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Chapter 4
Liam
I cutEli’s pancake into squares.He’d speared a sausage link with his fork and was chewing on one end.Silverware clattered around us.I’d grown up coming to this diner with Grandma Gin.Grandpa had never come to town with us.I thought he hadn’t liked the food.Then I’d gotten older.Saw the looks people gave us.Saw the tightening in Grandma Gin’s shoulders when we went to the bank or to the store or the tractor supply place on the edge of town.Her friends worked at the diner and she’d felt comfortable here.Everywhere else, I was Cameron Barron’s bastard, and the gossip about the night Mom died never went out of style.
I set the knife down.“There.Don’t drown them in syrup.”I glanced at Owen’s plate.He’d ripped his pancake in half and speared it like Eli had the sausage.“Put that down.We’re not cavemen.”
Eli screwed his face up as he dumped Log Cabin all over his plate.“Cavemen ate pancakes?”
A large shadow loomed over us.“What are you teaching your kids, Liam?”Holden swung into the booth, bumping Owen over with a grin.
“Holden!”Owen and Eli said in unison.
My cousin was like a celebrity.I wasn’t sure if it was because Holden treated them like his buddies, only smaller, and with cleaner language, or if it was because I didn’t bring many people around.I might suffer assholes that were usually my relatives, like I was paid a million a year to do it, but my kids didn’t have to.
Holden ruffled Owen’s hair like a soft noogie and lifted his chin to Eli.The waitress who’d served me when I was the kids’ age stopped over.“Usual for you today, kiddo?”
Holden was as tall as me.His heavy shoulders took up most of the forty-year-old booth.Only a five-year-old could fit next to him.But Holden grinned the same way he probably had when he was five and Jocelyn had waited on him.“Yes, ma’am.”
She gave him a sweet smile that made me wonder if she was going to muss his hair like he had Owen’s, but she hurried away.
I dug into my everything omelet.Holden eyed it.“Thought you’d be sick of eating out.”
“I don’t eat out much.”At his raised brow, I explained.“I pack sandwiches for lunch.Sometimes I buy a few subs to get me through the week cuz I get sick of packing lunch.When I leave in the morning, I grab my lunchbox, a Pop-Tart, and a banana.By the time I get off work, I’d have to go shower before I went to a place with decent food or go through fast food.”I poked my fork at him.“Drive-throughs got old after the first year.”
Holden grunted.“I’m not used to living in a place with more than a Tasty Queen that’s open only in the summer.”The only drive-through place in town.Fast food in Coal Haven was that or the Hot Stuff pizza in the gas station.
“I miss home-cooked meals.If it doesn’t come out of a box and can’t be grilled, I don’t make it.”
“I cook.You’ve gotta come over.Bring your wingmen.”
Eli’s wide eyes turned on me.“Can we go to Holden’s, Dad?”
I studied my cousin.Who was he trying to piss off by having me and the boys over?The guys I worked with and around in Williston were either single and out looking for hookups, or they had families and were like me.When work was done, we shot home as fast as possible.Some guys were a mixture of both, and I tried to stay away from that drama waiting to happen.My life had been affected enough by a cheating husband.
A lot of the guys I went to school with had moved away.That left the relatives that had nothing to do with me.And Holden, when he liked to get under his mom’s or uncle’s skin.I hadn’t been invited anywhere, unless it was a woman’s place.Half the time, they wanted a quick fuck in the back seat, skip the awkwardtime to leavestage, and go our separate ways.Add in the kids, and there were nohey, you should come overinvites.
Derek and Kenny had been the exception.
“You serious?”There was an edge of warning in my voice.He could kid around with me in that superficial way of his, but Eli and Owen wouldn’t understand.
Holden lifted his brows.“Why wouldn’t I be?”He shrugged.“I mean, Iknow, but I’m a grown-ass— Uh, a grown man.I don’t need my mom’s permission about who I hang out with.”
He glanced at Eli and awareness brightened his eyes.Holden wasn’t an idiot.He acted like it sometimes, but it was just that.An act.I had no idea why.“Look, the things we get told as kids, we accept.We don’t know any different.Then we grow up and think about that information and realize there’s more to the story.And we don’t necessarily agree with how people were treated.”
“Not everyone thinks the story has more than one point of view.”It felt like we were speaking in code.If I were to buy the house and land, Eli and Owen would learn soon enough what it was like to be different from the other Barrons in town.
“Not everyone is able to distance themselves from certain people.”Like Cameron and Naomi.“Not everyone got a front-row seat to the shi— Uh, crap show that went down.It was messed up, what happened.”
“Yeah, it was.”Mom had confronted Cameron.She’d pissed him off by naming him as the dad on the birth certificate and giving me Barron as a last name.She’d already lost her job.Fucking the married boss and getting pregnant with his kid tended to do that.
But she hadn’t been able to let it go.Scorned by the guy she’d had the bad judgment to fall in love with.Hated by the town, thanks to the vitriol spewed by Naomi.Broke and living with her parents, she’d left me with Grandma Gin and confronted Cameron at the street fair.He’d told her off in front of everyone.Accused her of being greedy, luring him away from his wife—as if he were some unwitting sailor at sea and she was a siren when he’d been the CEO of the oil refinery and she’d been his young personal assistant.He’d demanded she leave him alone and claimed she needed to seek professional help.Hadn’t she damaged his family enough?Wasn’t she satisfied with what she’d done?
I knew all the details.People had filled them in over the years.The town could be super helpful like that.
Mom had left, distraught.Sobbing.Shaking.And she’d accidentally driven headfirst into a grain truck on the narrow highway heading out of town.So… Shit show was an accurate description.
My father couldn’t own up to his role in his infidelity.He’d chosen to be harsh and mean, and I’d lost my mother because of him.Messed up?Completely and utterly fucked up.
