Sliding Down the Sky (3 page)

“You said women with her level of injury do it all the time, right?” I said.

His frown deepened. I got it. He wasn’t going to risk losing her again. But would she see it that way?

“How long have you known her?” I said, leaning forward. “Don’t you think she would’ve known exactly what the risks were, before she even made the appointments with the specialists? She’s probably been researching this for the past few months. Hell, she probably has fact sheets printed out, for God’s sake. The specialists appointments weren’t for her dude, they were for you.”

“Your point?” he snapped.

I held my hands out, palms up, in a gesture of surrender.

“I’m just saying she’s stubborn, not crazy. She’s going into this with her eyes wide open. She knows the risks, but she also knows they can be managed. She knew you’d be scared, that’s why she arranged the appointments. She wanted to reassure you.”

“Reassure me?” he spluttered. “How about terrify me! This whole… thing… it’s not worth it, not to me. I don’t care if we don’t have kids – we can adopt, or do whatever it is people do in our situation. What’s the point of trying for a family if I lose her in the process?
She’s
my family, and if she… “

He hung his head and ran a trembling hand through his short, dark hair. His frustration hit me like a punch in the gut, leaving me speechless for a few moments. He was right, but so was she. For once, I was happy not to be in his shoes.

“Have you thought about the message you’re sending if you tell her you don’t want this?” I asked carefully.

He frowned, obviously not following my train of thought.

“You’re saying this is something she can’t do
because of her injury
,” I clarified. “
You’ll
be the one pulling the rug out from under her, not the doctors.”

He groaned, leaning his head back against the booth and squeezing his eyes shut, as if trying to magic the problem away.

“This is a freakin’ nightmare,” he mumbled, opening his eyes again and staring blankly over my shoulder.

I was right, and we both knew it. Ally wouldn’t understand that his love for her was the reason he didn’t want to go through with this. She’d only see her failure. She’d think she was less than whole, less than capable. After everything she’d fought to regain, he couldn’t take this away from her. It would devastate her.

“Look, I know you’re scared – “

“You’re kidding, right?” he shot back, his green eyes burning into me. “Scared doesn’t even begin to cover it. I’m in an impossible situation here. We either do this and I risk losing her, or I tell her I don’t think it’s worth it and she thinks I’m some kind of monster. Damn right I’m scared – wouldn’t you be?”

“Absolutely.” I nodded slowly, trying to be the voice of reason.

It felt strange. He was the reasonable one, I was the impulsive one, and that had always been the way it was with us. But someone had to calm him down and get him to think this through, and I didn’t see anyone else here to do it.

“This is just another stepping stone, another obstacle to conquer – one of the many. You need to put her first here, because you owe her that. Stop conjuring up worst case scenarios. You know this isn’t gonna be easy, for either of you, but take a step back for a minute. In a year from now, you’ll be a family.”

Family.

The word rang in my ears. Jesus, did he even know how lucky he was? My Mom was off making a new life for herself – which she richly deserved, after all the shit she put up with from my Dad. Dad was God only knew where, not that it mattered anyway. Jack and Ally were more than just my friends, they were like family to me, and I was lying to them.

The idea of fatherhood was as foreign to me as actually giving birth myself. At least he had a great role model, some idea of what a father was and how he should act. Fatherhood had to be in the genes, and unlike Jack, my genes were less than exemplary.

Unconsciously proving my point, I took another gulp of beer. Jack followed suit a moment later. Seeing him put his empty bottle back on the table brought on a rare and unexpected flashback of my Dad doing exactly the same thing. It sent a shudder through my bones that took me right out of Barney’s bar and straight back to my childhood. I tried to shake it off as I watched him play with the empty bottle, rolling it between his palms, staring at it absentmindedly as if he couldn’t remember what it was doing there. I had the distinct impression he had more to say. I waited a few moments, and sure enough, he came out with it.

“Whether this is gonna be easy or not, I’m not even sure I want a baby.”

There it was. I wondered if that might’ve been part of the problem. I couldn’t say I blamed him.

“Honestly,” he continued, “the thought of a baby scares the shit out of me. What the hell do I know about babies? I’ve never even held one before – I still feel like a kid myself half the time. What if I can’t do it? What if I’m a crappy father – not everyone’s cut out for it.”

That was true. My Dad wasn’t. I didn’t think I was either. People like us shouldn’t have kids. But Jack wasn’t like us.

“I don’t think anyone’s really ready for something like this, are they? It just kinda… happens. But what do I know? One thing for sure, though – seems like Ally’s pretty confident you’d make a decent job of it, or we wouldn’t even be sitting here talking about this.”

“Jesus,” he sighed, standing up. “Time for another round.”

“Good idea. This is more like a three-beer problem.”

“Feels more like a fifty-beer problem,” he quipped, gathering up our empties and heading for the bar.

“Is that a challenge?”

“It’s just a fact,” he called over his shoulder.

I watched him walking towards the bar like a man walking towards his execution. Did Ally know about this reluctance? Probably. She wasn’t stupid. I got that familiar hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach, the one that reminded me that this wasn’t my problem. I didn’t need to get involved. They were married now, they had to deal with this shit together. It didn’t mean it didn’t hurt, though.

I slumped against the back of the booth, my gaze wandering. Harry was serving a couple at the bar. I only saw them from behind, but they didn’t look familiar. He was being unusually chatty, though, which drew my attention.

Harry was kind of an enigma. In his late fifties with military-short, wiry brown hair, he had a permanent five-o’clock shadow. He was built like a boxer and around six feet tall, although he gave the impression of being much taller. He rarely smiled, had fingers the size of sausages and a brusque manner that sometimes put people off. He didn’t say much, and he was the kind of guy who didn’t encourage casual chit-chat. When faced with a lack of information like that, people did what they usually do in small towns – they made up their own stories about him. Rumours buzzed around him like fireflies.

He was ex-military.

He’d run guns for a Mexican cartel.

He had an ex-wife who was batshit-crazy and was locked up in a loony bin somewhere down south.

He was a bounty-hunter.

He’s in the FBI’s Witness Protection programme.

You name it, he’d been accused of it. Whatever the real story was, he’d owned Barneys since before I was old enough to drink, and he was still here. I was in awe of him, to be honest. Everyone around here knew me, knew my family, knew my story, yet he had somehow managed to live among us all this time and keep his past private. I was jealous. I’d have given anything to wipe my slate clean.

While Harry had a low tolerance for bullshit, he’d shown me more patience than I deserved over the years, especially lately. I owed him, big time. I’d been getting into fights at Barney’s since I was old enough to drink. While he rarely stepped in when things got out of control, usually all he had to do was threaten to, and that was enough. I respected him, and I wasn’t the only one.

Although I was as curious as the next person, I had a feeling that although his past was probably interesting, I couldn’t see him running guns for a cartel. Military man, though? I could believe that. From what I knew of him, he certainly seemed to live by some kind of code.

As I tuned back into the room, I saw that Jack was talking to the couple now, too. I watched them for a few minutes, as they chatted away. They were about my age, early-mid thirties. The guy had short, dark hair and he was tall, leaning against the bar as if he’d been there his whole life. He had the kind of presence that Steve McQueen had on the big screen, like he was
someone.

His companion was a woman, and he was one lucky bastard, because she was gorgeous. She had short, dark hair that looked black in the bar light. It came to just above her collar, blunt cut and messy, like she’d just gotten out of bed. Her skin was porcelain pale, and her features were so finely chiselled, they looked like they’d been carved out of marble. She wore a black leather biker jacket and skin tight black jeans that hugged her slight frame. In fact, she was so slim that she bordered on skeletal, like she hadn’t had a decent meal for quite a while.

She was tall, almost as tall as him, but she didn’t wear his confidence. That struck me almost immediately. She was a reluctant beauty, someone who would rather blend into the background than stand out, which was odd considering how obviously beautiful she was. Where he looked content and comfortable, she looked awkward, as if she’d rather be somewhere else.

Her lips tilted up at the corners as she and her companion parted ways with Jack, but it looked more like a gesture of courtesy than an actual smile.

The overall effect was confusing, to say the least. Jack grabbed our beers off the bar and came back over to the booth, setting them down on the table between us.

“Who were they?” I asked, picking up mine.

“Shit, sorry – I should’ve introduced you. That’s Leo Hathaway and his sister, Sass. They’re our new tenants – well, half of them, anyway. Along with his wife, Gemma, and their little girl – can’t remember her name.”

Before I could stop it, my heart leapt at the news. Not a couple, but brother and sister. Interesting. I knew Jack was renting out his Dad’s place, but I didn’t realise the tenants had already moved in.

“They’re in already?”

“Yeah, last week, or maybe the week before. With everything that’s been going on, I guess I forgot to tell you.”

“Did you move your Dad’s stuff out of the garage then?”

“Not yet. I still need to do that, actually. Are you still okay to give me a hand?”

“Sure, just let me know when.”

“I’ll talk to Leo and find out when it’s convenient, then let you know. They’ve got a lot on their plate right now, so I think we’ve probably got a few more weeks before it gets urgent. I told you they’ve bought the Green Door?”

“Yeah, you did. I still can’t believe someone paid money for it, though. I thought they’d be giving the place away by now. How long’s it been empty? Seven years, maybe eight? They must be suckers for punishment.”

“Yeah, well. I’m looking forward to seeing what they do with the place. He told me a few of their plans, and it sounds like it’s gonna be awesome. Be good to have a choice of bars around here again.”

He picked up his beer and took a gulp, and we fell into comfortable silence. What kind of name was Sass? Maybe it was a nickname. Was it short for something? If it was, it was the only thing short about her. She had legs up to her armpits.

“She’s pretty hot,” he said.

I looked up, wondering if I’d said something aloud.

“What?”

“Sass. She’s hot. I can see the attraction,” he deadpanned.

I weighed up the idea of denying it versus agreeing with him. I decided to play it cool instead.

“Yeah, I guess so.”

He smirked.

“Dude, it’s written all over your face.”

“What is?” I snapped.

He picked up his beer, leaning forward. I’d said his was a three-beer problem. I wondered what mine was.

“I haven’t seen you look at a woman like that in… forever. Even Jane, and I was there when you asked her out for the first time.”

I cringed. Jane and I lasted longer than any other relationship I’d ever had, but it wasn’t without its problems – most of them mine. Hell, who was I kidding? All of them mine. We were still friends, and her new boyfriend was a good guy. She deserved better than me, and I had no right to hold a grudge.

“You trying to change the subject?” I said, taking a swig of beer. “I thought we were talking about your impending fatherhood problem?”

I felt a little guilty for bringing it up again, but obviously not enough to stop me.

“Yeah, well,” he huffed. “That’s not going anywhere, is it? Anyway, like I said – she’s pretty hot. I think you’d be crazy not to pursue that.”

“Don’t you think you have enough to worry about without poking your nose into my social life?”

He ignored the hint, and the discomfort mounted.

“That’s the problem – you don’t have one.”

“I don’t
need
one.”

“Bullshit,” he said, fixing me with one of his patented soul-deep stares. “You’re human, aren’t you? Everyone needs someone.”

I shook my head, taking another swig of beer. This was veering dangerously into chick-flick territory. If he continued following that path, I was out of there.

“I don’t know how many times you have to hear it, but you’re not your Dad. Tell me you get that.”

I glared at him, leaning against the back of the booth.

“I’m serious. What’s stopping you from asking her out?”

“Well, for one thing,” I bristled, sick of the subject already. “She might have a boyfriend. Or she might even be married, for all I know.”

“Stop making excuses, dude. Find out. Make a damn effort, for once. Do you want to end up working eighty hours a week at the garage, spending every night in here for the rest of your life? Don’t you want more than that?”

I wanted to challenge him, especially when he sounded so high and mighty about it. But the truth was, he was right. I didn’t want that – I didn’t want any of it, but it wasn’t that easy

“No one likes to have less than they did before.”