Hold (Gentry Boys, #5)(55)

“I’ll be back, boys,” I excused myself and cautiously approached the bar.

Since Saylor and I had gotten married, my relationship with John McCann had slowly evolved from angry glares into sort of a stiff politeness. I figured he was trying his damn best to get used to me but couldn’t quite let go of the fact that not only was I a Gentry but I was a Gentry who had badly hurt his only daughter when we were kids.

“John,” I said, and carefully held my hand out. He shook it, as he always did, but pulled back quickly. Again, as he always did.

John swiveled around on the stool as I sat beside him.

“Saylor with you?” he asked and I heard the hopeful rise in his voice.

“No, she’s home with the girls.”

John smiled faintly. “How are Cami and Cassie?”

“Beautiful. Like their mother. Getting bigger every day. Say posts pictures online all the time, don’t you see them?”

“Yeah, I do. I should come around more. I haven’t seen the girls since Christmas and I keep meaning to make the drive up but we’re understaffed and I’ve been putting in twelve hours, seven days a week.” He paused, took a drink and then turned a frank stare on me. “I’m sorry, Cord. About your mama.”

I stared at the lacquered surface of the bar. “You know the truth. You know she’s been gone a long time.”

He nodded and his mouth turned down. “You know, I remember her well. When she first got here she drove the town berserk. Man, she was a beauty. “

“So I’ve heard,” I said quietly.

He nudged my shoulder slightly. “I’m sorry, kid. Didn’t mean to rub salt in the wound.”

“You didn’t. There’s no point in dwelling on what’s gone though. That girl you remember died long before my mother did.”

“Fucking Benton,” he spat and I saw the hatred in his eyes. I didn’t know what kind of run-ins the two of them had endured, growing up at the same time in the same small place but it certainly wasn’t friendly. John grimaced. “Shit, I just keep shoving my foot in my mouth, don’t I?”

“It’s okay,” I assured him, watching my brothers pretend like they weren’t trying to overhear us as some waitress other than Kelly dropped off our drinks.

John took another sip of beer and was slow to put the glass down. He’d probably run out of things to say. A few times it over the years it had struck me that there was always this elephant in the room, just squatting there blinking at the two of us. There was always something that had gone unsaid, something we had never talked about. Maybe today was the day to send all old hurts to their final end.

“John,” I said and he looked up. “All these years and I’ve never apologized to you.”

He tensed. “For what, Cord?” He was going to make me say it, to acknowledge what I’d done.

“For treating your daughter like dirt. For hurting her, humiliating her.” I swallowed. “I never really understood what it must have been like for you, until I held my own girls.”

He watched me without blinking. Saylor had inherited her green eyes from him.

“I hated you,” he said tersely. “That’s no mystery. For a father to see his little girl hurting like that, it’s agony. I figured you’d end up being the same miserable heap your old man was.” Then he sighed and looked kind of unhappy. “But you were just a dumb kid with your own f*cking problems.”

“I was,” I agreed. “And I still don’t know what the hell I ever did to deserve your daughter. I don’t know why she gave me a chance to prove I wasn’t that nasty piece of shit any more. But I’ll happily spend the rest of my life atoning for that and for every other f*cked up thing I ever did if that’s what it takes to be the man that Saylor and the girls deserve.”

He nodded sadly and turned back to his beer. “I wasn’t there for her enough. I was a rotten father most of the time.”

I didn’t argue with him. Saylor was more wounded by her mother’s flat out rejection, but she had always acutely felt his emotional distance. Still, there was a bright side. He deserved to hear it.

“She turned out to be an amazing woman anyway.”

John smiled. “Yes she did.” He took his phone from his back pocket and ran his thumb over the screen. The wallpaper was a photo I had taken of Saylor as she held our newborn baby daughters. Her smile was so full of brilliant joy it made the screen fairly radiate. John stared at the image of his daughter and granddaughters for a moment before flicking to another picture. It was Saylor as a toddler. She carried a dandelion in her hand and a look of wistful wonder on her face.

“I got married too young,” John said with dreamy regret. “I wasn’t ready to be a dad and by the time I got used to the idea she was half grown and it seemed like I didn’t know her at all. It’s only now that I realize she’s the only good thing I ever managed to do with my life.”

I felt myself softening toward the man. He wasn’t the perfect father but he loved his daughter. “It not too late. Take a day for crying out loud. Take two. Drive up to Tempe. It would make her so happy and you could spend time with the girls. “ I swallowed. “You know, you’re the only grandparent they’re going to have.”

I hadn’t realized that was true until I said it out loud. But Saylor’s mother wanted nothing to do with any of them. My mother was now dead. And if Benton came within a thousand feet of my girls I would rip out his f*cking jugular.