Real Men Will

by Dahl, Victoria

  “Beth,” her mom said again, and then Beth felt her mother’s arms close around her. She started to pull away, but her mom held tight. Beth stayed stiff for a moment, but the hand slowly rubbing her back only made it harder to hold back her tears. Finally, Beth gave in and put her forehead on her mom’s shoulder…and she cried.

  She cried for that girl who felt as if she’d lost everything. The girl who’d moved from being Daddy’s princess to town pariah.

  The crying jag passed quickly. She’d gotten most of those tears out long before. Beth wiped her hands over her cheeks, which sent her mother scurrying out to get Kleenex. Beth was left alone with her father, but she didn’t look at him.

  “I just wanted to tell you the truth,” she said, her voice still catching on her rough throat. “Because I don’t want to lie anymore. That’s all. You don’t have to be happy about it, but at least you know who I am.”

  “Querida,” he said. When he didn’t say anything more, Beth looked at him. His head was bowed, one hand rubbing the back of his neck. He looked as if he’d shrunk half a foot in a few seconds.

  “I’m sorry, Dad,” she whispered. And she was sorry. If she could’ve chosen, she would’ve been the daughter he wanted. He was a good man, and she loved him so much. “Querida, I’m so sorry.”

  She shook her head, but tears fell from her eyes as if they’d never stopped.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I didn’t…I didn’t know what to do. I was so angry. And hurt. And I felt helpless. I didn’t know how to make it better for you, and that made me furious.”

  “You made it worse,” she whispered.

  “I couldn’t believe you’d done that. My little girl. I thought you were still drawing pictures of horses and dreaming of your first kiss. I didn’t…I’m sorry. I felt like my heart had been cut out.”

  “I know.”

  “I wanted to kill everyone who’d looked at those pictures. I wanted to beat that boy to a pulp. But in the end, I couldn’t do anything except take it out on you.”

  She nodded, and when he took her into his arms, Beth wanted to crawl into his lap and cry for hours. But that little girl was gone, so she only let herself hang on to him for a few heartbeats before she pulled away.

  He hugged her one last time. “I love you so much, querida. I can’t pretend I’m happy about what you’ve been doing. I can’t even pretend to accept it.”

  “I know.”

  “But you’re my heart, Beth. You always have been.”

  Her mom stood in the doorway with the box of tissues, but instead of offering them to Beth, she pulled out a bunch and pressed them to her own wet face. “Sit down,” she whispered. “Have some coffee.”

  “There’s something else.” Beth sighed. “This will take a while to explain.”

  “What is it?” her mom asked, rushing to take the hot water from the microwave.

  Beth grabbed a Kleenex for herself and blew her nose.

  Her mom brought the instant coffee over and both her parents sat on the other side of the table, waiting. So she told them. The whole story of the Kendalls and the brewery and Monica calling.

  “When Roland Kendall called you, he was trying to figure out a way to control me. He found out you didn’t know about the store, and he threatened to tell you.”

  “He threatened you?” her father asked.

  “Yes. And I did what he asked. I took back the story I’d told the police, because I didn’t want Roland Kendall to tell you the truth about me.”

  “Oh, querida.”

  “I know. I’m ashamed,” she whispered. “So I’m trying to make it right.”

  “Well, you can go to the police. Tell them—”

  “It doesn’t matter. That’s resolved, and despite what I did, it worked out.”

  “But he threatened you! You should tell the police. If they—”

  She shrugged. “He has a team of lawyers, Dad. Nothing is going to happen to him.”

  Her dad ran a hand over his face.

  “I’m sorry,” Beth said softly. “I’m sorry I let that bastard make me afraid. But mostly I’m sorry I’ve been lying to you for so long, because it wasn’t fair to either of us.”

  “Beth.” He took her hand. “Please just tell me you’re not going to stay at that place. You could get a position anywhere. You could do something amazing with your life.”

  “You know what? I think I will do something amazing, actually. I just have to figure out what it is.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  ERIC COULDN’T REMEMBER the last time he’d gotten drunk. He squinted down at the bottle of beer and tried to think. In college, maybe? Or just after?

  Whenever it had been, he was working damn hard at rectifying it now, and his secluded, sunny patio was the perfect place to do it in privacy.

  Wallace had returned to the brewery—sporting a smile beneath his beard that made clear his trip had gone well. Faron was back in Colorado and she was staying at Wallace’s house. “And,” he’d added with a gleam in his eye, “she’s a trained chef. I’m going to have her come in and cook for Jamie.”

  “Jesus,” Eric muttered, taking another swig of beer. That was just what they needed, a volatile couple working side by side in the back of the brewery. It would be a disaster, but Eric was staying out of it. Jamie could hire whoever he wanted. It was none of Eric’s business. He stretched out on his patio chair and propped his feet on the railing. It was cool today, but the noon sun was hot on his chest and it felt good. Or maybe that was the beer.

  As for the brewery, Eric had no idea what his business was there anymore. If he wasn’t a Donovan, who was he? But if he was a Donovan, why did he feel so out of place? Maybe he’d find an answer in the bottom of the next bottle. It was a Donovan brew, after all.

  He tucked the empty into the six-pack and opened the fourth bottle. But when his phone rang, he set the beer down so hard that it foamed over onto the cement. “Shit.” He grabbed the phone, hoping it was Beth, but Tessa’s name popped onto the screen.

  “Crap,” he muttered.

  “Hello to you, too,” she said.

  “I’m not interested in a meeting or group therapy or anything. What do you want?”

  “Jeez, you’re in a bad mood.”

  “Obviously.”

  “Fine,” she huffed. “Just listen. It’s Mom’s birthday today, and I can’t get away. Will you buy some flowers and take them to her grave?”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Yes, I do it every year, but I’m swamped here and I’m afraid I won’t get out before dark. Please? For Mom?”

  How was he supposed to say no to that? He looked mournfully at the beer bottle. He was only very slightly tipsy, and he really wanted to get drunk enough to stop thinking about Jamie and their dad and the brewery. And Beth. Christ, he’d really screwed that up. Or she had. He had no idea what had happened.

  “Fine.” He sighed.

  “Thank you. There’s a little vase at the foot of the grave, so just a few flowers will do.”

  “Right.”

  Eric stole one last drink of beer, then headed for the shower. He did his best not to think of Beth, or what they might do in a shower, and how hot it would be. She wasn’t returning his calls. It was over. She was done.

  Hell, he was done, too. She didn’t trust him and she never would. And he couldn’t trust her, either. She’d lied to him. About Roland Kendall. And about more than that.

  He’d finally read her column about threesomes, and her promise that she never dated more than one guy at a time had flown out the window. Hard not to date two guys at once when you were sleeping with both of them. Together.

  Maybe that was why she couldn’t trust anyone, because she knew she wasn’t trustworthy herself.

  Eric leaned his forehead against the cold tile of the bathroom wall and willed himself not to think about it. Beth had been a temporary pleasure in his life. Nothing more. And if he’d let his feelings get a little too deep… “F
uck,” he whispered.

  She wasn’t the type to settle down, obviously. He’d get over it.

  As he got out of the shower and dried his hair, he told himself he definitely wouldn’t check her column next week. When he pulled on jeans and a T-shirt, he tried not to remember her in his bed. “It was just sex,” he told himself. “Get over it.”

  At least to her it had been. And if he wanted to play in the big leagues, he’d have to toughen up.

  Eric grabbed his wallet and keys and headed out the door. It was only two miles to the cemetery, and he still felt mildly buzzed, so he decided to walk.

  There was a flower shop on the way to the cemetery, so he headed that way. Had Tessa really done this every year? How had he not realized that? He visited their graves sometimes, but not often. He couldn’t feel them there, not as he did when he was at Tessa’s house. There, he could actually see them, in memories like scratchy videos. His mom bringing Jamie home from the hospital. His dad painting a room pink for Tessa before she was born. And that constant feeling of wanting to get things right. To make sure that Michael Donovan never regretted adopting him, not even for a second.

  When Eric got to the flower shop, he couldn’t bring himself to buy a tiny five-dollar bouquet of flowers, so he bought a huge spray to lay on top of her headstone. She’d been an amazing mom, on her own and with Michael Donovan. Eric should’ve done this before. He should’ve brought flowers every month.

  Lost in thought, and his vision slightly obscured by baby’s breath, Eric didn’t realize there was someone else at the grave until he was halfway up the hill.

  He lowered the arrangement. Jamie.

  “Damn it, Tessa,” Eric cursed under his breath. Jamie was there, a bouquet already tucked into the metal vase at the foot of her grave.

  Eric was frozen. He wanted to simply turn and leave, but that seemed like an awfully petty thought as he stood in front of his mother’s grave. He could already see exactly how Tessa’s brain had spit this plot out. They can’t fight on top of Mom’s grave. They’ll have to talk.

  Eric started forward with a resigned frown.

  When Jamie looked up, he didn’t even seem surprised. His eyes slid to the big spray of flowers in Eric’s hand and his mouth flattened.

  “What?” Eric asked.

  “Nothing.”

  Eric laid the flowers on her gravestone, and then they both just stood looking at it, their hands in their pockets, silence between them.

  Eric cleared his throat. “I never seem to know the right thing to say to you,” he murmured.

  Jamie shot him a look before he went back to staring at the headstone. Silence fell again and dragged out for a full minute. Eric was about to turn and leave when Jamie finally spoke. “You know what I always hated? That you had to be perfect. You had to do everything the right way every single time. It made me feel like shit.”

  Eric shook his head, trying to clear the shock. “What?”

  “You were my big brother, and I wanted to be like you. But I’m not perfect. I’m not even close. It was bad enough before the accident, but then…” He shrugged and looked away.

  “I didn’t want you to be perfect, Jamie. I just wanted to do the best job I could. For you.”

  “Maybe after, but you’ve always been that way. You always set the curve so damn high, I had no chance of meeting it. Straight As. Jobs after school. You did all your chores and then some. You never broke any rules. Never complained.”

  “I couldn’t,” Eric said. “Don’t you get that? I wasn’t competing with you, Jamie. There was no competition. You were his son.”

  “Oh, come on. Stop with that shit. You—”

  “I’m serious. It’s not Dad’s fault. I know he loved me. But he only adopted me a couple of months before you were born. It was still brand-new, and then there you were, cute and adorable and his. The perfect baby. You even looked just like him. I loved you as much as they did, but it seemed impossible that I could compete with that. I had to be the perfect son, because he took me on. He loved me even though I wasn’t his. What was I supposed to do with that?”

  “He never treated you any different!”

  “But I felt different. Jesus, I didn’t even look like I belonged in the family! So I made damn sure I did everything right. I wasn’t born knowing I belonged. Not like you. So yeah, maybe I did need him to ask me to stay at the brewery, so I could know he really wanted me there.”

  When Eric looked at Jamie this time, his brother was staring at him. No smirk on his lips, no irritation in his eyes. Eric flushed and shifted a little farther away, but Jamie held his gaze.

  “Mom and Dad would talk about you over dinner sometimes,” Jamie said. “She didn’t want you to go away, but he said you needed to spread your wings. And he thought you’d learn things that would be good for the brewery in the long run. He wanted you there, Eric. Don’t doubt that.”

  For a moment, Eric didn’t feel it. They were just words. Nothing more. But then his breath got stuck in his throat. He had to swallow in order to draw air in. “Yeah?” he managed to say.

  “Yeah,” Jamie answered.

  Had it been that simple? Michael Donovan had been trying to set him free, and Eric had only wanted to stay? God, how tragic was that?

  He tried to clear the sorrow from his throat. “I’m sorry if I made you feel like I needed you to be perfect,” he murmured. “It wasn’t what I wanted for you, Jamie.”

  Jamie nodded, but now he was the one shifting from foot to foot as if he was uncomfortable. “It’s not all you. I felt…” Clearing his throat, he dropped his head and stared at his feet. His neck slowly turned red.

  “Hey,” Eric said. “You okay?”

  He shrugged, but didn’t look up.

  “Jamie. What’s wrong?”

  His shoulders rose on a deep breath. “I don’t know how to tell you this. I felt… Jesus. You were so perfect and I felt like the most worthless piece of shit in the world, and I fucking hated you because of it.”

  “Whoa. What the hell are you—?”

  “The accident,” Jamie cut in. “It was my fault.”

  “The car accident?” Eric asked, his mind reeling. “Jamie, you weren’t even there.”

  When Jamie looked up, there were tears in his eyes. Tears. And that scared Eric more than anything had in the past thirteen years. Jamie hadn’t even cried at the funeral.

  Eric started to reach for his shoulder, but Jamie took a step back. “They were coming to pick me up, because I was drunk. I drove my friends to a party and even though I knew I was supposed to drive them home, I got drunk. I didn’t know what to do. My friends needed to get home. So I called Mom.”

  Eric’s jaw had dropped. He couldn’t think, much less speak.

  “They were at home. They wouldn’t have even been in the car, much less on that road, except that I’d fucked up and they had to come bail me out.” He swiped an angry hand over his eyes even though no tears had fallen. “It was my fault.”

  “Jamie,” Eric breathed. “Why didn’t you tell me? Does Tessa know?”

  Jamie shook his head. “I’ve never told anyone but Olivia. I didn’t want anyone to know. Especially not you or Tessa. I killed our parents, Eric.”

  Eric grabbed both his shoulders before he could back away. “You did not.”

  Jamie laughed and wiped his eyes again. “I’m the one who doesn’t deserve the brewery or the name or the family.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Eric cursed, giving him a little shake before he pulled him in for a hug. Jamie’s body was stiff with tension, but Eric just hugged him harder. How the hell had Jamie lived with that? “You were just a fucking kid, Jamie. You should have told me.”

  He shook his head, and Eric felt Jamie’s back shudder beneath his hands. His own eyes burned with grief. “You should have told me,” he repeated, his voice cracking.

  “I couldn’t,” Jamie rasped.

  “It wasn’t your fault. Don’t say it again. Ever. It was an accident, d
amn it. If they’d been on their way to pick Tessa up from school, would you blame her?”

  “It’s not the same.”

  “Shut the fuck up,” Eric ordered.

  Jamie shoved him away, his mouth twisted halfway between a grimace and a pained laugh. “Stop telling me what to do. I didn’t even want to tell you. Ever. But Olivia said we’d never have peace if we didn’t talk.”

  “Wait a minute.” Eric cocked his head, not believing he was even about to ask this. “Did you tell Tessa to call me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Because you wanted to talk?”

  “Yeah.”

  Now they were back to staring in silence again. Eric’s head swam with grief and confusion. And huge, utter relief that he finally understood what had been wrong between them for so long. “I can’t tell you what to feel for yourself, Jamie, but I’ll never blame you. And neither will Tessa. And Mom and Dad thought you were doing the right thing, or they wouldn’t have come for you. It wasn’t your fault. And I sure as hell never thought I was perfect. So can we just start from here? Try again?”

  “I’d like that,” Jamie said. “I’m sick of fighting all the damn time.” He glanced up. “Plus, my jaw felt like hell for a while there.”

  “Consider it payback for all the stress you caused me over the years. I thought you’d never make it out of college with a degree.”

  “Dude, I serve beer. I would’ve been okay.”

  Eric growled, but he left it alone. Considering the burden Jamie had been carrying around, it was a miracle he hadn’t lost himself entirely. Eric’s heart shook at the thought of how bad it could’ve gotten if Jamie hadn’t been a good person deep down inside.

  Jamie rubbed a hand hard over his face. “Okay. Does this mean you’ll keep doing all the stuff at the brewery that no one else knows how to do? Much as I hate to admit it, we can’t do the things you do.”

  “Actually…no.”

  Jamie’s hand dropped. “No?” he asked warily.

  “I haven’t figured it out yet,” Eric admitted, “but something’s got to change.”

  “Something like what?”