Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 84002 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84002 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
“I’m Van.” It felt like he hadn’t stopped saying those words in the couple days he’d been back. He wasn’t Maxwell Sullivan, no matter what his birth certificate said.
“That is not who you are.”
Jesus. “I’m sure as shit not my father’s son.”
Her eyes began to well with tears. That was where he should apologize but he couldn’t bring himself to do it.
Mr. Chan cleared his throat. “What about the bank?”
“What about it?” he asked, the hairs on his arm rising.
“It’s been left to both you and your mother—you as the primary.”
“What the fuck do I know about running a bank?” Van shot forward in his seat. He didn’t know how he hadn’t even thought of the bank. “Who’s been taking care of things now?”
“Charles, the manager, and myself,” his mom answered with a sharp edge to her voice.
“I’ll leave the two of you alone for a moment.” Van didn’t look up at the lawyer as he slipped from the room.
“What was he thinking?” Van ran a hand over his face. Was that his father’s way of trying to apologize? That didn’t fit with the man his father had been. He never apologized for anything. Was that his way to try and get Van back to Last Chance? To try to tie him somewhere he knew Van didn’t want to be? And what about his mom? “What about you? You’re his wife.”
“Yes, I am. And whether you like it or not, you’re our son, Max. I agreed to this. I knew what your father’s wishes were and I damn sure plan to do my best to honor them.”
“Why?” he asked. “You don’t want me here. You can’t. Not knowing what you do about me. I’m not going to change, Mom. You accept me as I am or not at all.”
His heart sped up and his palms began to sweat. He wanted her to accept him. Maybe needed it, in some small way.
“The way you accepted your father for who he was, flaws and all?”
“That’s different.”
“Is it?” she asked.
“How can you ask me that? I never hurt anyone. I never hurt him. Hell, he never even said he was sorry.”
“Maybe he did. Would you accept it if so?”
The truth was, Van couldn’t say for sure. Likely, the answer was no.
“Seems we’re all looking for a little acceptance here. The thing is, I didn’t do anything wrong.”
She reached into her purse then, and pulled out an envelope that said Max in his father’s messy scrawl.
Blood rushed through Van’s ears. “How?” His father had died of a heart attack. How could he have written this?
“He wrote it a year and a half before he died.”
“Why didn’t he send it then?”
“Fear.”
Van scoffed at that. “He wasn’t afraid of anything. He sure as shit wasn’t afraid of how I would react or feel about something.”
She sighed. “I really loved him, ya know?”
An ache started in the center of his chest and spread out from there, until it nearly choked him. “Yeah, I know.” He just wished she’d loved him as much.
They called Thomas back in and his mom said they had decisions to make and would get in touch with him again. Van had already decided and he wasn’t changing his mind.
When they got back to the house, he asked, “Do you want to get started? We can get some packing done. I’ll help you.”
“No.” She shook her head. “Not today, Max.”
He could hear it in her voice, her disappointment in him. But he was disappointed in her too.
She left not long after. He didn’t know where, so Van left too, camera in hand, trying to forget about the letter he had never expected to get.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“Oh fuck.” Shane’s hand slipped, as he tried to loosen a nut on the alternator and his knuckle scraped the belt pulley.
Ryan looked over at him. “This is probably the tenth time I’ve heard you say ‘oh fuck’ today. You sure are screwing a lot of shit up,” he teased Shane. “What you thinking about so hard?”
“Your daddy,” Shane teased back, making Ryan bark out a laugh.
“You can do better.”
The truth was, Shane had been distracted. He couldn’t stop thinking about last night with Van—the head and the photographs. The way Van had described taking his picture. The way he’d left Last Chance to follow his dreams, that he’d done something so far from Shane’s reality he almost couldn’t comprehend it.
But he wanted to. Christ, he fucking wanted to.
“You okay, man?” Ryan said and Shane realized the other man had said something else to him he’d missed.
Yep, just fine. Thinking about my childhood nemesis taking pictures of me naked, is all. And that’s what it was, he realized. He almost…wanted that. Wanted to feel as though he could step outside of his body. Be someone totally different than the Shane Wallace who lived in Last Chance his whole life, and had never done anything…exciting. How he wanted something outside of his life of taking care of his mom, working in the shop, playing around in his studio, and drinking beer at Round Table.