Page 65 of The Bachelor

And he wanted to move on. He wanted a life with Avery, a marriage and kids and a dog. If he expected her to be ready, he needed to be damn sure he was ready too, and that meant leaving the ghosts of the past behind.

Her eyes widened. “Oh, I see.”

Billy drained his beer and crunched the can down. He threw it at Shane’s head. “He’s just leaving.”

Shane blocked the can before it hit him. He almost laughed. He had fifteen years of training in dodging the old man’s attempts to hurt him. It was amazing how easy it was to predict it still and avoid it.

“Billy!” Louise sounded shocked.

“Don’t ‘Billy’ me. The little prick just came here to rub it in my fucking face that’s he’s driving a sixty-thousand-dollar car, wearing expensive shoes, and carrying a fucking iPhone in his pocket. I don’t need to tolerate it. Selfish assholes, all my kids. Living in luxury and I’m living in this hellhole with you. Ingrates. Goddamn ingrates.” Billy had a line of spittle dribbling from the corner of his mouth.

Shane wondered what it was that made a man so bitter. So angry. So entitled.

He took a deep breath and knew that he nothing like the man standing in front of him. Blaming everyone else for his problems.

“Louise, I’m sorry I riled him up,” Shane said, regretting that. He had the sinking feeling that as soon as he left, she would be on the receiving end of that anger and that was the last thing in the world he wanted. “That wasn’t my intention, and I didn’t know he had a girlfriend. Do me a favor and find somewhere else to go this afternoon so he doesn’t turn that mean streak on you.”

This time Billy threw a brick he’d been using as a doorstop at Shane. “Don’t tell her what to do. Only I tell that bitch what to do.”

Louise let out a cry of dismay. She set the bag of whiskey down, tossed her cigarette into the dirt and said, “I’m out of here. I don’t have to put up with this shit.”

“Good riddance,” Billy told her. “Fat whore.”

She flipped him off over her head.

The brick had landed a good three feet away from him, so Shane didn’t even jump. He just shook his head at his father. “I didn’t come here to rub anything in your face. I thought I don’t know, maybe at some point you’d apologize.”

Billy snorted. “For what? If it wasn’t for me, you’d be a total pussy. I toughened you up. Like my father did.”

As if that had worked out for Billy. “You can justify it however you want but you were a terrible father and now you’re just a mean old man with nothing to show for your life.” He yanked open the passenger door to his car.

There was a worn and soft manila folder with cursive writing on the side. Hart, Shane. He grabbed it and felt the weight of it once more in his hands. The last time. Ten X-rays of all his broken bones compliments of Billy Hart. He had always kept them, for all these years, to remind him where he came from. Now he figured he only needed to know where he was going.

He took the envelope and hurled it into the dirt next to the bag with the whiskey in it. A cloud of dust rose.

“What is that?”

“Nothing. From nobody.”

Damn, that felt good. Shane took a deep breath, got in his car, and drove back to the life he had created. A life he hoped like hell would include Avery.

Pat called Avery that night.

“I like you, Avery,” Pat said after greeting her, and her tone was apologetic.

Shit. “And?” She knew what that meant. She was being fired.

“You’re very talented. You have a future ahead of you in the industry. But…”

There was the “but.” “Thank you,” she said, because she did appreciate the compliment, which sounded sincere.

“If I keep you on, it looks like blatant favoritism. There has been tension with the other writers.”

Avery gripped her phone and closed her eyes, tears burning at the back of her lids. It was over. She was done at Rusted Truck. “I understand.”

“I’ll have a courier bring over your personal effects and your last paycheck.” Pat sounded sympathetic, concerned, which made Avery actually feel worse.

“Thanks, Pat.”

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