“The boss knows this place is as much yours as it is his. You’ve always been welcome and you’ve been missed. He’ll listen to what you have to say and then you’ll listen to what he has to say and that’ll be the end of it.” He tilted his head in the direction of the back and gave me a hint of a grin, which was as close to a smile as I had ever seen him come. “He was working on invoices and bills for the month so I’m sure you’ll be a welcome distraction.”
I nodded briskly and stiffened my spine as I pulled out of the hug and headed across the battered wood floors towards the closed office door. I knocked and it felt like an eternity before a gruff “Come in” was issued. I pushed the door open and expected a scowl or a glower when Rome looked up from the messy desk in order to see who was behind the interruption. What I got was a smile that showed pearly white teeth and turned his harshly handsome face with the fierce scar that bisected one of his eyebrows and his forehead into something that was breathtaking and hard to look away from.
“Avett. What brings you by? Is your dad here?” Rome spoke a lot like he was still in the military. He didn’t waste words or time and his laser-like baby blues pinned me to the spot with almost no effort on his part. He cocked his shaved head to the side and gave me a narrow-eyed look when I didn’t immediately answer him. “Have you been crying?”
I laughed nervously and made my way over to one of the shabby chairs that sat across from his desk. I flopped down into the worn fabric and met his curious stare with an unfiltered one of my own. I was feeling raw, open, and stripped down to my most basic elements after that horrible confrontation with Quaid outside of the courthouse and there was no way to hold back the flood of honesty and admission as it rushed out of me.
“I came by because I wanted to tell you that I’m sorry. I’m sorry I was a shitty employee. I’m sorry that I didn’t respect you or what you did with this place, and I’m so, so sorry I didn’t say no when Jared asked me to take the money from the cash register. I hate that I put you in a position where you had to fire me and it makes me so mad at myself that I purposely did things that made it impossible for me to ever come back here. You’re a good man, Rome. My dad wouldn’t have done what he did with the bar if you weren’t. I spent a lot of time ruining everything that was good in my life, which is why I self-sabotaged every opportunity you offered me. I can give you the long explanation as to why I felt like I deserved to be kicked around and why I kept inflicting wounds on myself to bleed from, but the moral of the story is that I know now that punishing myself never got me anywhere, and those actions hurt other people far worse than they ever hurt me.” I blinked at him and bit my lip. “Like you, and Asa.”
He tossed the pen he was holding onto the desk and leaned forward on his forearms so that he was peering intently into my eyes.
“You know, when you come home from a war zone and have to settle into a normal, everyday kind of existence, no one ever tells you how to deal with all the things that you bring back with you. When you’re in a situation that calls for you to make life and death choices, you do so knowing those decisions affect so many more than just yourself.” I was mesmerized by his words and by the sincerity and depth with which he gave them to me. “When you come home you’re full of things like regret and doubt. You can’t sleep some nights because you wonder what-if, and guilt feels like it’s going to bury you alive. But eventually you realize all you can do is come to terms with the choices you had to make, for whatever reasons you had to make them. You can’t take those choices back, but you can learn from them and let them make you a better person. I’m almost jealous that you get the opportunity to apologize, Avett. There are some days I feel like I would give everything I have to be able to say I’m sorry for the things I may have done wrong. And I’m not talking about when I was overseas.”
I exhaled and felt some of the dread and trepidation that was fueling this little meeting fade away. I lifted my hands to my face and rubbed them over my messy eyes. “Thank you for understanding. I also plan on paying you back every single cent that I took from you.”
“I understood before you walked in here. I have a little brother that was all about self-destruction for a while. You actually pulled yourself out of it much sooner than he did.”
I wrinkled my nose and sighed. “That’s because girls mature faster than boys.”
Rome chuckled. “That’s true, and just so you know, you always have a place here. That kitchen belongs to your mother, not to me, so if you ever want to come back, she’s the one you need to make amends with.”
“We’re good … well, better than we were. There’s been a lot of apologizing and accountability since I got out of jail. Realizing you’re on a crash course with prison is surprisingly enlightening.”
“Are you sure that enlightenment didn’t come from the guy that kept you out of prison? After Brite finished bitching about the fact the guy rides a crotch rocket, he had nothing but good things to say about him. It sounded like he was shipping you and the lawyer pretty hard.”
I lifted my eyebrows at him. “Shipping?”
He rolled his eyes and I grinned when I noticed he had pink heat filling his cheeks. “Blame Cora. She watches all that stuff on the CW Network and is always shipping this and shipping that. She’s corrupted me.”
Cora was his pint-sized, very pregnant, soon-to-be wife. The two had an adorable daughter that was proving to be as much of a handful as her mother was. Cora was also the only person fierce enough and stubborn enough to put up with the moody former soldier on a permanent basis. On the outside the two of them were as different as night and day but when anyone saw them together it was obvious that they were perfectly matched and deeply in love. They were the epitome of relationship goals in my book.