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“We heard a scream.” Reid’s sharply angled jaw was set, his fists balled at his sides. Gage looked similar, minus the fists. His mouth wore a scowl, his gaze sweeping the area around them for looming danger.
“You okay?” Gage asked Sabrina.
“I didn’t scream. That was Veronica.”
“We’re fine,” Flynn said before amending, “Julian’s nose is broken.”
“Broken?”A fraction of a second passed before Reid’s face split into an impressed smile. He clapped Flynn on the shoulder.
“Do not encourage him,” Sabrina warned.
“So what now?” Gage asked at the same time more of Julian’s groaning and Veronica’s soothing echoed from the adjacent room.
“We’re skipping the rest of the funeral,” Flynn announced. “Who wants to go to Chaz’s for fish and chips?”
“I do,” Reid said, his British accent thickening. The man loved his fish and chips.
Gage, ever the cautious, practical friend, watched Flynn carefully. “You’re sure this is what you want to do?”
Flynn thought of his father, angry, yelling. His gutting words about how if he wanted to become as great a man as his father, Flynn would have to first grow a pair. He thought of Emmons’s bitter solitude after Mom had succumbed to cancer fifteen years ago. Emmons had suffered that same fate, only unlike Mom, he’d never woken up to what was really important. He’d taken his bitterness with him to the grave. Maybe that’s why Flynn couldn’t bear seeing his old man lowered into it.
Sabrina wrapped her hand around Flynn’s and squeezed his fingers. “Whatever you need. We’re here.”
Reid and Gage nodded, concurring.
“I’m sure.”
That was all it took.
They skirted the crowd patiently waiting for him to take his place as pallbearer. Moved past nameless relatives who had crawled out of the woodwork, and past one of Veronica’s friends who asked him if he knew where she or Julian were.
“They’re inside,” he told her.
Never slowing his walk or letting go of Sabrina’s hand, he opened the passenger side door for her while Gage and Reid climbed into the back. Then Flynn reversed out of the church’s parking lot and drove straight to Chaz’s.
