I shook my head. “Born politician.”
“I’ve been keeping the peace pretty much since you were born, so why not do it professionally?” He sipped at the bottle that held his microbrew. “You just waiting to get adjusted to the altitude?” He motioned at my water.
“Nope.” I watched the ice move as I swirled my glass. “I don’t drink anymore.”
Xander’s eyes widened. “Since when?”
“Since the day we buried Sullivan.”
He flinched and set the bottle on the table. “Because…”
“Because bad things happen when I drink, and to be honest, I’m too good at killing people to lose control. Look what I did to you.” I rubbed my eyebrow, and his mouth tightened. “I never told you how sorry I was. How sorry I am.” How fucking sick I felt every time I saw the scar.
“No. This was not your fault.” Xander shook his head and leaned forward, keeping our conversation private in the noisy bar. “I grabbed your shoulder. I knew how messed up you were from Afghanistan. I knew better. You reacted. That’s on me. Not you.”
“I was beating the shit out of Oscar Hudgens in the snack aisle of the gas station. You stopped me, and I threw you through a damned window.” My grip tightened on my glass. “Don’t excuse my fuckup.”
“Oscar deserved it.” He shrugged, dropping his voice low. “I heard what he said about moving in on Willow, since Sully was gone.”
Rage, as unsettling as it was comfortingly familiar, locked my jaw for a moment, and I sucked a breath in through my nose, noting that Oscar held down a seat at the bar. Even all these years later, I wanted to bash his head into the bar top. Unlike all those years ago, I’d learned how to control my temper…for the most part.
Willow was the only woman I’d ever gone to blows over. That night hadn’t been the first time, either.
“I don’t think I would have stopped,” I admitted and turned my baseball cap backward so he could see my eyes. See that I meant it.
“I know.” His thumbnail pushed under the beer’s label. “You know Charity owns this place now, right?”
“I didn’t,” I answered, thankful for the change of subject.
He nodded back toward the bar, so I leaned to the left and saw a pretty brunette talking to our waitress.
“Never thought I’d see the day that Judge Noah Bradley’s daughter owned this place. Did he have a heart attack?”
“Nah,” Xander replied. “Doesn’t talk to her much, though. Not since Rose was born, I guess. That all happened while I was gone. You know how he gets when he feels like he holds the moral high ground.”
“His daughters—and granddaughter—be damned, I guess,” I muttered. The news of Charity’s pregnancy hit right before I left for basic, ripping through the town like a machete, dividing the population into Team Charity and Team Noah. No one sided with Gabe, who’d abandoned both his high school sweetheart and his unborn kid for a few years.
My fingers rubbed together, as if they still rolled that little onyx rook I’d left on Willow’s windowsill that night so she wouldn’t miss it. Not that she’d needed me when she had Sullivan. She’d been far better off.
“Fathers.” Xander sighed, tipping back his beer.
“Speaking of fathers,” I jumped in, only to pause when our waitress brought two orders of eggs and bacon.
“Thanks, Jenny,” Xander told the young woman, who looked to be about five years younger than I was.
She tossed me a skittish glance, and I thanked her, which earned me a shy smile.
“You in a relationship?” Xander asked as she walked away, definitely swinging her hips.
“Nope,” I said, salting my eggs. Damn, I loved breakfast for dinner. “Not looking to be, either. You?”
He smiled at his eggs. “Kind of. She lives down by the resort. Nothing serious yet, though. So, you were saying about fathers?” He shoveled a bite into his mouth.
Subject changer extraordinaire.
“Yeah, so this is going to sound like it’s out of left field, but I was wondering how much Dad has talked to you about his advanced directive.”
Xander paused mid-chew and then swallowed, looking at me oddly. “What do you mean?”
“I mean he asked me about a DNR.” There it was, spewed on the shiny surface of the wooden table, where it sat between us as heavy as an elephant.
“A Do Not Resuscitate order?”
“Yeah.”
“I thought you said he didn’t know who you were when you dropped by.” His brows furrowed.
“He actually left me a voicemail about a month ago.”
Xander sat up straight, abandoning his food. “He left you a voicemail.”
“He did. Honestly, it’s what brought me here. Not that I wasn’t long overdue to come home and help you, but it was the first time he’d called in six years.”
His expression didn’t change. Not even a muscle twitched. “And he asked you for a DNR. In a voicemail.”
I took my cell phone from the back pocket of my jeans and scrolled through to my voicemail. Then I tapped the saved message and hit speakerphone, putting it between us as it played.
“Camden. It’s your father. I don’t even know where you are anymore. This isn’t easy for me to say, but you need to come back. Alexander is overwhelmed. He takes on so much for me, for the town… You know him. I’m losing myself more every day, and it’s dragging him down. Your brother needs you. He’s so good but so stubborn. He sees the world in black and white, no grays. Not like you do. I want a DNR, Camden. Alexander thinks that means I’m ready to die, and that’s not what this is about. I’ll keep living as long as God wants, but if He calls me home to your mother, to Sullivan, then I don’t want to be held here by extraordinary measures. I deserve to make that choice. You’re the only one Alexander will listen to and—”
The voicemail ended.
Xander blinked and picked up my phone, no doubt looking for the second part of the message.
“That’s all there is,” I told him as he handed it back to me.
“He can’t…” Xander hesitated, shaking his head. “He has no clue what he’s asking for. He’s probably not even lucid in that message.” He dug back into his eggs.
“He’s asking for a DNR. Does he have one?” I asked, leaning forward.
“Hell no, he doesn’t,” Xander snapped. “You think I want to bury our father? He’s fifty-eight years old.”