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CHAPTER ONE
WALKERCOLELOOKEDat his sixteen-year-old son and felt a piece of his heart come undone. It was a lot to take because he’d just left a piece of his heart in California in his oldest son Carter’s new apartment when he’d dropped him off for his first year of college. And now his youngest son was leaving for the summer. Even though Sky would be back at the beginning of the school year, it was still a lot.
He was an empty nester for the summer, and he had no idea in hell what to do with that.
Raising the kids, especially as a single dad, had been all-consuming.
After losing Anna, he’d lost a dream. And so, he’d had to work at building new ones. Had to work at figuring out how to take his joy and wrap it around those kids. As tight as he could. And sometimes it was breathtakingly sad, knowing that Anna wasn’t here to see this.
That she wouldn’t see Sky play a mouse in the Christmas pageant.
That she wouldn’t see Carter make the varsity football team. Or see him graduate from high school. Or go off to college. Move into his first apartment.
He grieved her loss in a hundred different ways every day. But in some ways, that made it easier. That was what they said, right? That you ate an elephant one bite at a time?
You didn’t grieve all at once. Which should make it all more bearable.
Maybe.
Nothing was easy about it. Nothing was easy about losing your high school sweetheart. Nothing was easy about watching your kids lose their mother.
And dammit all, nothing was easy about sending your boys off into the big wide world, knowing how unforgiving it could be. He wanted to hold on to them tightly. He wanted to keep them safe.
And with Sky especially, who was headed off with dumb teenage friends for nearly three months, he wanted to lock him in his bedroom and tell him that he couldn’t leave.
He’dwantedto do the same with Carter. But hell and damn, he couldn’t.
Being a father, eventually, was about letting the kids go. He knew that. They didn’t belong to him. They were on loan. He was charged with helping to make them the best men that he could. And he had done it. At least, he hoped he had.
Not that he hadn’t had help.
Frankie had been indispensable for all these years.
Frankie.
That was a whole other shift that was about to happen. Frankie was a whole other problem. One that had been getting worse for the past few years. But one that was going to self-solve.
He felt like an ass, but honestly, keeping Frankie around any longer than necessary was asking for trouble at this point.
He wasn’t going to think about that right now. Even though his friends were in the car, Walker leaned in and gave Sky a firm hug.
“You drive safe.”
“Dad, of course we will. You know I take that seriously.”
You had to when your mom had died on that familiar route home, a route she’d taken hundreds of times only to encounter a drunk driver at just the wrong time.
A drunk driver who had walked away while Anna was dead.
“I’m serious, though,” Walker said. “No horsing around. No drinking and driving.”
“Seriously,”said Sky. “I’d never let them do that.”
“Good.” He clapped his son on the shoulder.
He wasn’t going to say anything about underage drinking. Because hell, he was letting his kid go out into the world. Sky knew what Walker expected. What he thought. But that didn’t mean he was going to obey. Walker had to trust that his kid was going to take the values that he’d given him and carry them forward on this trip.
Lord.
