Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Gideon
I entered the house. The cat was on the couch. She blinked at us, then closed her eyes and went back to sleep.
Dad was safely home. His pickup was in the shop he’d had the party in, only there were no tools other than what was in the bed of his pickup. Jonah and Summer had left.
Jonah hadn’t said a word about the sale.
He hadn’t said much at all, just gotten to the task at hand.
The guy was different from what I remembered.
He was younger than me by a few years, but he hadn’t been the bearded, quiet man then.
Autumn had told me about his accident and the death of his brother fifteen years ago, and I could see how it’d changed him.
Taught him to seek peace in his own head. I knew the feeling.
Now, I had Autumn home, but I couldn’t put those condoms to use. I was dirty and had grease stains on what had been my good casual clothes. Autumn was as fresh as a daisy. Her cheeks were pink from laughing with Dad.
My chest grew tight at how easily they had chatted. Dad hadn’t talked about his meeting, but Autumn had told me that was a thing, hence the anonymous part.
She gave Sprinkles some scratches and got a trilling sound in return. I could bend this woman over the couch, and I wouldn’t care what an eyeful the cat got, but I didn’t want to mark that creamy skin with the grunge from earlier tonight.
“I gotta shower.”
“Okay. Leave your clothes outside the door and I’ll put some spray on them.”
“You don’t have to do my laundry.” Other people had been doing my laundry for years. It was one of the perks of living on the premises. But not Autumn.
“You can’t grow up a Bailey and not learn how to get grease stains out. It’s fine, and don’t worry, it won’t be a regular thing.” She smiled, but it slipped immediately.
I was about to ask her what was wrong, but the regular thing part of her comment stood out. Our relationship was scheduled for mere weeks.
“Go ahead and clean up,” she insisted, skipping past the odd silence. “I’ll find us something to eat.”
“Thanks.” We only had about three weeks left. Did I want us to be longer?
I pushed a hand through my hair. It didn’t matter. Without Percival, I had no ties to this town. Entertaining thoughts of a lasting relationship wasn’t fair to Autumn.
My grandfather’s low growl rose in my head. A man’s worth is in his name. Percival is no longer your last name, but it’s alive in the land. Don’t let your dad destroy it.
I shook off the memory, exhausted at still being torn between my grandfather and my dad after all these years.
Besides, I had to shower, and then I had to bury myself in my wife.
I folded my clothes outside the door for Autumn.
In the bathroom, I turned on the faucet and stepped under the frigid spray.
I needed the cold shock after tonight. Once the water warmed, I let it pour over me and scrubbed myself off.
This was my second shower of the day, and I needed the reprieve of this little curtained cove.
So much had changed since I’d left. Was it me who’d altered the most? Or Dad?
When I’d left home, Dad hadn’t had to worry about feeding me, though he’d quit long before that. Had he noticed I was even gone? Maybe not as much in the years he was drinking.
Seeing him reminded me of the good times, and I hated it. Those days had been me and Mom, but now memories of Dad were invading my brain. Was that what it had been like for him? Had I been a walking, talking reminder of the life he used to have, the one he’d lost when Mom had died?
No wonder he’d let me go without a word.
What had made him sober up?
It sure as fuck hadn’t been me.
I flung the shower curtain back and pressed a towel against my face. Autumn’s sweet scent glided into my nose on a deep inhale. The tension from my earlier circle of thought drained out of me.
None of that mattered anymore. All I had to worry about was a quiet night with my wife.
I stepped out of her bathtub/shower combo.
How quickly I had adapted to one showerhead.
A delicious cinnamon smell was drifting into the bathroom.
After throwing on a T-shirt and an old pair of black basketball shorts that proved I wasn’t always a slacks-and-loafers guy, I went in search of my little teacher and the source of the sweet smell.
She was at the stove, her hips swaying. Her phone was on her dining table by my computer. A twangy country song came from a small speaker by one of the cupboards. This was the private dancing she did. I was glad it was all for me.
I went behind her and slid my hands around her waist. She jumped and giggled, looking over her shoulder. “You just appear, don’t you?”
“It’s a handy trait when you’re the boss.” I eyed the french toast she was cooking. In another pan was sausage, and she had a bowl of eggs already whisked together sitting on the counter. “You didn’t have to go through all the trouble of cooking.”
“I don’t know if you noticed, but we don’t have many takeout options in Bourbon Canyon.”
“That was the one thing I never looked back on when I moved.”
She glanced over her shoulder. “You looked back though?”
“A few times,” I admitted. If anyone else had asked, I’d have denied it. “College was easy. It was new and I had something to focus on, and there’s a lot to do in Vegas.”
“But you got homesick?”
“Yes. There’re always people. To go from barely seeing Dad to having roommates and classes full of more people than my entire high school? A vast change. Then I got a place of my own with a buddy, but he worked nights and was gone a lot.”
She flipped the two pieces of french toast. “And you were back to being alone.”
“Sometimes my grandpa Percival would visit, but he’d rant up a storm about how Dad was mismanaging the farm and what a drunk he was.
Then he got too sick to travel.” The relief I’d felt had filled me with shame.
My grandfather hadn’t realized that he was also detailing all the ways I’d failed.
I didn’t share his last name. I hadn’t gotten Percival.
I couldn’t help Dad. No matter how much wealth I accumulated, it wasn’t Percival, and Grandpa Percival didn’t care, wasn’t even proud.
The thought filled me with dread, like he was going to return and indict me all over again.
“You two were close?”
“Yeah.” I thought for a moment. “In a way. His health didn’t allow much, and he and Dad never got along.
So our visits were short.” And filled with Grandpa Percival’s anger.
“At least he called a few times when I was in college before he died. Dad never reached out.” Not for a long time.
By the time he had called me, I’d bottled up so much resentment I disconnected midring.
She looked back again. “That must’ve hurt.”
“Yeah,” I said gruffly. At the time, I hadn’t realized how much I’d dwelled on it. “I can only guess that when he started calling was when he got sober. I’d been gone for almost ten years by then.”
“Do you think he wanted something?”
“Since I was working my way up the casino and hotel management chain, I assumed he wanted money. I didn’t have to look very hard to know how bad the farm and ranch were doing. But he never asked.” Unlike Grandpa Percival, Dad hadn’t demanded anything of me during those calls.
Mom’s voice rose in my head. She’d cut off Grandpa Percival during one visit. You leave him be, Dad. Giddy’s going to make his own legacy. Her voice had been light, laughing, but my grandfather had shushed her and kept recounting the Percival family history.
“Did you keep in contact with anyone after you moved?”
I buried my nose in her hair, grateful to leave that memory behind. She’d let her hair down, and I toyed with the coppery strands. “Not really. My other grandparents all passed away before I left Bourbon Canyon.”
She dug the two slices of french toast out and transferred them to a clean plate. She set the spatula down and faced me. “Your dad might’ve been reaching out because he felt ready to face his failings.”
A hot wave of resentment wound its way up my neck, but she flattened her hand on my chest.
“I’m not saying that negates what he did. I’m saying that he loves you. He failed you, and you feel like he’s failing you again. But he loves you.”
“Are you saying I should forget everything?”
“No, I’m saying don’t let the terrible experiences erase the good in every memory. Not for his benefit, but for yours.”
Any response I had stuck in my throat. The way I wanted to heave suggested I’d do nothing but sputter if I tried to talk.
The past was mixing with the present. Dad’s easy acceptance of me when I was a kid compared to my grandfather.
Dad had done the same with my job, with Autumn, and with the way I treated him.
Regret was replacing a small portion of bitterness, and goddamn, I was not ready for that.
She scrutinized me. Was she guessing how I would react? I didn’t even know.
“Can you check the sausages, and if they’re done, will you cook the eggs? I have some more french toast to batter.” She patted my pecs and turned away from me, giving me much-needed distance.
Before I’d returned to Bourbon Canyon, I would’ve sworn all my memories of Dad were bad. Now I was seeing a different side of him, and it was difficult. My resentment had built up so strong, solidified so hard, that I’d been ready to use an innocent woman to get what I wanted.
Autumn might be innocent, but she was smart. Once again, she’d said something that tilted my world and made me look at my past differently.
Autumn
I had worried for several minutes that my comments about Hank were deeply disturbing for Gideon.
I thought he’d close in on himself again, but he loosened up, and after the first groan over my french toast, I knew we were in the clear.
As we ate, he asked me about the music program and the skit and how I thought it went.
Now, he was helping with cleanup and dishes.