And enough! Alex bullied his father away from Kelsey’s door, down the hall to the elevator. “Don’t call Mom a bitch, you asshole! And I can and will keep you away from my family. You walked away from yours. All of us. From Mom!” Alex rolled his shoulders, fighting for a modicum of restraint. “Where the hell have you been all these years? Why are you here now? What do you want?”
Mel stiffened his hairy chin and rolled one shoulder. He thumbed the bulbous end of his nose as if he were some kind of prizefighter. He was—the loser kind.
“I been places, you little fucker. Important places. Not like you ever cared.”
By then Alex was glaring down at the bastard. He was bigger, taller, and his shoulders were wider than the man who’d made his childhood hell. He was also meaner than he’d ever been as a nine-year-old. And smarter. “For once we agree. I don’t give a shit where you’ve been, and don’t ever call my wife Sissy!”
“Why not? She’s pretty enough. She looks like a Sissy.”
Pretty enough? “Because that’s what you called Mom! Or did you forget her, too? Or is that what you call all your girls? That’s it, isn’t it? Calling your whores Sissy made it easy to keep track of the one you were with.” That actually made perfect sense. Mel had other women. Alex knew that for sure. He’d hid the secret from his mom because by then, she’d been sick and hadn’t needed more crap in her life. Cancer and Mel were crap enough.
“I call ’em all Sissy because—”
“You know what? I don’t give a shit! How much do you want?” Alex jerked his wallet out of his rear pocket. “Fifty? A hundred? Two? How much will it cost me to get rid of you?”
Mel’s brittle gaze zeroed in on the bills in the wallet. His tongue flicked his upper lip like the snake he was. “I don’t need your money, boy. Fact, I don’t need nuthin’ from you. Just stopped by to say hey.”
“Hey,” Alex spat.
“Fine then.” Mel’s startling blue eyes fell to the tiled floor between them. “’S just that…”
Everything inside Alex turned to stone. Here it comes. He’s going to tell me he’s got cancer. Or two months to live for some vague reason. Or another bullshit story he thinks will force me to take him in. Not happening.
Mel stuck his hand out. “Never mind. You got a nice little family, son, and Sissy, err, I mean, Kelsey, looks happy. Just wanted to catch up on good old times with my boy.”
“I’m not your boy, and we’ve got no good old times to catch up on. Do you even know I was married before? Were you there after my first wife and daughter were killed in a car wreck while I was deployed? Hell, no! Where were you when I buried them, huh? Did you give a shit when Gram died from a broken heart after I buried Sara and Abby? You weren’t even there when I buried your own mother. For the love of God! You don’t get to just walk back into my life like you belong. You lost that right years ago. The fuckin’ day you walked out!” Alex raked a hand over his head. God, he was pissed.
“You’re sure a selfish bastard.”
“Learned from the best, didn’t I?”
“I’m outta here.”
“Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out.”
Mel shuffled into the waiting elevator, and Alex joined him. The ride down was dead silent, but finally, they were in the hospital lobby. Mel headed straight to the wide glass exit doors, and Alex was damned glad to see him go. Yes, he was a pitiful sight with his head down, and for certain, he’d slept in those wrinkled clothes. The sides of his dirty shoes were broken down and his jeans were worn and tattered. Those clothes and that ratty jacket were probably all he owned.
But Alex truly did not care. Abigail was the one he’d wished could’ve been here today. Not Mel. She was the one he adored. She’d been a saint, a long-suffering angel who’d made the mistake of falling for a foul-mouthed swabbie out of Norfolk. A sailor who’d done more harm than good to the people he’d declared he loved. Lies. All lies. Good riddance.
Abigail had passed years ago, long before Alex had ever thought of marriage or adulting. Long before Gramps and Gram died. He’d been nine when he’d lost his mom, and the memory still hurt. But he felt nothing for the man he’d lost the next day. Melvin Stewart had only ever been a lousy husband and a worse father. A loser. He shirked responsibility then, still did today.
Not like a motherless nine-year-old kid would’ve been better off with Mel in his life. Truth was, Alex had done just fine after he’d been dumped at Gramps’ farm in West Virginia, three days before Abigail’s funeral. But for that brief time with Mel, those couple days it took Abigail to die, that stupid nine-year-old had actually believed he’d be going home to live with his dad. That they’d, somehow, become a real father and son team. A family. That Mel would finally care.
Not so. Mel was there when Abigail died, but he wasn’t at the cemetery when Alex and his grandparents went back to Norfolk to lay her to rest. From that moment on, Alex hadn’t wasted a minute thinking about his old man. He’d learned the hardest way possible. Mel had nothing to offer anyone. Not a goddamned thing.
Standing at Abigail’s grave that blustery winter day had left one of those sucking black holes in that foolish nine-year-old boy’s heart. That was the day Alex turned to Gramps for the comfort and fatherly support he’d never gotten from Mel. Was also the day Patrick Bradley Stewart finally had a son he could count on. Alex and Gramps were inseparable from that day
