The desire to go home just proved all the accusations his father had thrown at him over the years. Too soft. Too weak. Too goddamn stubborn. That makes two of us, old man.
But not old enough. Sixty was too young to die. There was no warning or slow decline of health. No chance for reconciliation. Despite what the rest of Houston thought, Beckett didn’t hate his father. They were just too different—or too similar, depending on who he asked. All Beckett ever wanted was some semblance of a relationship with the cold bastard, but any hint of softness had died alongside Beckett’s mother all those years ago.
He scrubbed a hand over his face, trying to focus past his exhaustion and the first stirrings of something that might be grief. Or relief. The battle was over, for better or worse. There would be no more tense dinners that inevitably ended in fights about the future of Morningstar. No more awkward holidays that spotlighted the missing piece of their family and the loss of what could have been. No more trips for Beckett that were barely concealed excuses to get him the hell out of Texas, at least long enough for them to cool off about the argument of the month.
The future stretched before him, a single path forward that he was destined to walk alone.
What the hell were you even doing driving, let alone driving drunk?
He paced around the kitchen island for the fifth time, but his restless energy didn’t dissipate now any more than it had in the hours leading up to that moment. There were no answers there, and if answers did exist, they were in Thistledown Villa, currently forbidden to him. He could sneak in—he’d been sneaking out of that place since he was fifteen years old—but it would muddy the inevitable legal wars if he got caught and…
Fuck it.
He pulled on a new pair of jeans and a black T-shirt and headed for the parking garage. His old Harley had been to hell and back with him, but he’d kept it out of some perverse need to stick it to his old man. It didn’t make a lick of sense as he stood in the darkness, flipping the key from his palm and out and back again. Nathaniel had been a remote and harsh father, but that didn’t mean Beckett had been the easiest kid to deal with. He was as responsible for the times they butted heads as his father was.
His phone rang, dragging him from his thoughts. He yanked it from his pocket. “Yeah?”
“You back in town?”
Beckett closed his eyes. All he had to do was make his excuses, get on his motorcycle, and drive the forty minutes out of town to the mansion. Instead, he answered truthfully. “Yeah, I got back a few hours ago.”
“Want to go get a beer?” Frank Evans, his longtime friend, offered him a lifeline he hadn’t known he needed.
“Yeah.” It was even the truth. With one last look at his Harley, he pocketed his keys and headed for the elevator. “Usual place?”
“I’m already here.”
That surprised a laugh out of him. It felt good, almost cathartic. “I’ll be there in fifteen.”
It only took him ten minutes to walk from his condo to the Salty Chihuahua, a tiny bar sandwiched between a Mexican restaurant and a high-end spa that catered specifically to pets. Inside, the theatrically dimmed lights gave hints of the vintage pinup posters plastered on the walls, and all the tables were adorned with fishnet-clad plastic legs instead of normal table legs. He veered around a group of drunk college kids and made his way back to the corner booth tucked near the door to the kitchen.
As expected, Frank lurked there. He’d managed to find a specifically dark shadow to sit in. Beckett never knew if the man did it on purpose, but he seemed to melt into the shadows the way some people always sought the sun. Combined with his fierce scowl and the height and body that would fit right in with any NFL player. No one fucked with Frank. Though, truth be told, that had as much to do with Frank’s money and influence in Houston as it had to do with his forbidding looks.
He slid a beer bottle over as Beckett sank into the opposite side of the booth. “Thanks, man.”
“How you holding up?”
He didn’t know how to answer that. Even though he’d known Frank damn near twenty years, they didn’t do the braiding-each-other’s-hair-and-whispering-secrets bullshit. That didn’t change the fact that, at the end of the day, Beckett trusted the man with his life. Their friendship had lasted despite life hauling them apart for months and sometimes years at a time. It never seemed to matter. When he needed him, Frank was there—and vice versa.
That still didn’t mean he wanted to unload all his emotional bullshit. “Fine.”
Frank snorted. “More like you’re not completely torn up the bastard is dead and that’s bothering you as much as being an orphan is.”
Orphan.
It felt like a dirty word, for all that it was the truth now—had been the truth, if not the reality, since Beckett’s mom died. God, could I get any more morose? Beckett drained half the beer in a single pull. “I’m fine, Frank. Not okay, but fine.” There was no damn reason he should feel like a ship without an anchor, drifting from wave to wave, no land in sight. Nathaniel King had been many things, but a safe harbor didn’t enter into the equation.
Beckett eyed his beer. “Tonight might be a whiskey night.” Even as he said it, he knew he wouldn’t get shit-faced drunk no matter how much he wanted to. Work waited, and it was time sensitive. His conflicting feelings about his old
