It feels like he’s squeezing my heart into a little clay knot.
I can do this.
Oh, God.
I can do this.
But I can’t stand here with townsfolk daggering me with dirty looks, and I cast about quickly, searching for the back of Flynn’s head.
I say the back of his head because that’s all I’m used to seeing, Flynn parked at the bar and bent over whatever his poison is for the night.
Looks like tonight’s no different.
There’s a noticeable radius of empty stools around him, like no one wants to be near his slumped, stoop-shouldered figure. His rangy body bows over as if he’s forgotten how to sit up and his wispy grey-white hair sticks up in little tufts from the top of his head.
I can smell the liquor on him before we close in.
Bourbon, tonight, by the stench of it.
My heart wrenches as I slide onto a stool next to him, Alaska taking the seat on my other side.
Flynn’s eyes are rheumy, filmed, lost. He stares into that tumbler of whiskey like he just wishes he could break its hold on him.
I know that look.
And I feel like I’m seeing my dad resurrected as I take in his sallow skin and the signs of addiction pockmarking his face.
“Hey, Flynn,” I murmur.
Can he even hear me? I’d meant to come on friendly, firm, but I just can’t.
This hurts.
The plan to offer him a drink to loosen up flies out the window.
No flipping way. I can’t stand being the one to feed another drop of death down his throat.
He blinks slowly, like it’s taking time for my voice to filter through his fog, and he lifts his head, peering at me like he just can’t quite see me through some cloud in his mind.
A minute later, his vision clears, and he offers me a smile with slack lips.
“Little Miss Flissy,” he slurs. “Well, I’ll be damned. Feels like I haven’t seen you since you were barely knee-high.”
That’d be back when my dad was alive.
Back when the two of them were friends.
Even though we’ve both lived in the same town for the decade since.
“How’s Morgan?” he asks, and that hurt inside me turns into a hot lance.
I search his watery eyes.
“Flynn,” I say softly. “Dad’s been dead for ten years. You know that.”
“Huh?” His face wrinkles inward before he sighs heavily. “...oh. Shit. Yeah, you’re right.” Slowly he looks around. His eyes sharpen as if he’s just realizing where and when he is. “I forget things sometimes. Sorry, Felicity.”
“It’s okay.” Even if the fumes of alcohol rising off him hurt my nose, I reach over and rest my hand on Flynn’s wrinkled fingers. “Dad’s actually what I came to talk to you about, Flynn.”
“Yeah?” He puckers his lips together oddly, smacking them, then pulls his hand away from mine and curls it against his tumbler, his fingers shaking. “Don’t know what you want me to say. Morgan was a good guy. Loved shooting the shit out here with me. And man, we had some damn good fishing trips. Great fucking fishing trips.” He sighs so hard it puffs his cheeks. “Really didn’t deserve to go the way he did, Little Bee.”
Arrow, meet heart.
My eyes flutter shut just a second too long at a nickname I haven’t heard forever.
Why does this hurt so much?
I’m angry at my father, damn it.
I don’t miss him.
I don’t.
...but I do.
I miss the man I knew before he was hollowed out by his demons, before he always had this haunted, hungry look in his eyes, like a vampire desperate for one more taste of blood.
I miss when he started calling me Little Bee with his hand on my shoulder, always so gentle.
Every time I hear that name, I remember he’s the one who gave it to me.
When I hear it now, some small, scared part of me demands to know why.
Why Dad had to evaporate and leave that walking cadaver who just had his name, his face, barely alive...until he wasn’t even barely anymore. He was gone without answering that question that hurts so very much.
It’s several bleary seconds before I can bring myself to say anything, blinking my eyes until my vision clears. The wavering blur eases. I manage not to break down crying here in the middle of Brody’s.
Alaska helps.
Because he’s there at my shoulder, resting one big hand almost possessively against my back. I know it’s part of the boyfriend-girlfriend act, but it’s also saying everything I need.
I’m here.
I’m here, I’ve got you, and you’ve got this.
Swallowing, I muster a smile.
“No. No, he didn’t deserve it. I never got to talk to him the last few days he was alive, Flynn. But I’ve heard some people say you did. That you were the last person to see him alive.”
Flynn instantly goes tense.
“Yeah, well...maybe so,” he admits slowly, and for someone who’s three sheets to the wind he suddenly looks entirely too clear, one eye on the door. “What’s it to you? I already told Langley I didn’t do shit.”
“I know you didn’t. Dad was your friend. You’d never hurt him.” When they weren’t hurting each other, that is, telling each other one more drink would be okay. “But I just...I don’t understand some things. I was hoping you might have answers. Because I can’t let Dad rest in peace until I get why he slipped, Flynn. Why he went from over a year clean to dead behind the wheel, full of so much junk it’s like...” The words stick hard in my throat before I push them out. “It’s almost like he wanted to die.”
That’s what guts me right down the middle, I realize.
Wondering if Dad actually wanted to die.
If it wasn’t an accidental overdose, wasn’t foul play, wasn’t anything but my father crumbling under the weight of his addiction and choosing to surrender to the void.
“Hell no!” Flynn snarls. “Your old man had so much life in him. So much goddamned fight. Maybe he fell off the wagon for a bit, but he was gonna get back on it. He was fighting to get back on. Fighting for you, but he—well...”
“Well?” I prompt softly.
Flynn looks uncomfortable, his bony fingers rattling against the tumbler, then tightening.
“Look, your old man got in tight with some bad folks. Dude was desperate, trying to figure out how to make ends meet when most people don’t wanna hire a former junkie. So he was doing their dirty work and getting paid, okay? And those people, they started wanting more out of him. But he had his limits, nothing that’d hurt his family, and he told ’em to fuck off. Until they started talking about going after you and your mom.”
Whatever I’d been about to say splits right off my tongue.
Holy crap.
I really am my father’s daughter, huh?
Doing whatever I have to, taking whatever punishment’s necessary, to keep people I love safe from Paisley.
Even if it means endangering myself.
Will I share his fate?
Struggling to protect my mother, and all I get for it is a nice case of the deads?
Brute memories howl up inside me. Too many memories of that strange, haunted look on my father’s face, how tired he was all the time, and me trying my damnedest to do something.