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Mr O’Hara grimaced at Jonathan and leaned against the doorframe. Dark hair streaked with grey, green eyes. Checked red and black against wood. Somewhere behind him, Ben and his mum were giggling.
“What can I do for—?”
“Why?”
Pinched eyes. No long lashes like O’Hara’s. These eyes looked bald, tired.
Jonathan’s voice broke. “Why did you push your son away?”
The door began to close and Jonathan stepped a foot inside. “He left because of you. You didn’t care. You didn’t love him.”
Laughter, dry and humourless.
Jonathan’s teeth ached. “Why?”
Mr O’Hara stared at him, hard. “We butted heads. We had our faults. I said things I shouldn’t have. But he was wasting his potential. He got all ‘A’s, he could have become anything. He could have become something. I urged him to think about his future and he wouldn’t. He refused. In those last years at school, he stopped taking the subjects that would have given him a better chance at a career. All he wanted was to study philosophy and Greek history. All he wanted to do was please you.”
Jonathan jerked back, losing his footing on the threshold.
Mr O’Hara didn’t shut the door, he kept coming forward. Onto the porch, hit by softening hail. “Later, after he left, I told him he’s welcome home if he admits his mistakes. He chose not to do that. He hasn’t learned the lesson yet.”
How different father and son could be. One manipulative, controlling. The other light, life itself. “You offer him an ultimatum and ignore him when he wants to come back. That’s not a lesson. That’s you pushing him away.”
Mr O’Hara’s brow quivered briefly. He shifted from foot to foot, but he doubled down. “He needs a taste of the real world. What it’s like to struggle. When he realises how he squandered his potential, he won’t make the same mistake again.”
Jonathan’s heart pounded. He steeled his voice. “What mistake? He earns more from classics than he ever could have in IT, or even as a doctor. He’s always followed his heart. Always done the right thing.”
Another dead laugh. “The right thing? All he ever did was argue and break curfews. Tell me one phenomenal thing he’s done right, and I’ll eat my words.”
Jonathan looked hard into stubborn eyes. “I could spend all night telling you incredible things about David. But I will tell you four that even you have to agree with.” He pushed forward, nose to nose. “Olivia Anne, Meira Nicolaus, Felix Shreth, and Nash Treatise.”
“Who are they?”
“The people your son has saved.”
He didn’t walk home, after. He walked to Jacquie’s. She let him in and he stood dripping on her welcome mat until she brought him a towel and a t-shirt—his own, one he’d left after they’d broken up. He changed into it. His jeans were damp, but nothing that would seep into her furniture.
He crossed to lean on the mantel and let the blazing fire underneath chase off the chill of the rain.
Jacquie muted a cooking show on the television. Jonathan pictured her and O’Hara with a good glass of wine, cooking aprons, and a whole lot of flour as they tried to recreate a cake or muffin or something ridiculously extravagant. They’d make watching a weekly event.
If he lived here.
“Jonathan?”
She held her hands over the fire with him; red light danced over slender fingers he’d so often held in his own. He’d always held on tightly to Jacquie.
As if trying . . . to squeeze something real between them.
He looked into the fire.
Sometimes, we just want to burn, she’d said.
He met her wide brown eyes. Warm, waiting. Specks of mascara had dusted onto her cheek, adding to her pretty freckles. “You were right to end things between us.”
Her eyes twinkled. “I know.”
“I really wanted us to work.”
“I know that too.”
“Should I let you tell the rest?”
She laughed and rubbed his arm, then ran her hand down his sleeve, pausing above his watch. She let go. “There’s that one aisle at the library. Romance on one side, history on the other. You stand at the shadowy end every shift, breathing it in. You stand there and read through the posts on your Picstar account. You cared about me. You offered me respect and fondness—a part of your heart, even. You just could never offer all of it.”
He returned his gaze to the fire licking at logs, eating the wood black and glowing red.
“I’m not blind, Jonathan.” Air shifted and a kiss touched his cheek. “Neither are you.”
“I’m sorry I never loved you the way you deserve to be loved.”
“I will be, one day.”
“Yes.”
“He will be attractive.”
“Yes.”
“Incredibly smart.”
“Yes.”
“More charming than anyone we’ve ever met.”
“Don’t push it.”
She laughed, and sighed, and rested her head against his shoulder, tucking an arm around his. “You never talk about when O’Hara left.”
An ache opened like a chasm in his chest. “There’s not much to say. We were friends and then he was gone.”
