Fighting Fire (Finding Focus Book 3)

by Jiffy Kate

  I laugh, shaking my head and pulling out the chair across from him. Leaning back, I make myself comfortable, my arms behind my head.

  Jose finds himself a spot under the table and my dad passes me the bottle.

  “I fucked up,” I tell him, uncorking the bottle and letting the whisky burn away my sins.

  “We all do from time to time.”

  “I think I fucked up more than just my relationship with Dani,” I admit. “Alex is bad news. Deacon was right. I should’ve listened.”

  The alcohol flowing through my veins is loosening my pride and making me vulnerable. But this is my dad. If I can tell anyone in the world what’s been hammering around in my brain, it’s him.

  “Hindsight and all that,” he says, waving a hand, motioning for me to pass the bottle.

  “I don’t know how to fix it.”

  “Well, you’re in too deep to back out now. So, you gotta make the best of the situation.”

  “You’re a good lawyer,” I tell him, swiping the bottle. “You could find a loophole and get me out of that contract.”

  “I could,” he says confidently. “But I won’t.”

  We have a stare off for a minute. My dad gives me his signature stare, steely eyes, the same ones he uses on people in the courtroom to make them shit their pants. But it doesn’t scare me. Okay, it might’ve put the fear of Jesus in me over the years, but now that I’m older, it garners more respect than fear.

  “Okay, say I do find you a loophole. We won’t get into the fact that I’ve never let you quit anything in your life or that you’ve put too much of your hard-earned money on the line. But say, you’re strolling the streets of New Orleans in a month or two, and you come across the building you’ve put all your sweat, blood, and tears into—literally—but it’s vacant. Closed up shop. All the chairs are on top of the tables, dust collecting on that gorgeous bar you had installed. Lifeless. Nothing. How would you feel?”

  I shake my head, trying to wrap my brain around the image he’s painted.

  “Horrible. Sick to my stomach.”

  “Right. Because even though you’re in this mess with Alex and she’s wreaking havoc, you’ve earned all of the success that’s going to come your way. This is your dream, your vision. You deserve this.”

  “I guess so,” I say quietly, taking another drink of the Crown to keep the emotions from spilling over.

  “I know so. You’ve lived in your brother’s shadow your whole life. Sure, you’ve made a life for yourself. And I know Pockets and Grinders are just as much yours as they are his, but Deacon started those places. He’s having so much trouble with this, because he’s not used to you going against him. Trust me, it’s bad now, but when the two of you make it through this, you’ll be stronger for it. And you will make it through.”

  “I was thinking earlier, before you knocked on the door, that maybe I’m still trying to earn Deke’s respect. I want him to be proud of me, of himself, for teaching me everything I know. It’s crazy, because most people don’t see the Deacon I see. They see the goofy, easy-go-lucky Deacon. But I know the one who’s incredibly dedicated and hard-working. I’ve thought a million times over the past couple of months how I wish he was beside me. I wish I could ask his advice. I wish he could tell me what to do.”

  “But he’s not. And you’re doing just fine on your own,” he says, leaning across the table, tenting his fingers under his chin like he does when he’s listening to a trial.

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “You are. It just looks bad today, but give it time. Trust me, everything will work itself out.”

  I’m not sure how, but if my dad says to trust him, I trust him.

  Rolling over in bed, I look out the window and instantly feel the residing pain in my chest. The one that’s been there since Christmas.

  Eight days.

  Yesterday was New Year’s Day, but completely uneventful, especially in Landry terms.

  Normally, we have a big shindig, inviting half the parish. But after the excitement of Christmas, my mama opted for low-key. And by low-key, I mean, Cami and Deacon stayed home. Dani was working on a project for Piper. My parents drank wine out by the fire until they deserted me and headed upstairs for God only knows what. And I drank alone, then called it an early night with Jose tucked in by my side.

  That’s how it’s been.

  I called Dani the day after Christmas and she picked up on the fourth ring. She wasn’t hostile. She didn’t sound sad. She didn’t yell at me, though I wish she would’ve, because at least then I would’ve known what she was feeling. The only way I can describe her mood lately is reserved and resolved.

  She says we’re fine, but I can tell we’re not.

  I slept at the apartment one night, but she stayed up late in the living room working on some proofs for a shoot she did last week. When I woke up the next morning, I could tell she’d never come to bed. I can’t take it. And being the inexperienced, dumbass I am, I don’t know what to say or do, so I’ve just been giving her the space she requested.

  This is just one more thing I wish I could talk to Deacon about, but he’s back to pretending I don’t exist. Our schedules for Grinders are back to resembling a revolving door—I come in, he goes out. We don’t cross paths. We hardly even leave notes for each other anymore.

  And since my days are mostly spent at Lagniappe, nailing down the final menu and training the staff, I hardly see anyone. With the plantation being closer to Nola, I’ve just been stopping here and crashing.

  Commotion outside forces me out of bed. Someone is moving shit around . . . or tearing something down.

  “For the love of . . .” I mutter, flinging open the door. “Shit, Tucker. What the hell are you doin’?” I ask, pulling a T-shirt over my head.

  He grins, closing the door on my shed outside. “I was just lookin’ for this.” He holds up a chainsaw and waggles his eyebrows.

  “What are you gonna do with that?” I ask, rubbing at my eyes and wishing I’d had coffee before I had to interact with him this early in the morning. “Do you even know how to use it?”

  He pushes a button and then pulls the handle, making it roar to life.

  Jose comes running out the front door, barking his head off and I don’t even call him down.

  “Easy, Jose. It’s just me, your ol’ buddy, Tucker.”

  The traitor waltzes over to Tucker, laying down and rolling over so he can rub his belly.

  “Seriously, what are you gonna do with that?”

  “I just need to borrow it to cut down a few trees over at Dad’s place. His is broken.”

  “He has trees he needs cut down?” I ask, trying to think of where and why.

  “Nah, just a few trees he said I could cut down,” Tucker says, like it’s completely normal.

  “Okay,” I drawl.

  “What are you doin’ here, anyway?” he asks. “You and Dani finally fixin’ this place up and movin’ in?”

  “No, I’ve just been stayin’ here on nights I work late. It’s closer.” I close the front door and sit down on the porch, enjoying the morning breeze and the unseasonably warm weather, even for Louisiana.

  “And Dani is . . .” he says, wanting more information, because under that shaggy blond hair and scruffy beard he’s sporting these days, he’s a nosey old lady.

  “In Baton Rouge at the apartment,” I tell him, picking at the wood on the arm of the rocking chair.

  “So, she’s still pissed about Alex crashin’ Christmas?”

  “Yep.” I nod, looking up the lane and wondering if my mama has a pot of coffee made yet. “I’m actually getting ready to leave and head there now. Hoping I can catch her before she’s out the door for work.”

  “You’ve been stayin’ pretty busy, huh?” he asks, sitting down in the other chair.

  We rock for a minute, like an old couple, and I wonder if Dani and I will ever get to that point.

  “Yeah, openin’ a restaurant is no joke.”

>   “For sure,” he says with a nod.

  “How about you?” I ask. “Have you been keepin’ busy? I haven’t seen you much. I’m surprised you haven’t hit the road again. Never seen you home this long.”

  “I’m home indefinitely,” he mutters, looking off into the distance, like he’s deep in thought.

  “Is everything alright with you?” I’ve been kind of worried about him for a while. And as much as he likes to meddle in other people’s business, he’s relatively tight lipped when it comes to his own.

  “It’s gettin’ better.” He turns toward me and gives me a winning smile. “But this isn’t about me, this is about you. What are you gonna do to fix things with Dani?” He grows serious, completely un-Tucker like. “You can’t mess this up with her.”

  “I’m tryin’ not to,” I admit.

  “Don’t.”

  “Okay.” I laugh, oddly encouraged by this early morning intervention.

  “You won’t find another Sheridan Reed,” he says with conviction.

  That’s for damn sure.

  AFTER MY TALK WITH TUCKER this morning, I did a lot of self-reflecting. I’ve been doing a lot of self-reflecting, but this morning some things finally clicked in my brain. The manual labor I did for my mama might’ve helped too. I haven’t had much time to get in my daily workout lately, and with Dani giving me the cold shoulder, I had a lot of pent-up energy.

  While I was hauling compost to the greenhouse for my mama, as part of my punishment for the whole Alex incident, I realized a few things. One, shit stinks. Two, my mama will always follow through on a promise. Three, I’m willing do anything to fix things, even if that means saying I’m sorry.

  This morning, my mama reminded me that apologizing doesn’t equal weakness. It doesn’t mean I’m admitting defeat or losing. It means I’m human and I made a mistake. I am, of course, sorry about the whole Alex thing. I wasn’t thinking. There was a small part of me that knew she’d show up on Christmas, but I didn’t think it would cause World War III. It was a stupid move. Hindsight being twenty-twenty and all, I can see now that Alex being there was the straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak.

  Both Deacon and Dani see her as the catalyst for everything that’s been going wrong lately, and that might be true. I can spot a snake a mile away, but it’s time for me to take some ownership and admit my own faults.

  My vision has been clouded since the night Alex walked in and dangled prime real estate in front of me. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she had access to my brain and knew exactly when to show up and exactly what to say. Since then, I’ve let my ambitions overshadow what really matters.

  Having a restaurant in New Orleans will mean nothing without Dani and Deacon by my side.

  I don’t know how I’m going to make everything right, but I’m going to start by apologizing. I’m also planning on wooing Dani with her favorite dinner. On my way into the city, I stopped and picked up all the ingredients for crawfish etouffee. Hopefully, she’s hungry and ready to listen to what I have to say.

  On the phone the past couple of days, she’s been back to her usual happy self, but I can tell she’s been distracted. I’m hoping it’s just work. I know she’s been busy on a few different projects. She’d put most things on hold for the holidays, so she’s been making up time. I guess me sleeping at the cottage has kind of worked out for the best, even though I hate not spending every night with her by my side.

  She needed some space and I gave it to her. I would’ve been pushing my way through the door on Christmas night, demanding that she talk to me, if it hadn’t been for my dad. He helped me realize this is normal. He said relationships go through phases. When it all starts, there’s this immediate spark and it builds to a roaring fire, sometimes completely knocking you off your feet and taking your breath away. When the smoke from that inferno begins to clear, what you’re left with is the foundation, the building blocks that you’ll be able to build the rest of your life on.

  Dani and I have our spark and we’ve felt the fire, now we’re finding out what we’re made of.

  I believe we’re strong.

  I love her and I know she loves me.

  After we get through this, I’m going to ask her to marry me. Maybe not tonight, but soon.

  Before I go to the apartment to surprise Dani, I make a stop at Grinders.

  When I asked my mama for some advice this morning on how to make things right with Dani, she told me I had to start at the root of the problem.

  Never cover up the weeds, they’ll just come back to haunt you.

  Parking in my usual spot, I jump out of the truck and grab the six-pack from the back. I figure a peace offering was a good icebreaker. Between my mama’s gardening metaphors and my dad’s fire talk, I don’t know if I’m pulling weeds or putting out a blaze, but here I am.

  “Hey, Micah,” Kara says from the hallway as I walk in the backdoor.

  “Hey, Kara.”

  “Uh, Deke’s here,” she mentions hesitantly. “You’re not on the schedule until Saturday.”

  “Right, I know. I’m not here to work, but I do need to see him. Is he in the kitchen?” I ask, making my way around her and popping my head in the office to make sure he’s not in there.

  “No, and it’s probably a bad time.” She cuts her eyes from left to right and then lowers her voice. “It’s kind of a bad day at the office, if you know what I mean. He’s not in a good mood.”

  “What’s goin’ on?”

  “Well, our new dishwasher quit. The food order got screwed up, so we had to change the special. And the computers are glitching.”

  “Shit. Bad day.”

  “Kara!” Deacon’s voice booms down the hall causing her eyes to bug out of her head.

  “Crap! Coming, Boss,” she yells back, holding up a stack of manual order pads. Normally, we key everything into a kiosk and the orders show up on a screen in the back. Looks like we’ll be playing it old school today.

  “What are you doin’ here?” Deacon, less than pleased to see me.

  “I stopped by to talk, but I see it’s a bad time.”

  “Yeah, you could say that.” My normally in-control-of-the-situation brother looks frazzled . . . and tired.

  All of a sudden, I feel the weight of the boulder between us. It’s messing up everything. I should be here. Before all of this shit with Alex, if things would’ve been going wrong, he’d have called me.

  “What can I do to help?”

  He hesitates for a minute, but then takes a look back down the hallway toward the main part of the restaurant. For a second, I think he’s going to tell me to leave, he’s got it. But he finally turns back around, letting out a deep pent-up breath. “We could use a dish washer.”

  “I’m on it,” I tell him, sitting the six-pack in his arms and rolling up my sleeves.

  The kitchen crew all give me surprised, puzzled looks as I walk in and begin scrubbing plates, but none of them say a word.

  After a few minutes, Joe whistles at me to get my attention.

  Glancing up, I see him grinning over his shoulder as he mans the grill. “Nice timing.”

  “I didn’t know what I was walkin’ into,” I tell him with a laugh.

  “Oh, you know, just another perfect storm kind of day,” he mutters.

  Joe and I both know those kind of days. We’ve experienced them together many times over the years. It’s those days where a series of events leads to a hurricane. Separate, they’re not that bad, but put them all together and it feels like you should just close the doors and call it a day.

  “Special got screwed up, huh?” I ask, missing having kitchen talks with Joe.

  “Yeah, but no biggie. I raided the fridge and came up with a replacement.”

  “So, what is it?”

  “Shrimp marmalade grinder with a side of red cabbage slaw.”

  “Stop talkin’ sexy to me, Joe. You know it ain’t gonna work,” I tease, laughing when I feel something hit the back of my
head. Probably a shrimp.

  “Don’t waste the profit,” Deacon bellows from the door.

  Joe and I give each other side glances, trying not to laugh. It’s definitely in our best interests not to laugh.

  The rest of the afternoon seems to run a little smoother. Deacon doesn’t talk much, except for the occasional request for me to run out and take an order or to help plate food. It’s kind of like old times and it makes me miss being at this place even more than I already did. But what it really makes me miss is Pockets.

  I miss the old times.

  I miss the camaraderie.

  There’s not much of that at Lagniappe yet. I know it’ll happen over time, but it’s not going to be the same without Deacon. I’ve had a plan working in my mind for a while, about how to really fix everything—buying Alex out. But I know it’s going to take some serious cash and before I talk to anybody about it, I’ve gotta have my ducks in a row.

  When everything seems to be under control and the rush is over, I look around for Deacon. I need to get to the apartment and Dani, but I’m not leaving without doing what I really came here to do.

  I’m not gonna cover weeds.

  Deacon pops his head around the corner, tapping the wall. “Good work today, everyone. I know things got crazy, but y’all handled it like champs. Thanks for the hard work.”

  The kitchen crew nod and murmur their acceptance of the praise. Deacon’s always been one to let you know when you do a good job. I’ve craved that praise my whole life, even when we were kids. When we were playing backyard football, I just wanted to be included. As we got older and we moved to school ball, I just wanted to be as good as Deacon.

  I’m still trying to be as good as Deacon.

  “Hey, Deke. Can I talk to you for a sec?” I ask, before I talk myself out of it. As much as I know what I need to say, it doesn’t make it any easier. Admitting I’m wrong is something I hate doing, but I’m trying not to be a stubborn mule, as my mama called me this morning. Actually, she called all of the Landry men stubborn mules and told me one of us was gonna have to break or this feud would go on forever. So, I’m gonna do it. Since I technically started all of this by accepting Alex’s offer, it should be me to offer the olive branch.