Full Tilt (Full Tilt #1)(82)

“Do you want to go in alone?”

“I don’t think I can.”

“Maybe he’s changed,” he said. “He’s cold on the phone but maybe if he saw your face, up close. Saw how beautiful you are, and how much you love him. Because it’s all right there in your eyes, Kace. He might see it and things would be different.”

“I don’t know,” I said slowly.

The front door opened and my parents came out.

I clutched Jonah’s hand in a vise grip as they went down the walk toward their car. In the light of the streetlamps I could see my mother, small and birdlike, wearing a neat blue dress with a black purse. Beside her, my father was tall and lean in a navy suit and yellow tie.

“They’re going out,” I said.

“You can do it,” Jonah said softly.

I mustered my courage, my will, added it to the overwhelming desire to talk to my parents. Seeing them after four years swamped me with nostalgia, even if so little of it with my dad was good.

“Okay,” I said, and reached for the door handle.

But then my father stopped at the passenger door of the Subaru. He turned to my mother.

“Wait,” I whispered, laying a hand on Jonah to still him.

My father was saying something. We were parked too far away to hear, but I could see my mother tilt her head up. Her brittle, plastic smile bloomed into something spontaneous and joyful. She tossed her head—a carefree, almost girlish gesture I’d never seen before. Her laugh floated across the street and my father brushed his thumb over her chin—a lover’s caress. Romantic.

“Dad.” My mouth shaped the word without a sound as he opened the passenger door for my mother. When he moved around to the driver’s side, his stride was almost a strut, his angular, stony face soft and amused.

“Kace, they’re going,” Jonah said.

“Let them go,” I whispered.

“Are you sure?”

But the car was moving away from the curb and disappearing down the street. My fingers lifted off the window frame in a small wave.

Jonah’s fingers caressed the back of my neck. “Why?”

“They looked so happy,” I whispered. “I’ve never seen them look like… It was such a moment, you know? If I’d gotten out and surprised them, it would have ruined it.”

His hand played soft in my hair. “I’m sorry.”

“Maybe he’s better,” I said, “now that I’m gone. I’m not trying to be a martyr. I just mean…maybe he’s happier. Which makes them better together. I wouldn’t want to mess that up. God, they looked so in love…” I exhaled, and looked back at Jonah with a weak smile. “Let’s go back to the hotel. We have an early flight in the morning.”

Jonah started up the car, drove ten feet, then jerked it to a stop and threw it into park. He turned to face me, one hand on the steering wheel, the other along the back of my seat.

“When you’re ready, you’ll come back,” he said. “And your father might talk and reconcile, or he might hold on to his stupid anger and turn you away. If he does, then he’s a goddamn idiot. You wanting to be loved by him doesn’t make you broken, Kace. He’s the broken one for letting you go. It’s his loss. I want to hate him for what he’s done to you, but instead I just feel sorry for him.”

He kissed me then, fiercely, as if sealing a pact, his hand tight in my hair.

“Needed to get that off your chest, did you?” I asked.

“Yep,” he said.

“Feel better?”

“Much.” He put the car in drive and pulled away from the curb again.

I turned to the window to watch my old house go past. “Me too.”





End of September




I sat on my bed, guitar in my lap and notebook open beside me. I tapped a pen on the lower body of the Taylor acoustic, sighing at the blank pages. No lyrical flow today. Wasn’t happening. Chett was a dead subject to me, and I didn’t want to write about my dad. Basically I was too happy to go digging in the dark pits of my past.

Which, all things considered, was a good problem to have.

For six weeks now, Jonah and I had been together. A couple. Almost every night after work, he’d come to my place, or I to his. He didn’t need much sleep and I was a night owl with nowhere to be in the morning. We spent the deep hours lost in each other, making love—sometimes hard and rough, sometimes slow and gentle—then talking, eating and laughing before falling back into bed.

We had our little routines. Sunday nights at the Fletchers’ house, outdoor dinners beneath Jonah’s glowing lamps. Lots of laughter, good food and better conversation. Tuesdays were our date nights. ATM cupcakes, a fountain show at the Bellagio or just staying in to watch a movie.

He left a stash of his medications in my kitchen, and I bought a blender at a yard sale so I could make smoothies for him. And nearly every day, I brought lunch to the hot shop where Jonah and Tania were hard at work finishing the installation pieces. The gallery show at the Wynn was only two weeks away, but Jonah said he felt confident he was going to make it.

He is going to make it, I thought. And beyond. He’s healthy. His body is strong.

I felt the strength in his body almost every night. My little flame of hope was a torch now, and not even a hurricane could douse it.