance that what Rusty was saying was actually true…
It was a long shot, but if Daddy said he was good at homework…then he should probably do his homework, too.
Just a look, though. Just to prove that I was right—that Rusty was either lashing out at my father in grief, or that he had actually lost his fucking mind and genuinely thought that he had a chance at winning me back.
Either way, it wasn’t going to happen. No matter what kind of evidence Rusty had put together, he wasn’t coming back into my life or Lissa’s.
Not after what he’d put me through.
Not after what he did.
7
Rusty
The drive home from Spartanburg had required a pit stop. I didn’t think I could head back to Harper and Nick’s place sober—not with two pregnant Omegas staying there and not a lick of alcohol on the premises. I left my Mustang at the bar as I stumbled out to the Uber.
I thought that maybe, once my driver dropped me off, I might’ve found my feet a little easier, but no such luck. The better part of a bottle of vodka would do that to a guy. I had to pick and weave my way to the front door, and even then, it was without the satisfaction I’d been hoping to find at the bottom of each shot glass.
The awful feeling that I’d failed at convincing Daniel to work with us was now coupled with an even worse one. I hadn’t managed to drown my sorrows, either.
“Rusty?” The living room light flicked on as I balanced myself against the wall, trying to kick off my cowboy boots without falling over onto the floor.
I squinted as the searing light hit my eyes. The way I remembered them, the living room lights in here had always been kind of soft and golden. But with the amount of booze that I’d funneled into my system, now they felt like spotlights.
“Kaleb. Harper. Hey.” I held up my hand to give the blurry figures of my brother a lazy wave.
Bad move. The wave threw my balance off. It sent me reeling to the right, one boot half off my foot and the other tangled in the entryway’s rug.
“Grab him,” Kaleb barked. “Before he falls over and wakes up the whole damn house.”
Harper was already moving to my aid. Just before I went crashing into coat rack, his shoulder caught me in the ribs.
“Woah there, big boy.” Harper’s words were joking, but his tone wasn’t. Up close like this, I could see now that he was scowling at me, too. “You drive home like this?”
“Naw. Pfff.” I blew out a breath of annoyance through my vodka-heavy lips. “Like I wanted to give the Fort Greene PD a reason to pull me over.”
Kaleb came up to my other side, lifting my arm up and slinging it around his neck.
“You smell like Smirnoff and puke.” He sniffed at me then turned his head away. “Hell of a cocktail, Rust.”
“You should see the other guy,” I slurred. A joke. To remind them how funny I was and shit.
But Kaleb and Harper weren’t laughing. I could feel how pissed they were at me. Maybe because I’d gotten home so late, or because I hadn’t brought Daniel Rasner back with me.
Even with their help as they guided me toward the couch, I nearly sent all three of us toppling over into the coffee table.
…Or maybe, they were pissed at me for being, well. Pissed.
“Great. So you went out drinking.” Kaleb pushed me off of him with a low grunt. When I fell into the couch, the cushions caught me. I bounced slightly, blinking while I waited for the world to stop spinning.
“Needed to decom… decom…” I leaned back, tasting the word on my tongue but not quite able to spit it out. “Like what those deep sea divers do so the nitrogen in their blood doesn’t boil.”
“Decompress,” Harper supplied. He raked his fingers through his hair, looking down at me like I was a spoiled kid who’d been caught joy riding in Daddy’s favorite classic car. “Rusty, you jackass. You were supposed to wrangle your baby daddy into helping us.”
“Not help yourself to a bar crawl,” Kaleb agreed. He was looking at me like I might as well have killed Josh myself. “I thought you were going to take this seriously, for fuck’s sake.”
“I am taking it seriously.” I scowled, crossing my arms over my chest. Even that only made me feel more like a petulant little brat. But what the fuck did either of them know? They both had Omegas. Babies on the way. And after all this time, my baby had only been two hours away. Hidden from me in plain fucking sight. “Give me a fuckin’ break. It’s been a shitty day.”
Harper and Kaleb exchanged a look. Like Mommy and Daddy were trying to decide whether to ground me from attending the spring fling, or if they should just take my phone away.
“Okay. So you had a shitty day.” Harper sighed. “Does that mean that Daniel isn’t going to help us?”
“Dunno.” I focused my eyes on the ficus across the room. Or, the three ficuses across the room. The way my vision was fucking up, it was like the plant was still deciding how many copies of itself it wanted to be.
“But you did talk to him, right?” Kaleb’s voice was full of accusation. “I swear to God, Rust, if you chickened out and wasted all that time just drinking today…”
Fuckers. They genuinely didn’t understand, did they? Couldn’t put themselves in my boots for a damn minute. They had no idea what it had been like, seeing him again—seeing her—
So I had to make them understand.
…Which would’ve been a hell of a lot easier if my tongue didn’t feel like it was made of half-dried concrete.
“She’s got my eyes.” The memory of those g
reen swirls in her irises, the gaps in her teeth, was enough to sober me up a little. “His hair, but my eyes.”
Harper and Kaleb shared another look. A longer one.
Harper shrugged. Kaleb nodded, then sighed.
“You finally got to meet her, then.” This time, there was at least a little sympathy in Kaleb’s voice. Finally. About time he caught on to how fucked up the little mission he’d sent me on really was. “Did he… Did Daniel…”
“Meet her. Pff. No, I wouldn’t say that. That’s stretchin’ it a bit.” A glimpse of my baby girl through the window of Daniel’s pretty little suburban house before he’d whisked her away. Not even a hug. Not even a handshake. “Only saw her for a second. But it was enough. My eyes.” I nodded, trying to convey how important that was to me. That she had some little part of me, however small. “She’s got my eyes.”
“That…must have been hard.” Harper glanced down the hall toward the master bedroom where Nick must have been sleeping, safe and sound. I could feel his mood shift as he did it. Must have been imagining what it would’ve felt like if it’d been his own kid that’d been taken away from him like that.
I appreciated it. It meant something, even though I knew the truth.
There was no way either of them could ever understand how this felt. Not without going through it themselves.
And that wasn’t something I’d wish on anyone.
“It was hard,” I agreed softly. The growl in my voice was subsiding. “It was really…really fuckin’ hard.”
As Harper slumped down into an armchair and Kaleb balanced himself on the arm of the couch, I felt like the sense that I was getting a firm talking-to was slowly vanishing too.
“We’ve stirred a lot of shit since we started this investigation, Rust.” Kaleb reached out and clapped a hand on my shoulder. “We know that sending you along to see Daniel was a big ask. But coming in drunk like this…”
“You never know who might be lurking around waiting to take advantage of that.” Harper patted his side, where beneath his shirt I knew the scar of a bullet wound was still forming, shiny and twisted and pink. “Plus, you’re our littlest brother now. It’s our job to watch out for you, ain’t it?”
I scowled at that. I was only the youngest of the King boys now because some bastard had taken Josh away from us. Being reminded of it left a surge of anger coursing through me. It refocused my brain even through the fog that the vodka had left floating in my head.
It had been a big ask, sending me to deal with Daniel. But they wouldn’t have asked it of me if there hadn’t been a damn good reason for it.
“I won’t do it again. Promise. But…I don’t know if Daniel will help us or not.” I hung my head. Admitting it made me feel like even more of a failure. “All I wanted to do when I got there was pick my baby girl up in my arms, hold her tight, never let her go…but Daniel wasn’t having any of that. Sent her away before he even answered the door. When I gave him the notes, he didn’t seem convinced. Reckon he thought I was there just to cause trouble.”
“Causing trouble is your specialty.” Harper smirked, but there was a sadness in his eyes still. I hadn’t given him and Kaleb enough credit, I realized. They cared. Of course they did. Us King boys had just never been all too good about talking out our feelings. Shouting and growling and needling at each other was usually about the best we could do.
“Still…” Kaleb’s brow was furrowed. I could see the wheels turning in his head. “I don’t imagine this Daniel Rasner boy is an idiot, Rust. After all these years you’ve stayed away, why the hell would you choose now of all times to come barreling into his life again?”
“He’s not an idiot.” Even now, even after everything, I still felt a little flare of protectiveness over Daniel. “He’s smart—real smart. Smartest person I’ve ever met.”
“Then he’ll be able to see through his father’s lies.” Harper grunted and nodded, perking up with optimism. “If he’s as smart as you say he is, he’s gonna read what we’ve given him and he’s gonna realize the truth.”
“And when he does…” Kaleb squeezed my shoulder. “We know this is a lot for you, Rust. Harper and I can take point from here on out, if you want.”
For anyone else, it might’ve been a tempting offer. But for me?
Hell no. This was my investigation now.
“You two, taking point on this?” I laughed, shaking my head. “Either of you old farts ends up in the hospital again, Nick and Derek’ll kill me themselves. Naw…I can handle this. This is my responsibility. It’s my turn to show you two how it’s done.” I stopped grinning for a second so they knew I was serious. “I’ll even do it sober.”
That made Kaleb laugh. “In the morning, maybe. Right now…” He sniffed again, reeling back. “You need a shower, kid. Then, bed.”
“Ugh,” I groaned. “Do I have to, Dad?”
Harper rose and came over to me, offering me his hand. Kaleb did the same. Together, they hauled me up and helped me stagger to the bathroom.
“Hot shower tonight.” Kaleb turned on the tap for me and tested the water the back of his hand. “Cold one in the morning.”
“Don’t forget to wash behind your ears.” Harper winked at me as he and Kaleb stepped out the door. “Good work today, Rust.”
As the bathroom filled with steam, I fumbled with my clothes and let the warmth engulf me. And somewhere in the blurry image of my face reflected in the fogged up bathroom mirror, just for a moment, I let myself imagine a different life for myself. One that I didn’t have to down the better part of a bottle of vodka just to escape.
A life where I’d built something for myself that wouldn’t have driven Daniel away.
A life where I could’ve been a real father for my daughter—not just a man standing outside her house, waving through the window and wishing I could scoop her up into my arms.
But as I stepped out of the last of my clothes and put myself in the shower, I let the water wash those dreams away.
It was just a fantasy, and I knew it.
But maybe…
Maybe someday, I could make it real.
It was a long shot, but it was the only shot I had.
8
Daniel
The next day, my head felt like a can of worms. Not like I’d opened a can of worms, although I supposed that was true as well. But no—inside my brain, the tendrils of the story Rusty and his brothers had put together were wriggling. Beneath my skull, damp, loamy soil was shifting.
My shoulders were tense and aching in anticipation of whatever would emerge.
“Will your friend come again today?” Lissa traced the outline of a rainbow in the fog on the backseat window as the rain poured down outside.
“No,” I said with certainty. “No, honey, that was a one-time thing. Promise.” It had to be. I didn’t know how to handle it if we had another unexpected visit from Lissa’s Alpha father—a man who I thought I’d forced out of our lives for good.
“He was good for my drawing, though.” A glance in the rear view mirror showed me that Lissa was pouting. “Miss Murray says I should always grab hold of inspiration.”
Despite myself, I smiled. Lissa didn’t seem to have made many friends at school yet, but Miss Murray was obviously good for her. It was even cute, the way she parroted her teacher’s words. I knew once Lissa started hanging out with the other kids more, she’d stop talking so much like a little adult. It was probably one of the reasons she was so serious—she’d never really had kids her age to play with.
Which meant I probably needed to arrange a play date or something during my lunch hour. Sometime in between dealing with my ever-growing stack of case files at work and figuring out what to do with all of the information Rusty had handed me. Plus picking Lissa up from school, snack, homework, dinner, dishes, laundry, bath time and a bedtime story—as a single father, my work was rarely ever done.
And who’s fault is that? The wriggling in my brain seemed to have gained sentience. If yo
u would’vet just forgiven Rusty and let him be Lissa’s father too…
I shoved that particular thought back down into the depths of my brain as quickly as I could.
What Rusty had done to me was unforgivable. If it was anyone’s fault that he wasn’t in my life anymore, it was his.
“Have a good day, sweetheart.” I pulled up to Willow Heights’ drop-off point and reached back to ruffle Lissa’s hair. “And no more drawing on your face, okay?”
She dodged my hand with ease and took it into her own tiny hands instead. Against my knuckles, she pressed an enthusiastic little kiss.
“I’ll behave!” she promised.
I pulled into a parking space up ahead so I could watch and wait until she got safely inside.
In Lissa’s absence, the crawling in my head only intensified. As promised, I’d done my homework. The more I learned about the case the King boys were following, the more I wished that when Rusty showed up, I’d never opened the door.
My relationship with my dad was a tenuous one. It had been for a long time. Hell, that was half the reason Rusty and I had ended up falling into bed together to begin with. Daddy issues.
My father wasn’t a great man. Sometimes, I wasn’t even sure that he could be considered a good one. His politics were all self-serving. His policies put people in positions of harm. It wasn’t just opposing Omega rights bills, either. He’d quietly supported cutting funding for public schools like the one Lissa went to. His budgets had left libraries, public transportation, and important social services without much-needed funds. For a long time, I’d wondered how many of the cases that wound up on my desk wouldn’t exist at all if our elected officials would have just given a damn about the people in our society that had it the worst.
The people I dealt with every day were troubled, but they were trying to get better. The children I visited during my follow-ups weren’t bad—they were from broken homes with no one to help them and nowhere else to go.
