Total pages in book: 51
Estimated words: 49385 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 247(@200wpm)___ 198(@250wpm)___ 165(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 49385 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 247(@200wpm)___ 198(@250wpm)___ 165(@300wpm)
She moves to the door, hand on the knob. It’s not a shove, but it’s a dismissal with manners. “Thank you for the hospital,” she says. “Really.”
“I want more than weekends,” I say, quietly. It’s the only hill in the room I recognize.
She looks at me a long second. Whatever she thinks, she doesn’t hand it over. “Good night, Lucas.”
My body knows how to leave a room without making a mess. Boots. Jacket. Keys. I step into the hall because staying would be a different kind of damage.
At the elevator, I take one breath, four-count in, four-count hold, four-count out. Box breathing. It doesn’t fix anything, but it keeps me from punching drywall.
The SUV is cold. I like it that way. I sit with my hands on the wheel until the heater stops wheezing and the windshield clears. My phone lights: a text from Duke—
DUKE: Client wheels arrived early. We’re repositioning to South Harbor. You in?
En route
I type. Then:
Might be useless company.
Three dots.
DUKE: We’ll discuss.
I drive, city lights smearing on wet asphalt, wipers clicking steady. “Weekend father,” I say to the empty truck, testing the phrase like a bruise. My jaw aches again.
At the marina, the air tastes like metal and salt. Holiday lights are strung along the boardwalk in cheerful loops that feel like a dare. I pull into the shadow of a delivery van. Duke raps the hood twice, climbs into the passenger seat, brings a draft of cold air and hunter’s quiet with him.
“You look like a man who got handed a problem set with no right answers,” he says, buckling in.
“Feels like one.” My voice is sandpaper.
Gunner’s SUV idles two spaces down, a dark silhouette topped by his trucker cap. He crackles the radio with a low, dry: “I have eyes on the south entrance. And, uh, congrats, I guess? If ‘congrats’ is the word.”
“Thanks,” I say. It scrapes less the second time.
Duke watches my profile. He’s a professional at letting silence do surgery. “A baby, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“How you gonna handle it?”
I give him the truth he’ll respect. “Not sure.”
He grunts. “You breathing now?”
“Trying.”
We scan for fifteen seconds. It’s habit, and it buys me time. A couple stumbles past in knitted hats, laughing too loud. A gull screams at no one. I report what I see because I need a sentence I can finish. “Two private patrols on rotation. One black sedan circling the block for a second pass. No plates in our registry.”
“Copy,” Gunner says. “Clocking the sedan.”
Duke lets that ride, then: “What do you want?”
The question sits heavy. I could punt, cite the op. I could say I don’t know. I do know one thing with clarity that scares me more than any alley. “Not that,” I say. “Not weekends. Not ‘you can meet your kid in a calendar invitation.’”
He nods. “Then don’t accept that.”
“She set a boundary.”
“So set one of your own,” he says. “Show up. Not loud. Not forcing it. Just… persist. Earn it. Be there when it counts.”
I stare at the boardwalk lights until they blur. The anger is still there, a hard knot, but it’s changing its shape—less flammable, more useful. Under it, something steadier: the picture I didn’t know I was building in my head—a crib anchored to a wall that doesn’t squeak because I fixed it; a birthing class where I’m the guy holding the terrible plastic doll like it matters; a Tuesday afternoon where I’m timing contractions with the same focus I use on a stakeout; a kid in my lap on a porch learning that flame is hot and love is not something you show up to on alternate Saturdays.
“I asked the wrong way,” I say, and the admission tastes like iron and relief. “In the store. I boxed her in.”
“Then unbox it,” Duke says. “You’re allowed to be pissed. You’re not allowed to be done.”
Gunner: “And for what it’s worth, ‘complicated’ is just the word men use before they’re ready.”
“Thank you, Dr. Phil,” I mutter, and catch myself almost smiling.
Our client’s car pulls up to the south gate. We work—clean, quiet, precise. Hands know what to do. Eyes do their jobs. The job is good for me. It files the edges down without sanding away the truth.
When the handoff is done and the marina returns to sleepy, I lean back in the seat and stare at my hands on the wheel. They didn’t shake tonight. They will later.
I text Melanie:
Home? Hydrated?
A minute. Two.
Yes. Thank you
No period. She always forgets the period when she’s typing fast.
I type and delete three times. I land on:
I’ll be at the next appointment if you’ll have me.
The dots appear. Disappear. Appear.
Okay. I'll text you details
Copy. Sleep.
I add a water emoji because I’m an idiot and because it makes her send back a laugh emoji that feels like a handhold.
Duke tips his head against the window, eyes closed like a man catching a ten-minute power charge. “You going to be okay?” he asks without looking.