Only You

by Addison Fox

  The fact was, his mother—a woman who by all accounts had made something of her life that was good, and noble, and responsible—had made a terrible error in judgment. He’d been honest in admitting that it bothered him, yet equally honest in expressing why he could and would move past it.

  Harlow had secretly—in her innermost heart of hearts—thought herself somewhat noble for forgiving her father for his indiscretions. Yet Fender had positioned it in a way that not only made more sense, but took the burden off of her. Off of the notion of the entire situation being solely about forgiveness.

  It was okay to be upset. To wish the person you loved had behaved better. And it was okay to still love them in spite of the flaw.

  Which made her trip to Park Heights that much more necessary.

  Around two A.M. she’d finally given in and accepted sleep was going to prove elusive. So she’d clicked into one of those Google links she’d been diligently avoiding, looking to see where she might begin the trip to acceptance. It would also give her a chance to make the apology she’d intended on earlier in the week, at the rally in the park.

  The one that had been interrupted by her meatball-sub lunch with Fender.

  Louisa was speaking at a breakfast at the community center, and for a nominal fee of three dollars, you could add pancakes, sausage, and coffee to the proceedings. Harlow did just that, quietly picking up breakfast for the elderly couples behind her, and found a seat in the back. The crowd was large, and Harlow quickly realized their excitement went well beyond a surprisingly hearty breakfast.

  Louisa was a well-loved speaker. Her tales of growing up in Park Heights, the way the community had kept its roots yet spread its wings with growth and development, were a hit. Add in a few well-placed stories about her boys that were particular favorites, and she held the audience enraptured.

  To her surprise, by the end Harlow was enraptured, too.

  There was no question that Louisa was well able to do the job. What was even more clear was just how much she wanted the opportunity to do the work. She had plans, from road paving, to borough-wide intramural programs for at-risk teens, to an idea that particularly captivated Harlow—a pilot program at a local elderly care facility that would include a preschool.

  By the end, Harlow was on her feet with the rest of the crowd and looked forward to her turn to speak with the candidate.

  She helped a few of the volunteers clean up the breakfast plates before they gathered up the tablecloths for washing before the next event. The action helped calm her nerves, and gave her something to do while waiting for the large crowd to slim down.

  And then finally it was her turn. All the plates had been tossed and the coffee cups emptied in the sink, and there wasn’t anything holding her back.

  “Louisa?”

  “Yes?” A soft smile played across Louisa’s face, drooping only slightly when she made the connection. “Harlow?”

  “Yes.” Harlow extended a hand, receiving a warm clasp in return. “Harlow Reynolds.”

  “I didn’t see you here.”

  “I came in just before you started. I was in the back.”

  “I hope it was okay.”

  Okay? The comment was genuine and Harlow wondered if the woman truly understood the magic she’d woven over the crowd.

  Over her.

  “Your speech was inspired, and I love your ideas.”

  “I’d like to get them off the ground. Even if the election doesn’t go in my favor, I think I’ve got enough support on some of those to push for them.”

  “The preschool is my favorite.”

  Louisa’s face lit up. “Mine, too. I saw how Emily thrived as my boys grew up, and how good it was for all of them. Then recently I saw an article about a pilot program in the Pacific Northwest—” She broke off on a small, wry smile. “I could keep going on and on, but think I may be overlooking the bigger point. I understand you met Emily Weston the other night.”

  “Oh yes. She’s a character.”

  “And then some.” Louisa gestured her toward one of the front tables. “And she thought you were something special. She hasn’t stopped talking about you.”

  “I enjoyed Friday night and meeting her. Meeting all your family.” The reality of why she was there suddenly hung between them. “I’ve owed you a visit for a few weeks now. Ever since my mother decided to interfere with your election.”

  Louisa’s focus shifted to a point on the back wall of the community room before she seemed to come to some conclusion. Her gaze was direct and unwavering when she finally spoke. “Your mother is entitled to her anger. I’m sorry she’s felt the need to express it now, but she’s entitled to it.”

  “That’s awfully understanding of you. More than she deserves, really.”

  “I’m not so sure about that. I made a poor choice. One a lot of people, including yourself, have had to live with.”

  The thoughts that had kept Harlow company shifted once more. Between her understanding martyrdom of silent forgiveness and the freewheeling live-and-let-live attitude she’d resolved herself to in the middle of the night, Harlow realized that maybe there was a middle ground.

  Simple acceptance.

  Although something had been pulling her toward this moment for a while, she hadn’t been entirely sure what a conversation with Fender’s mother would entail. Would some long-buried anger work its way to the surface? Or would Louisa’s own frustration and embarrassment become something she’d use to lash out with?

  Much to Harlow’s relief, neither had happened. Instead, there was just healing conversation over coffee.

  “It was a long time ago. I’d like to think my life has more definition and meaning than something that happened when I was a child.”

  “It certainly seems to.” Louisa’s gaze drifted away once more before coming back, as she seemed to steel herself to speak. “I was very sorry to hear of your father’s passing. I know it’s been many years, but it’s a painful thing to lose someone you love.”

  Once again, emotion rushed Harlow, this time shifting her so hard it nearly upended her before she slowly righted herself. And in the quiet aftermath, she realized something else.

  Whether the love was ill advised or not, the day her father died, Louisa Mills had lost someone too.

  “Thank you. He was always so much larger than life that it was a shock when it happened.”

  “It was a heart attack?”

  “Yes. It was massive and not something he’d have recovered well from, if at all.” Harlow thought back on those days—at the news that had been delivered in the hospital lobby by a well-meaning surgical resident. At the questions she’d finally had the courage to ask her own physician the following fall during her annual physical.

  And the acceptance through the grief she’d finally found a few years later, when the pain wasn’t quite so choppy or the reality quite so difficult to comprehend.

  “He wasn’t a man who would have handled being an invalid very well,” Louisa said.

  “No.” Harlow smiled at the thought. “Not him.”

  “I am sorry for it.” Something relaxed in the stiff set of Louisa’s spine and Harlow felt hers relax in kind.

  “Thank you.” Harlow wanted to say more, yet held back. It was enough that Louisa had asked. It had to be enough.

  And then, as if she understood it was enough, Louisa shifted the conversation once again. “I understand you have a gallery in the city?”

  “I do.” They spent the next few minutes talking about some of Harlow’s recent shows before the conversational sands shifted yet again.

  “Since we seem to have come to some sort of understanding here, maybe you’ll indulge me for a moment.”

  “Indulge you?” Harlow asked. “For what?”

  “Let’s talk about my Fender.”

  * * *

  Fender tapped a hand against his thigh as he reached for a wrench with his other hand. The underside of the Buick above him was a mess when he’d started, bu
t he’d have Mrs. Zartman’s Regal purring before he was done with it. Even if the woman had avoided coming in for maintenance for a good year.

  He shuddered to think of her barreling through traffic on the Belt Parkway in the car’s previous state, but except for warning her not to let her car get into the same condition again, there was precious little he could do about it. Other than the occasional outreach to someone’s children suggesting that their parent shouldn’t be driving any longer, he had no say in what happened once they drove off his lot.

  Someone had left the radio on a country station, and while he was a rock-and-roll man himself, he easily hummed along to a Brett Eldredge tune. Brett had just finished crooning about Illinois and Brad Paisley had started on the great impact of a lone beer can when something tugged on Fender’s foot.

  “Yo, Fend!”

  Nick’s voice echoed down to him, loud but muted by the two thousand pounds of metal over his head. “Give me a sec!”

  He made the last few twists with the wrench, satisfied he was leaving the Buick in a shape nearly as good as when she came off the line, and pushed himself and the dolly out from beneath the car.

  His brother stood over him, a heap of man in a gray three-piece suit.

  “Look at you. Snazzy as a Sunday churchgoer.”

  “I had calls this morning.” Nick looked every inch the businessman he’d become. Between his investment in and subsequent work with at the End Zone, and his recent purchase of the Unity Brewery, the big kid who’d grown into an even bigger football player had become an adult. A bona fide player in Park Heights and, if Fender knew his brother’s ambition, well beyond.

  “What brings you by?”

  “Rumors.”

  Fender didn’t miss the dark look that rode Nick’s eyes or the stiff set of his shoulders beneath the mile of Italian silk. “Office?”

  “Yep.”

  Fender tugged a rag from his back pocket and wiped off his hands as they walked. Pointing toward his office door, he beelined for the sink. “I’ll be right in.”

  In moments, he’d scrubbed off most of the residue of Mrs. Zartman’s Regal and headed for his office. When Nick closed the door behind him, something hard settled deep in his chest. “What’s going on?”

  “Your father’s back in town.”

  Whatever Fender had been expecting—and quite a few things had run through his head in the past thirty seconds, including illness, death, and the possibility something highly unlikely had happened between Nick and Emma—the mention of his father wasn’t remotely on the list. “What?”

  “Chili called me a little while ago. Said he’d heard it from an acquaintance that Trent was back in town and looking for some work.”

  Fender was well aware his father’s definition of work didn’t pass the usual pressure test. Although the man was a great mechanic, the pay had always been beneath his dreams, so he’d turned to leg breaking, petty theft, and the occasional drug run to augment his income. “Fuck.”

  “I thanked Chili for the heads-up. He said you should call him if you needed anything.”

  Chili Samuels, Nick’s personal champion and the former owner of the bar that had become the End Zone, had moved to Florida around the same time he’d sold to Nick. Although not a leg breaker himself, Chili had always maintained a base relationship with the less-savory elements of Park Heights. He’d managed and run a business that stayed off their radar, yet sustained a sort of equanimity with the neighborhood’s thugs.

  Nick had managed the same, albeit with a bit more polish than his predecessor. But it was always a solid reminder when the distance from respectable bar owner to town thug was pointed out.

  “When did he get back?” Fender asked.

  “Chili didn’t know. Said he could look into it if you wanted, but I told him to hold off until I could talk to you.”

  “Thanks. Yeah. Good call.”

  “You okay?”

  It would be easy to dismiss the question with a shrug and a sneer—but this was Nick. His brother. And a man who’d grown up under the same shadow of fists and bruises, condemnation and abuse. Nick’s had taken the form of an asshole with fists whose problems lived in the bottom of a bottle.

  While the outcome had been the same, Fender’s had carried the extra layer of criminal element. His father was small-time, but he was mean as a snake and, Fender suspected, equally lethal if crossed. To this day Fender didn’t know for certain if the old man had killed anyone, but if he had to bet on it, he’d side in the cardinal-sin column.

  “Why do you think he’s back?”

  “I don’t know.” Nick stilled for a moment. “A lot of his old associates are gone. Goldfish died a few years ago and Boneyard bit it even before your old man left. Sonny “Lemons” is still in prison and Joe Tortoricci seems to have gone straight since he’s been out on parole. We can check with Cade or Daphne on that.”

  It was a good call on Nick’s part that would leave Chili out of the middle of things. Daphne’s brother, Cade, had run vice for over a decade for the NYPD out of the same precinct as Daphne. Cade would know the score.

  “It’s a good start, but geez, do you hear yourself?” Fender was the last person who should make fun of a name, but Goldfish and Boneyard and the inimitable Sonny “Lemons,” who had gotten the name on account of the fact that his shitty—and criminal—personality was the exact opposite of the sun or anything that remotely smacked of freshness. “Those names? The backgrounds and the rap sheets each one of them has or had? Shit.”

  His office was too small to pace—especially with someone else in it—but Fender stood up anyway, unable to sit. He’d built something, damn it. Had moved on and built a life, and a business, and a future for himself.

  What the fucking hell was Trent Blackstone doing back, right in the middle of it all?

  And just like that, the leisurely Sunday he’d spent with Harlow filled his mind’s eye, a sheet of ice spreading through his body like frostbite.

  He couldn’t expose her to this. Couldn’t take the risk his father might find out about her.

  “Fend? You okay?”

  “Yeah. I’m great.”

  Fucking swell.

  The fears he’d harbored over a crappy past and a long-dead relationship between his mother and her father seemed like the least of his problems. If Trent Blackstone got a load of the classy woman with the killer legs and Upper East Side pedigree, he’d never go back to the hole he crawled out of.

  Ever.

  Chapter Ten

  Harlow hit mile three of her run around the reservoir and fought the urge to veer off toward the vendor cart she’d passed on the south end of the path. Although she exercised regularly, the need for a fourth mile was specifically because of the third hot dog she’d inhaled on Sunday night and the pancakes on Monday morning. She’d done her penance the day before with a run and knew a second day of atonement was required for that lapse in judgment.

  When you added on the attack of nerves that had suddenly taken root every time she thought about her dinner the next evening with Fender, the incentive remained high to keep pushing forward, one foot after the other.

  She deftly ignored the hot dog’s siren call and kept on. The August morning was hot, even though she’d started her run around six. She thought fondly of the cooler days that would be here before she knew it.

  It wasn’t in her nature to wish her life away, but she’d be lying if she didn’t admit how much she looked forward to what might be in her future. The time she’d spent with Fender had been amazing. What was building between them—and hopefully would come to something more after their dinner—even more so.

  The fears she’d had over starting something with him hadn’t vanished, but their Sunday together had given her a new perspective. Her time with Louisa the day before had given her even more confidence that they could all find a way forward.

  Maybe it was naïve of her, but she’d begun to convince herself that they could find a way past their mutu
al backstory. Because in the end, that’s all it was. A history that neither she nor Fender had participated in, that had no place in their present.

  Or future.

  Not that it wasn’t awkward, she admitted to herself. She could be as brave in her own mind as she wanted, but she still hadn’t mentioned to her mother or her brother that she was spending time with Fender. Nor had she gone out of her way to introduce him to any of her friends.

  Which she’d change.

  If she could ever figure out which one of them she might want to introduce him to.

  The sad fact was that she had few friends, and her social life was mostly made up of acquaintances. How had she let things get to that place?

  Her best friend, her roommate from college, had moved to a Chicago suburb a few years back with her husband and children, and Harlow had allowed the distance and their separately busy lives get the better of them. Their third roommate had been roaming the world on photography assignments, and other than a few Facebook messages, likes, and post comments, Harlow had lost touch with her, too.

  All of which needed to change.

  Whether or not Fender Blackstone became a permanent fixture in her life, she needed to reconsider the one she was living. The fun evening out with his family and friends on Friday had opened her own eyes to how much she was missing out on, and it was time to make a change.

  With renewed energy, both mental and physical, she picked up her pace and sped through the rest of her fourth mile. Heading for the cart—and resolutely resisting everything but a bottle of water—a loud hello pulled her from her thoughts.

  “Harlow?”

  “Tandy!” Harlow glanced down at her soaked tank top before stepping back. “I’m in no state to hug you but it’s good to see you.”

  “You too.” Tandy leaned in anyway and gave her a polite kiss on the cheek. “I’m about to start my workout so I’m going to hope your self-righteous exercise vibes rub off on me.”

  Harlow gestured toward a nearby bench. She might have been neglecting friends of late, and here was an opportunity to change that. “Let’s catch up quickly before you get started. It’s so nice to see you.”