Chapter 45
Forty-Five
Storm
Tap. Tap. Tap!
My lips twitch as I walk down the hall and into the living room, the paper covering the newly installed floor crinkling softly.
“Why’re you pounding holes in my wall, asshole?” I call.
Rain doesn’t respond.
Just keeps tap. Tap. Tapping.
Then stands back, hammer falling to his side, and flips me off. “I’m trying to do something nice, asshole.”
I snort and move over to him. “I thought Harrisons don’t do nice.”
He rolls his eyes, jerks his thumb to the side. “Shut up and look.”
I look, and feel…
God, I don’t know that I’ll ever get used to this.
God, I hope I don’t.
Because if I do, if it starts to become second nature, old hat, whatever the fuck idiom that properly fits, I won’t appreciate it as much as I do in this moment.
Rain moves to stand beside me, turns to look at the wall.
At what he just hung on the wall.
It’s a framed eight-by-ten of me, Poppy, and Holly at the ice rink. Holly had just come off the ice after her hockey lesson and Poppy is kneeling down, having undone her helmet and setting it on the floor. They’re smiling at each other and I’m watching them with an expression that’s full of—
Well, it’s love.
Right there in full color.
“Rain,” I whisper.
“I know,” he whispers back.
I sit in that feeling for a few more seconds…then I let a bit of the Harrison out.
The Harrison I want to be, anyway.
“You download that shit from the Cedar Hollow Gazette?”
“Asshole,” he mutters.
My lips quirk. “That means yes.”
He just rolls his eyes again.
I shove his shoulder. “Next one needs to have you in it.”
His inhale is sharp, short, and he’s silent for a long time. But his throat is working and his blue eyes are full of emotion.
I give him space for it, turn back and stare at the photo, committing it to memory.
Then I look around the space, committing all that my brother gave me here to memory too—wide windows that let in lots of sunshine, large rooms cleared of liquor bottles and cardboard boxes full of shit.
Moldy carpet gone, rage-filled holes from alcoholic fists patched.
And inside the walls, the electrical and plumbing has been inspected, replaced where needed.
Across the hall, we installed the last of the appliances in the kitchen and hooked up the light fixture my dad definitely would have hated.
The bathrooms are finished, along with the guest bedroom downstairs and the three upstairs.
Even the office is completely redone.
It’s all done.
In a matter of months, it’s gone from a nightmare to a home.
My home.
Not a cesspool for rage and booze and pain.
It’s a new beginning, a place to start over, to rebuild.
Which means it’s time to put the last of the past behind us.
“You ready?” I ask quietly.
He jerks, tearing his gaze from the photograph, and looks at me, lifting a brow in silent question.
Just as silently, I pull the letter I retrieved from the nightstand this morning out of my pocket.
It’s folded and stained, but my dad’s handwriting is scrawled across the front.
Storm.
Rain stares at it for a long moment.
Then shakes his head. “I don’t know if I’m ready, kid.”
“You’re gonna be all like, I’m five years older and you’re scared of a piece of paper?”
He scowls. “What are you trying to say?”
I shrug. “I said what I meant, dumbass. Get your fucking letter. We’re gonna read this shit and then we’re gonna burn them. And then we’re going to bury Norm Harrison once and for all.”
Silence.
Taut and stretched thin.
Then he curses softly. “I’m supposed to be the mature one.”
“Have you looked around you?”
His mouth quirks. “That’s true enough. You’re still being an asshole about it.”
“Genetics, remember?”
“Oh, I remember.” A heavy breath. Then he shoves his hand through his hair. “Pain in my ass,” he mutters, reaching into his pocket and pulling out his much-abused letter.
My heart convulses, and I wonder how long he’s been letting it sit in there.
Festering.
Eating away at him.
“Let’s get this shit over with,” he grumbles.
For once, I don’t argue. Instead, standing there in the middle of the space that used to be a nightmare, but is now one Rain and I have managed to turn into a home, I tear open the envelope, pull out the yellowed page…
And I read.
Storm,
If you’re reading this, I’m dead.
Congrats. You’ve outlived me.
Knowing you, you’re probably reading this expecting some sort of grand apology, expecting me to beg you for forgiveness for all the things you think I’ve done wrong.
You’re not going to get one.
People are who they are. Life is hard and oftentimes shit. I was hard on you and your brother because you both needed to be toughened up. Without it, you would have been chewed up and spit out. The world isn’t kind to weak men, to soft men.
You needed that.
And maybe because of it, you thought I hated you. Maybe that’s where I went wrong. Because hating you would have been easier than trying to make something of you.
The truth is I expected more from you than anyone else. You HAD to be better or you would never have gotten out of this godforsaken town.
And there’s no point in arguing about it now—you made it to the NHL. You have your career, money, fame, women. You got everything you ever wanted.
You should be thanking me.
Though you probably hate me, blame me, tell everyone what a bastard I was and how I ruined your life.
People like villains, like to have someone to root against.
Your brother certainly does.
I’m sure you two have found plenty to say about me now that I’m dead. This whole town is probably pissing and moaning and gossiping about all of my poor decisions.
Funny how everyone suddenly becomes an expert the moment a man’s in the ground, isn’t it?
Now about the girl.
Poppy tried to reach you. She even came here to do it. But by then you were gone chasing your dream. Maybe I should have tracked you down. Maybe you should have come back. Doesn’t matter much now. You weren’t here, and she wasn’t going to wait forever.
Whatever happens between the two of you, leave Holly out of it. She didn’t ask for any of this.
I’ve left an account for the girl’s education. The lawyer has the details.
The girl seems smart enough and it would be a shame if she never got a chance at a good future just because the adults around her couldn’t get their shit together.
Don’t piss the money away on something useless. Help the girl build whatever life she wants.
And don’t go reading into this—
I’m not asking for forgiveness.
I’m dead. What fucking use would that be to me?
Maybe it would give something to you.
Or maybe it wouldn’t.
Either way, that’s your burden now.
Not mine.
“Jesus,” I mutter, crumpling the paper and turning to my brother to see he’s done the same thing.
“You got that right,” Rain mutters back. “He…” A shake of his head. “He never changed did he?”
That pain in my brother…
Fuck, I hate it.
And part of me is glad I didn’t come back when our father was still alive, that I don’t have to reconcile taking care of a frail old man with the bastard who raised us.
“You okay?” I ask softly.
“Not really,” he admits. “You?”
I sigh, shake my head. “He left money for Holly.”
Rain’s eyes go wide. “He did? Why?”
“To”—I hold up the paper—“because: the girl seems smart enough and it would be a shame if she never got a chance because the adults around her couldn’t get their shit together.”
“Jesus,” he mutters.
“What’s your favorite?”
“What?”
I nod at his letter. “What’s your favorite idiocy from your letter? Mine is”—I scan then scoff—“And don’t go reading into this—I’m not asking for forgiveness. I’m dead. What fucking use would that be to me?”
Rain chuckles. “Fucking asshole.”
“Yup.” A beat. “Now yours.”
He looks down, reading for a minute then, “You spent your whole life fixing broken things. Shame you never figured out how to fix yourself.”
I choke. “What the actual fuck?”
“Cute, right?”
“Check out this gem,” I say, quoting another line that burned when I read it, but now just sounds like a sad old man trying to score a punch.
We keep reading, sharing lines, keep…laughing.
We’re actually laughing about this shit.
And maybe it’s dark. Maybe it’s fucked up.
But my brother and I are standing in our childhood home laughing. Not fighting. Not angry. Not locked in the painful past.
We’re together.
“He was wrong you know,” I say as we take our letters over to the stove and test it and the hood out, setting the pages alight and then dropping them into an old pot to watch them burn.
To watch them turn into ash.
“About what?”
“You fixing broken things.”
Rain’s expression clouds over.
“But he was sure as fuck wrong about you. You’re not broken, Rain. You never were.”
He’s quiet for a long time, his gaze locked onto the ashes in the pot. “I don’t know about that.”
I clamp a hand onto his shoulder, hold his gaze. “I know.”
A deep, slow breath.
Then he nods, and I can see the look in his eyes, know I’ve pushed him far enough.
For tonight, anyway. And only about the past, I think, as a bit of mischief slices through me.
Because the future—
“Maybe you should go find Riley and fix things with her.”
Any softness disappears like so much smoke and he glares at me. “There’s nothing between us.”
“Just cleaning those gutters, right?” I smirk. “And making out at the inn.”
“Fucker.” He digs into his pocket and chucks a set of keys at me. “Now get out of here already.”
“But I thought this was my house?” I ask innocently as I catch them.
“Asshole.” He grins then his expression softens. “But damn right it is.”
Heart full, past in ashes, I hold the keys tight, look around at all we rebuilt, and know…
I’m finally home.