Page 10 of All the Ugly Things
Dad rolled his eyes behind his recently purchased glasses. He hated wearing them. That he did so early in the morning told me how tired he was.
With a heavy sigh, he frowned. “She said no.”
“Then leave her alone.” Because why… why in the hell couldn’t he leave her alone? We owed her nothing. We didn’t evenknowher. Hell, he’d already helped enough.
“She needs this.”
My dad was a bleeding heart. I admired the hell out of him for it. I admired the hell out of the way I grew up. There were usually so many damn kids in and out of our house, my sister and I were sometimes forced to room together. And we never cared. New friends all the time. A lot of enemies too, frankly, because not everyone who came through our doors left a better person. Some left just as angry, hating life and being as terrified as they’d been when they walked in our doors, regardless of how much Mom and Dad loved on them.
Helping people was what the Valentines did. And hell, my dad did it so much, he started being nicknamed Saint Valentine by the local press back when I was a kid.
He wasn’t a saint. He was a man who wanted to help people because he came from poor circumstances and had vowed to do what he could to make other people’s lives easier.
He was a good man. The best kind of man.
Sitting across from me, he looked worn and weary. And that pissed me off. Everything he was doing, it was wearing him down, and I’d already seen it happen with someone else. The last thing I needed was it happening to him.
I loved the man, but he was as hardheaded as they came. Mom used to say his skull was built from a construction worker’s helmet.
“Not all who wander are lost, remember?”
He shook his head, refused to see it. Maybe she had her own plan figured out. So she got some minor help along the way. She was smart enough to get to where she wanted to go.
“This girl isn’t wandering, she’s dead. Don’t you see it?”
I saw it. I saw it every time he talked about her and in every photo he’d shown me. I saw the hardness in the press of her jaw and the tightness in her eyes. I saw pain and the complete lack of life in her expression whenever he’d snap a photo when she was staring off into nowhere.
She’d probably call the cops. Have him arrested for stalking if she knew what we did.
But more than her pain, I saw the damage it did to my dad to see her, driving twenty miles out of his way, late at night, because she’d become an obsession. All due to a promise made years ago.
“She fixed my LX last night.”
That had me sitting up. “Excuse me?”
“Made some weird sounds on the way. Temp thing didn’t seem right. Whatever, I didn’t know anything. Mentioned something to her and she didn’t hesitate. Just went right outside, checked it out, and fixed it.”
“Jesus, Dad. Why didn’t you stop somewhere safer?” Her diner was perched between two strip clubs, a truck stop, and a hotel that rented rooms by the hour. Which was only part of the reason why my dad wanted to give her a job. It wasn’t safe for anyone, especially not someone who strolled up in a six-figure car. Or the girl who couldn’t hide she was beautiful enough to win pageants, even if she covered herself in heavy makeup and an ugly uniform. “Where is it now?”
“At the dealership. Called Floyd. He had me bring it in and gave me a rental. I’ll get it back tonight.”
Relief pushed out a heavy breath through my lungs and I sat back, just in time to jolt forward again as my dad said, “I want you to go talk to her.”
“No way in hell.” My arms strained from the pressure I put on them, bracing them flat on my desk. “I told you I wouldn’t do that. You get her working here, I’ll treat her with all the respect she deserves, but you want this. Not me.”
“Melissa wanted it.”
“God, I hate it when you use her against me.” I swiped a hand through my hair and then pushed it to the side, scowling at my dad.
Stubborn as a mule.
“If she said no, what good would it do?”
“You’re younger and handsome. Maybe she’d trust you more than a man who might remind her of her father.”
“So I pretend, what—to be her brother?” Because the very idea had my stomach rolling. When I looked at her photos there was nothing brotherly I felt about her.
Exactly why I was not the guy for this.
