A puff of smoke billowed out in front of him and his chin dipped down in a nod as he pulled the cigar out of his mouth. “I can do that. I have a car parked outside Sassy’s looking for our yokels as well. No sign of them yet. They’re probably lying low or they may have figured out they got the wrong guy and are keeping their heads down so the person that hired them doesn’t come looking for a refund.” He stuck the cigar back in between his lips and when he talked the red end bounced up and down. “Keep that pretty little thing close, son. She’s a keeper and you don’t want anything happening to her.”

I laced my fingers behind my head and rocked back on the chair so that it was balanced precariously on the back legs. “I’m more the catch and release type.” I wasn’t actually a fisherman at all because the catch of the day tended to land in the boat without me reeling them in. “And I promised her I wouldn’t let anything happen to her while she’s with me. It’s a promise I intend to keep.”

The cigar twitched as he turned his head to look at me and then he sighed long and loud, which sent fragrant smoke drifting up around his head. “That’s not a promise you can make good on, son. Sometimes the things that happen to those that we love are out of our control. The only thing you can make sure of is that you’re not the person or the reason she gets hurt. That you can control completely. If you hurt her, that pain falls squarely on you, Dash, and you don’t get the luxury of blaming God or piss-poor luck.”

His words dug themselves deep inside my skin. It was a fatherly warning, but it was more than that. It was hard truth that I couldn’t bury my head in the sand and ignore. I was always waiting for the bad to work its way into my good thing. I rarely stopped to wonder if I was the bad working myself into someone else’s good thing because of my long-held hang-ups and refusal to let anyone close.

“I owe you an apology. I know the words don’t make up for my actions, but I am sorry.” I kicked the chair back even farther so that I was looking up at the night sky. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you what I was really risking when I was overseas. I’m sorry I never made it back home. I’m sorry I left the way I did and I’m more than sorry I wasn’t here when you needed me the most. You have always been the best example of a father any kid could ask for and I’m sorry you got stuck with me instead of a kid that deserved you.”

There was absolute silence from the man next to me, so I turned my head just as he was shifting in his seat so that he was looking directly at me. He pulled the cigar out of his mouth and gingerly placed it in the glass ashtray that was resting near the leg of his chair.

“Did I ever tell you I loved your mom long before she ever agreed to go out on a date with me?” At the abrupt change of subject I gave him a quizzical look and shook my head. “Well, I did. I thought she was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen when we were in high school together. I used to watch her in the hallways, and I had a picture that the paper ran of her from her pageant days stuck on my mirror in my room. I would have given anything for her to look at me, for her to see me the way I saw her, but she never did.”

I snorted. “Probably because her parents would have lost their shit if she tried to bring home a black boyfriend while she was still living under their roof. It probably never occurred to her that you were a viable dating choice back then.”

He nodded and lifted a shoulder and let it fall. “Maybe, but I didn’t know that. I didn’t know she was raised by racists and had been taught that different skin color was something unacceptable. What I did know was that she came from money, and I did not. I came from the Holler. My home had wheels and aluminum walls. I shared that space with a mom who had a drug habit and a dad who liked to knock her and me around when he was home. I didn’t have a lot, and what I did have wasn’t anything to brag about, so I never asked your mom out. I never took a chance.” His eyes were intent on mine as he kept talking. “When I saw her again when she came back to town the rumor had spread that she left school and had a baby. This is a small town, so it was no secret she was on the outs with her folks because the baby wasn’t enough like them. By that time, I’d been on the force for a few years, I’d gone to college, I’d bought a home, and had a life any man could be proud of, but I saw your mom and all those old fears came back. I wasn’t good enough for her and there was no way I had anything impressive to offer her. I didn’t deserve a woman like that because I didn’t know what I would do with her even if she gave me a shot. My life was violent and ugly, that was the reality of things. I didn’t know if I had it in me to be a different kind of man than the one I was raised to be and that terrified me.”

“That’s shitty.” We’d never talked much about his childhood since so much if his focus had been on making sure I had a great one, before and after my mom.

“It is shitty, but it turned out I wanted your mom more than I wanted to keep her safe from all the things I was scared of. I asked her out without meaning to and almost had a heart attack when she said yes. I was already in love with her, so I was surprised how easy it was to be the kind of man she needed me to be. When things got serious and she told me it was time to meet you—” he stopped talking and had to clear his throat “—I remembered every single time my dad hit me. All I could think about was how short-tempered and angry he was with me all the time. I’d always had a thing for your mom but you were this tiny, innocent stranger that I was going to have to fool into thinking I was worthy of love and affection. I didn’t think I could do it. All I could imagine was doing the wrong thing with you, screwing up and having your mom leave me, and worse than that, having her leave me because I’d been right all along and I wasn’t good enough for her.” He gave me a pointed look that I could see clearly even in the dark. It was like he was looking right into my soul. “I broke up with her before she could bring you around me. I left her with some lame excuse about things moving too fast, lied through my teeth that I wasn’t ready to be a daddy, told her it wasn’t her, it was me … all the stupid stuff idiotic men say when they know they are breaking a good woman’s heart.”