by Eden Butler
I watch Joe’s face, his gleaming teeth broad against the same light, joy lighting up his features so that if I touched him, just now, I could feel the current of his happiness skimming into my skin. My father points across the sky, shows Declan one thing or another that fascinates him and they wear similar smiles, contentment that I don’t believe I will ever tire of seeing.
I remember the moment I said goodbye to the past. It was out there on that murky trail at the Dash, with exhaustion—and elation—pressing on me, weighing me down as Tucker, my yesterday, reached for me. I thought that moment was so profound, the greatest instance of power and hope I’d ever felt. I was wrong. This is. Now, in this place watching the two men I love most in the world; my father who left so that I would not be hurt by his past and the boy onto whom he had transferred all his love and affection.
My Daddy.
My Declan.
Right now, at this moment, I celebrate today and tomorrow both wrapped together and resting in my heart.
I love you, Today, because you give me peace, you give me a sense of who I am meant to be, because you proved that not every word is a broken promise. And I love you, Tomorrow, because you are limitless, because every thought, every hope I have right now is reflected in you. I can’t say I love you too much because my heart is an all-consuming, constantly replenished source of potential. It is full, bursting with hope, with serenity.
“It’s a sight, isn’t it, love?” Declan whispers against my ear. He leans over, runs his thumb along my bottom lip.
I smile, rest against his warm chest, enjoy the sound of his steady heartbeat. “Yes,” I say. “It’s beautiful.”
BEHIND THE PITCH
Note: This novella takes an alternative Point of View from the novel “Chasing Serenity” (Book One of the Seeking Serenity series); reading the original novel first is highly recommended.
The timeline in this novella shifts from present (Now) to past (Then) and takes place prior to the epilogue of “Chasing Serenity.”
Irish expat Declan Fraser met graduate student Autumn McShane amid the fire and confusion of undergrad hazing and too much whiskey. He isn’t proud of his drunken approach or the Neanderthal way in which he groped her that night on the rugby pitch. He can only excuse this behavior by saying that whiskey and a beautiful woman can make a lad completely forget that he normally is not a wanker.
Through that first impetuous and rather embarrassing encounter, Declan and Autumn’s lives would be irrevocably changed.
He still apologizes for being a drunken arsehole.
He’ll never apologize for kissing her.
One day this pain will make sense to you.
Love, Rugby
The same can be said of love.
***
N O W
Seven Days Ago
I’m convinced love makes you stupid.
How does anyone believe that not to be the case? For a time, I didn’t mind being a stupid wanker. I thought maybe, just maybe, the great well of shite my life has been was becoming a bit shallower.
Now I mind a bit more.
The plastic chair I’m sitting in squeaks when I stretch and the crack in the surface pinches my back. Guess cops don’t really care if their suspects are comfortable in this station. This town is so small, I doubt the cops even have a proper holding cell. At least that would have a cot for me to lay down on.
“Dude, you’re dripping.”
I look at Donovan with a frown I’m sure tells him what a ruddy arsehole I think he is. “What?”
He twists his chin at me, to the plastic Ziploc bag filled with ice I have been forced to keep on my swollen cheek. “It’s dripping.”
“Like you fecking care,” I tell him.
“Declan, I said I was sorry. I don’t know what happened, man. Honest.”
When I glare at him, my supposed best mate slinks down in his chair, pulls his fingers through his messy blonde hair. He doesn’t know what made him take a swing at me? Well, I sure as hell do.
It wasn’t my sodding idea. Layla thought we could discuss Autumn’s anger. Her other friends, Sayo and Mollie, were staying well out of this entire debacle. But Layla wanted my side of things before she decided if she should refuse to talk to me. I’ll admit, I was desperate. I’d likely have agreed to just about anything to get my ginger angel to speak to me again. The pub had been loud and Autumn saw me and Layla at the corner of the bar, inching toward each other to hear over the noise of the crowd. She made some assumptions. Like I’d ever be interested in anyone but her. She was fecking gorgeous with long, thick ginger hair and about a billion freckles. Fit body that is tight in all the right places. She’s funny and smart and has had me wrapped around her bleeding finger since that first time I kissed her in the library basement. She knows that. So how could she think I was trying to chat up one of her best mates? The light dimmed in Autumn’s eyes. She frowned. Betrayal was written all over her face and the tight grip that clutched my heart at that expression, made me blind to Donovan’s fist flying toward my face. It seems my best mate made some assumptions of his own.
That bugger has a vicious right hook.
Donovan is slumped over in the seat next to me, resting his elbows on his knees, shaking his head as though he can’t sort out what made him react that way, seeing Layla inching toward me.
A quick glance down at the poor sod and I decide to cut him a break.
“You fancy her.”
Immediately, his head jerks toward me. “What? Don’t be stupid.”
My cheek aches when I smile. It’s the first one I’ve managed since Autumn and I had our fight two days ago. “You’re a stupid bollocks, Donovan. You and Layla have been going after each other for months now. Get on with it, mate. You’re driving us all mad.”
“What the hell are you—”
“Don’t be thick. You lot have been pranking each other for ages and when you’re not doing that, you’re screaming at each other.” The ache in my cheek worsens when the smile goes wide. “That’s a long bout of foreplay, mate.”
“It’s not…she’s not—”
Now Donovan’s face goes all red and splotchy and he gives up his protests, abandoning me for the water fountain next to the lady cop typing at her desk. He gulps down the cool water like he hasn’t had a drink in ages and the woman at the desk eyes him hard.
Poor wanker. I can relate. I’m the biggest wanker of all. It’s because of Autumn that I was, and until just a couple of days ago I couldn’t care less about me being love’s bitch.
But then, that bleeding letter had to come from Ireland and Joe finally told me a secret he had been holding on to for years. Him and his fecking secrets. Should have known it would have blown up, would have driven a wedge between Autumn and me.
“I should have told you, Deco.” Joe went all fidgety, headed straight for the liquor cabinet and a half empty bottle of Scotch. I knew it was bad then. He hadn’t drank a drop in months. One massive heart attack and a near death experience had blunted his taste for the drink. But that day, his hands shook when he pushed the glass to his lips and he wouldn’t look me in the eyes. Joe had been my father since I was a teenager. He’d never lied to me, not about anything important. He’d taken care of me when my mum died. He’d been the only father I’ve ever known, but when the lawyers sent that letter to me, and Joe couldn’t quite make his eyes stay trained on my face, I felt like I didn’t know him at all. “I didn’t want to upset you, you see.”
“What’s this about, Joe?” Even stepping up to him, moving my head to catch his glance didn’t help. Neither did me shoving the letter in his face. “Who the hell is this Fiona O’Malley and why did she leave something to me in her will?”
Joe fell onto the sofa, clutching the glass in his shaking hand. “I imagine she didn’t leave you anything a’tall, Deco. It was likely Micah, her husband.” He took a sip of the Scotch, paused, and then downed the whole of it in one final swig before he seemed able to look at me. “Micah
O’Malley was your father.”
Joe waited for me to react, but I could do little more than stare down at him like a fecking idiot. He said the words as though they were nothing; as though that long-withheld name was some glib detail in the makeup of my life that he found trivial and unimportant.
It was his attitude, the casualness, that hacked me off well and good.
The words “your father” moved like a saucer around my brain. I didn’t know “my father.” I’d never known him. Mum’s sister, my aunt Clara, had told me from an early age that I shouldn’t worry about things like fathers. There had been many of my childhood mates that had been raised by women on their own, just like me. It wasn’t shocking or unheard of for a boy not to know who his da was. But Clara had warned me that mentioning my father to Mum would only make her already dark moods worse. I hated seeing her sad, didn’t want to be the cause of any tears.
O’course Joe would know. He was my mother’s husband for a time, but him knowing and not telling me? That was almost as bad as him never telling me about the family he had here in the States, or his own connection to Autumn until well after I’d fallen for her.
“Say something, Deco. Please, son.”
“How long?” The table in front of the sofa stopped my retreat when Joe stood up. I couldn’t manage to look him in the eye. He didn’t answer and I reckon my temper got the best of me. The table behind me slid across the floor when I kicked it. “How fecking long have you known about my father, Joe?”
His shoulders fell, as though all he’d given up trying to calm me; as though my anger was an absolution he’d willingly take.
“I knew about Micah O’Malley before I married your mum. I…I thought she was through with him when I took up with her.” He shrugged, returned to the sofa and avoided my eyes again. “When she told me she was pregnant I assumed you were mine.” Joe laughed to himself and the sound was bitter. “When you came early, I knew I’d been played for a fool.” I didn’t like the curl of Joe’s lip or the way his eyes had grown cold. “What an idiot I was, yeah? Believing her, thinking she would ever want me after she’d had that bollocks.”
Dammit, this wasn’t about him. “She was scared, likely,” I told him, feeling oddly like I needed to come to her defense. Joe’s glance met mine and a swift rush of anger filled me at the expression on his face, as though my mum had been some simple tart. As though he thought very little of what she did as a scared kid. But she wasn’t a tart. She was kind, fragile, never raising her voice far as I can remember, despite the stupid shite I got up to as a kid. It was always “that’ll do, Declan” or “be still now” when she fussed at me. I knew she wasn’t perfect. She had made mistakes, but that didn’t give Joe the right to look down on her. Besides, I’d known about her past, or so I thought. Joe had explained it all when he told me about the family he left in America. He’d come back to Ireland when mum got sick, mainly because he had never bothered to divorce her. I had to give him that, at least. But I didn’t like his judgment, didn’t like the look he gave me and I wouldn’t let him disrespect my mum. Not after everything since…not after everything he’d already put me through.
“Don’t give me that look.” I threw the letter at him, ignoring that Joe seemed immediately guilty. In my own anger, it didn’t matter. “She was a kid. She made a mistake, but you’ve known who my father was my whole life. You knew and never told me. Even after we came here, even after.... you should have told me.” I never hated Joe, not when I was an angry kid watching Mum die. I never hated that he came into my life acting like a father I never had when I lost the one person in life that made me feel safe, loved. I didn’t hate him after his past, his nondisclosures, threatened everything I wanted with Autumn. But now? After all we’d gone through, he still held secrets about my life. When would it end?
“I had my reasons.” Joe’s anger began to surface; I knew the signs. I’ve lived with him long enough to know when I’ve pushed him too far, when his temper flares and his hackles start to rise. I didn’t care.
“What were your reasons, Joe?” When I moved closer to him, Joe stood, his wide shoulders squaring as though he was readying for a fight. “Were they the same barmy reasons you abandoned your other family, abandoned Autumn?”
Too far. Much too far with that insult. Joe’s guilt over what he’d kept from Autumn had yet to subside and even though we were together, sometimes my stepdad would look at me and Autumn and I’d wonder if he thought she could do better. I knew he loved me. He loved Autumn, too, but that didn’t mean he thought I was good enough for her.
Joe’s eyes narrowed and I could see anger surf up his neck, on his face to color his cheeks pink. Joe might be in his fifties, he may have been weakened by his heart attack, but he was no pathetic old man. But I wasn’t thinking of mincing my words or worrying about Joe’s ability to hand me my arse. I was too hacked off to muck about with logic, or compassion.
The brimming anger swelled high and Joe met me nose to chin. “You might want to mind what you say, boy.” I was taller, but that death glare still had me inching back from him.
Sometimes anger weakens fear. It did that day. I wanted to hurt him, dole out the quick spark of upset he’d caused me, remind him of the pain he’d caused Autumn. “Why the hell should I? You lied to me about your other family, and now I find out you’ve lied about knowing my father. What else are you hiding, Joe? Have any other long lost children you’re keeping from us? Any other women you’ve left behind?”
“I’ll allow your anger, but not your disrespect. I protected you and Autumn both from the truth for a reason. I’ll not apologize for that.”
I was tired, so tired of his meddling; tired of the lies Joe liked to throw over all of us like a cloak. He’d controlled so much of our past, played us, both Autumn and me; he had held all the cards in the game our lives had become. Finding out from a fecking legal letter that he had withheld knowledge of my father’s identity, added with knowing how much he had withheld from Autumn, then I doubted that he had yet come clean with everything. How long would Joe continue to pull ghosts from the past to haunt those he swore he loved?
He walked away from me then, or at least tried to, but I’ve always been as pigheaded as Joe in being a stubborn arse. I grabbed his arm, spun him around, screaming, calling Joe every vile thing I could think of.
He was no weak man. He reacted, raised his fist ready to strike.
But I swung first.
“You old fecking bollocks!”
He blocked me and I pushed, my anger rising even further. But he wouldn’t strike back, wouldn’t even push me. “Stop it now, Deco.”
“Piss off, Joe.” Again I swung, this time high and to the right and nipped my stepdad right on the chin, just as Autumn came through the door.
She ran to him immediately, throwing herself between us even as she leveled the wickedest glare I’d ever seen from her right at me.
“What the hell are you doing? Are you crazy?”
I needed to make her understand that Joe somehow deserved my anger. Seeing her crowding over him, trying to lift his heavy weight on her own, only hacked me off further. “You don’t know what he did, Autumn. What he’s kept from me.”
“I don’t care what he did, Declan.” She stood in front of Joe then, him still on the floor as she shielded him from me. “He’s an old man. What the hell…” she looked down at Joe and then back at me as though she couldn’t process what she’d just seen. “This is insane.”
She wouldn’t hear me out. Wouldn’t let me explain. Of all people Autumn should understand how Joe’s lies inflict the worst kind of wounds. Seeing her hovering over him, forgetting everything he’s done to us both, only fueled my self-righteous anger and for just a few moments I forgot how much I loved her. I forgot that she was the most important person in my life. For just those few seconds, she meant nothing to me and I wanted to lash out, hurt her, even her, the woman who meant the world to me.
“Figures you’d take his side. Yo
u’re a good little girl, aren’t you?” I didn’t stick around for her response, just grabbed my keys and headed toward the front door.
“Where are you going?”
I didn’t look behind me when I left. Didn’t bother answering her even though I knew she’d worry, I knew Joe would. At that moment, all I cared about was cradling my own anger, being so utterly fed up with Joe and his puppet tricks.
I had a father I never knew about—but I could have. I didn’t know what he looked like, what kind of a man he was. I didn’t know when he died, didn’t know what he and my mum had been to one another.
Joe did. Clearly, he did and yet again, he kept it all to himself.
When hours passed and my anger quelled, I just wanted her. My Autumn. I had to make her understand. But she wouldn’t even let me through her door. So I stood in her doorway, trying to talk to her, feeling her own heavy anger flicking out onto me like a wave.
And then, suddenly and irrationally, she was the one hacking me off, with the way she defended the man who had brought her so much sorrow.
“Maybe Joe was protecting you. Maybe your father was an obnoxious bastard. He was clearly a cheater. Joe told me that much.”
Joe had confided in Autumn, but not me? About my life? They discussed my life, my business when I deserved to know the whole truth?
“What did you say?”
Autumn had wrapped her arms tightly around her waist, completely closed off from me. Despite my anger, I had to force my hands in my pocket to keep from touching her. I didn’t want her to talk, I wanted to hold her. But she continued. “Your…your mom. She and your father had an affair. He was married. He cheated on his wife with her and when she got pregnant with you, he broke it off. Joe believes she only married him to cover up the fact that she was pregnant.”
