by Ally Blake
Just ask April. The look on her face when she’d realised he knew Hazel slammed into his mind as it had a thousand times since. He scrunched his eyes tight and shook it away.
Folding the ticket neatly, he tossed it onto the coffee table, then lay back on the couch; eyes closed, hands behind his head.
The fact that he was about to leave the country under a name he’d given himself in an effort to draw a line under his old life seemed fitting. Using that ticket would be such a neat departure. A far less exhaustive adieu to this chapter than he’d ever imagined.
No fake moustaches or switching cabs with the devil at his heels. No fraught goodbyes. Frank was prepared. And willing to ease the way. Kane and the boys had cornered him after the party to get the whole story. They’d fought and yelled and told him there was no way he was leaving. Then started making plans for a boys’ weekend in Napa.
All he had to do was get on a plane and he’d have an entire ocean between him and his past.
It would cost him nothing.
Except April.
Knowing there was a mere city between them made him feel like he wasn’t all there. As if she’d gleefully stolen pieces of him long before he’d even noticed she’d pried them loose.
He dragged himself upright. Knuckled his gritty eyes. Then lifted his head and stared though the blinds.
Only this time when April’s face filtered into his mind, he held it there. Forcing himself to face the reality of her. The truth that April wasn’t just people.
April was the reason he’d taken so much time deciding the best course of action. His father had so long been the shadow by which Finn navigated his life, he’d not been able to resist the stunning impact of the woman shining her determined light onto the darkest corners of his soul. In doing so, in opening up to him, in trusting him, she’d given him leave to trust himself. To no longer be guided by the scars of fear clenching in his gut, but the kinder voices in the back of his head. The unguarded desires of his heart.
All of which had led to his hasty decision to ask her to come.
But she’d said no. And she’d walked away.
Good decision. Smart decision. The only decision.
Because he’d given her no reason to make a different one.
He’d lied to her from that first moment. Hiding how much he’d come to want her, and need her, and care for her in a way that defied all debate. Opening up about his past hadn’t been a great confession, it had been a misdirection. Because it was easier than giving her what she really wanted. Himself.
Only by leaving could he truly put her first. Only by leaving could he keep her safe. Leaving would make him a better man. And a better man was all he’d ever wanted to be.
Finn dropped his tired face into his hands, pressing his thumbs into his tight temples. Then lifted himself off the couch, shoved his hands into his pockets and glared out the window; soaking in the savage beauty of the city at his feet until the rising sun, reflecting off the windows of buildings beyond, left coloured squares dancing behind his eyelids.
And with the clarity of absolute truth, he saw the path he had to take.
Out of the office and striding down the hall, he barked into his cell phone. “Town car to the airport. As soon as you can.”
Chapter Sixteen
A dive bar would have been more appropriate for the meeting Finn was about to undergo – somewhere dark and dank where the air tasted of old smoke and perpetual despair. Instead he sat in the bright, white visiting room of one of Victoria’s finer correctional facilities with a dozen others wearing big blue ‘guest’ badges.
He cleared the tight out of his throat. Counted floor tiles. Fidgeted. Like a needle bumping over a scratch, he kept coming back to the fact that he didn’t know how he was supposed to feel.
April had hit on a hell of a truth right there.
Finn didn’t know how he was supposed to feel. About anything.
About reconnecting with his father. About his success. About the way in which he’d achieved it. About walking away from all he’d built over the past fifteen years. Or about April.
He was sure about one thing. If it wasn’t for April, he wouldn’t be sitting in the visitor’s room waiting to talk to his father at all. Before her, the very thought would have been ludicrous. Impossible. Before her, he’d been angry, anxious, lost. His life a fog of early mornings and late nights and falling asleep on the couch, always facing his front door in case the bogey came back.
She’d brought not only light into his life, but colour. Hope. Simplicity. Joy. She made even the hardest things seem simple. Doable. Okay.
Because, no matter what happened, she’d be there. With her wide smile, her wild hair, her soft skin, her warm touch, her huge, kind, forgiving heart. And her love. For him.
Another thing he was sure about. She loved him. Before she’d probably even realised it herself. He’d felt it – like a life force spilling from her into him, wrapping around him, drawing him in. He’d known it in the way a man who’d been starved of such feelings his whole life knew. He’d been drunk with it. Thoughtless. Mindless.
That was why he’d made mistake after mistake in an effort to keep it close, to contain it, to do whatever it took to make sure he wouldn’t lose it. Wouldn’t lose her.
Because he loved her too.
His surrounds impeded on the edges of his vision like shimmering a grey haze, only so much as it occurred to him that it was a hell of a place, a hell of a time, to realise that he was in love for the first time in his life.
How else could he so readily put her needs before his own? How else was he willing to give her up?
Only love could have brought him there, could have made him quietly sacrifice the one thing that had kept him going, pushed him, made him strive – his absolute hatred for his father.
The hinges on the far door groaned a half second before the heavy block swung open and Finn snapped back to the present so fast he swayed with it; April’s bright, shining warmth leaving him in a cold, ghostly rush. He reached for it. Found it. Wrapped it about him like a cloak. He’d need it to get through this. To remind him why it was necessary.
A guard stepped through the door and time slowed. Then trickled to a standstill until everything in the room leapt into devastating relief. The scuff marks on the skirting boards. The sheen on the doorhandle. The mesh embedded in the small windows.
And then there he was.
Cillian Wardell. Finn’s father.
After all the time inside, Finn had expected his father to have aged. For time to have beaten him down. He should have known better. Wards were a robust breed. Truculent. Driven. Cillian looked broad. Fit. Handsome. His dark hair only just tinged with grey. Swollen knuckles on his gnarled fingers, and a white scar down the side of his neck the only sign that his life hadn’t been all goodness and light.
While Finn’s every nerve fired – relief warring with anger, fear with fight, as if his own body was trying to pull him in opposite directions, to tear him apart.
Till his father’s eyes found his – cool Irish blue, the exact same hue as Finn’s, and clear. Pupils visible. Clean for the first time in Finn’s life.
Cillian said a word to the guard, made him laugh. Seemed his charm hadn’t suffered. Then he moved through the tables and scraped back the chair opposite Finn’s before settling down.
“Jesus,” his father said on a laugh that drew glances, “you’re fucking huge, boy.”
“That would be because I am a man. Have been for a while now. It’s been fifteen years, in case you didn’t remember.”
“Hmmm. Perhaps it was easier to still imagine you a boy.”
Finn sat back, crossed his arms. “It was easier to imagine you in shackles.”
Cillian smiled his crooked smile – the one that had women coming at the hook of a finger and little old ladies giving up their life savings. “I’m a good guy now, don’t you know. Best behaviour. Didn’t my lawyer tell you?”
“They di
d. I didn’t believe it.”
Cillian dropped his hands. “Fair enough.” A breath as his eyes took Finn in. Then, “You’ve done well for yourself by the look of you. Made some money. How about friends? Found a good woman?”
Finn didn’t respond. He didn’t dare breathe. Giving his father even the slightest insight into his life, his friends, his woman was his worst nightmare.
Cillian held out his hands. Palms up. Conciliatory. “I only mean to say that I’m not surprised. You always were a smart kid. Drove me nuts. But I’m glad you found a way to use those smarts to grab a good life. Once I’d tasted the easy route it was too much of a lure. You’re stronger than I was. And I’m fucking grateful.”
Finn could no longer hold his breath. It came out in a thin, hot stream.
Then his father leaned forward, placing a hand on the table. “Look, Ethan—”
“It’s Finn, now. Finn Ward. Which you well know.” Finn’s voice came out gruff. Rough. Chafing the inside of his tight throat. “Getting in touch through my lawyers was one thing, but sending me that letter, at my place of work... Which of your goons did you use to track me down?”
Cillian laughed. It had been such a long time since he’d heard the sound, it shocked Finn into silence.
“Nothing that cloak and dagger, mate. I haven’t been in touch with the old crew in years. It was nothing but pure luck that found you. Maybe even fate. I saw you on TV.”
Finn blanked. “TV?”
“Late night talk show on cable TV – the kind with dodgy curtains and a potted palm in the background. Interviewing some rich broad claimed she was a love guru.”
Hazel. Finn ran a hand over his mouth.
“Finds rich guys for nice girls. Cinderella stuff. Even recognised one. That footy player who broke his leg diving.”
Kane.
“And there you were in a picture with the guru and some old guy – her husband, I figured – at some fancy do, drinking champagne. You were off to the side of the shot, and it was gone in a flash. But it was you. You, boy, were like a ghost. But that love guru – she’s everywhere. After that all it took was a couple of phone calls. Good behaviour gives me one a day, didn’t take long. The girl who finally gave you up told me to tell you to get your own assistant.”
Finn’s face dropped into his palms and he rubbed with all his might. There he’d been, creating systems so as to keep his life disentangled from any other. And Hazel had given his photo to a national TV crew. Not that she’d known how dangerous that was, because he’d never said a word.
“When my lawyer said you’d told him to bugger off, I was going to leave it. I was. Then I saw that picture. You looked like you had your shit together and I figured it was worth another shot. ’Cause I need you, son.”
Finn flinched, his entire body reacting against the word.
Knowing Finn’s patience was reaching its limit, Cillian’s words came out in a rush. “Far as I’m concerned they couldn’t lock me away long enough to get over what I did. But that’s not how this works. I’ve been given a chance to leave this place. A chance to find honest work. For honest pay. A chance at freedom.”
Freedom.
The word hit Finn like an arrow to the chest.
If he could pick one word that had summed up the motivation behind every choice he’d made since childhood that was it. Freedom from tyranny, from poverty, from fear. He dreamed of it, yearned for it, strived for it. He’d run, hidden, lied, charmed, skirted the edges of the law in order to get physical freedom, then financial freedom, each step hurtling him closer to that bright, shiny brass ring – finally feeling free of his past.
Now his father wanted that same chance.
Not helping the man meant Finn would be the one taking that chance away.
Finn cleared his throat as he tried to sort through the tumble of feelings stampeding through him and asked a question he’d never thought would leave his lips. “Where would you go? If you got parole.”
Cillian licked his lips, his hand shaking on the table before he curled it into a fist. “I’ll be put up in a halfway house the first six months. My lawyer can help me find work once I can prove to him, and to myself, that I can stay clean. Menial. Lowest pay grade imaginable, I expect. But I don’t need much. The sun on my face more than one hour a day, the choice to decide what I want to eat each night, that’ll be worth it.”
The possibility of his father leading a normal life, a life of honest struggle, sat between them, like a shadow; difficult to imagine into reality.
“You don’t owe me anything, I know that,” his father said, “but I hope you can find it in your heart to listen to an old man’s rambles. Just this once. And then whatever you decide to do after that... No hard feelings.”
Finn, seeing an end, whatever it might be, nodded.
“It’s about your mother.”
Finn’s throat locked up. His whole body clenched. He felt like he was being held together with cheap glue.
“After your mother died, so did I. Small ways of acting out – against God, against the world – soon grew into bigger ways. Each needing to be a little more dangerous than the last so as to eke into the pain she’d left behind. All the while knowing each danger took me a step closer to her. I knew... I knew you’d be okay. With your willpower, your mental toughness, even as I lost myself you were strong enough to endure. But Bradan...”
Finn closed his eyes.
“Bradan was too much like her for me to handle. Such a soft kid. Chasing butterflies, reading all those books. I punished him for it. Bradan was never meant to be there that day. I was high. And angry with you. Because I could see how strong you were, even then. A strength I couldn’t control, couldn’t find in myself. I honestly don’t remember pulling him out of school. But witnesses attest, and that’s that. It was entirely my fault. I lost my wife. I killed my son. Her son.”
Into the ensuing quiet Finn dragged his eyes open to find tears sliding down his father’s bristled cheeks.
“When the police came, when they took me away, when the lawyer told me there was no getting off – it was a relief. Coming here was the only thing that kept me alive.”
Finn swallowed. Swimming deep in the unchartered waters of understanding his father for the first time.
His voice was rough, as he said, “That’s why everything went so wrong that day. You wanted to get caught.”
Sadness settled over her father’s eyes. “Sometimes, son, you get so deep in a hole of your own making, you’ve involved too many others, made so many errors, you literally can’t see a way out beyond running. But letting it go down the way it did was the coward’s way. I know that now. I needed to put my hand up and admit my mistakes. To face them. And to pay for them. I’ve done that here. I’m ready to do better this time. To try.”
Finn felt a familiarity of realisation scoot up his spine.
He had wanted to get caught.
April had accused him of the same. And she’d been dead right.
When he’d felt himself falling for April, it was so foreign, so counterintuitive, the freedoms he held so high no longer as important as being with her. With her spontaneity, her endearing oddness, and her blistering intuition, she had begun to unpick the very fabric of his life.
In making sure the time would come that he’d get caught in a lie, Finn the great fixer had fixed things to fail.
But in chasing freedom with such single-minded determination his whole life, he’d forgotten that freedom meant different things to different people. The freedom to go, or to stay. The freedom to self-protect, or open up to others. The freedom to be an island unto himself, or to love and be loved.
Freedom was whatever he wanted to be.
As if reading his mind, his father said, “Love screws with a guy, Ethan.”
“It’s Finn,” he said automatically. “And of that I’m well aware.”
“Are you now?”
Finn’s gaze cleared as he looked once again on his father, who was smil
ing at him now. Tears dried, charmer back on deck. Only there was no malice behind his eyes – only calm, and sorrow, and hope.
“If I can leave you with one piece of advice... Finn, it’s to be very, very careful on that score. She the kind of woman won’t leave your head? Can you smell her perfume even when she’s not there? Does her laugh made your heart turn inside out? I half wish she’s not. ’Cause when you have that, and then lose it...”
Cillian tapped a finger on the table. Three times. Then curled it into his palm.
Finn had already lost it. No, he’d tossed it away. Because not having known that kind of selfless, true love in his life he hadn’t understood what he was protecting himself from.
Well, he was done protecting himself. Done looking over his shoulder. Screw his past. Screw his DNA. He was Finn fucking Ward. And this wasn’t the end.
Finn sat forward, steepled his fingers, and looked his father in the eye. “So here’s what’s going to happen. I won’t be writing you that letter of support. It would dishonour Bradan. But when you do get out, whether it’s in a few weeks months, or years, you will look me up. No, I’ll do better than that. No more lawyers talking to lawyers. I’ll keep track of your continued reparations. If there’s anything you need to help on that score while you’re in here, I will look after it. And when you get out, I will be there to give you that chance at an honest life. To honour Bradan. To honour Mum. To be a better man.”
Finn’s father breathed deep, his nostrils flaring, his eyes shining. “Jesus, son. I don’t even know what to say.”
“Freedom has its own challenges. I know. Focus on getting ready for that and I’ll help you take it step-by-step from there.”
As his father’s eyes shone with new tears, Finn cleared his throat and nodded at the guard, who took a few steps into the room.
The men each pushed back their chairs. Finn held out a hand to shake on the deal. Or to say goodbye. Or something.
But the guard called out, “No touching.”
