The Teacher and the Soldier (5 page)

“Why don’t you ask her?” Luke said. He wasn’t going to rake over dead coals and wished he hadn’t even opened his mouth. If Daniel asked his mom what the hell had happened she would just give the party line that she hadn’t known about anything that was happening.

Bull shit
.

“I remember you at school,” Daniel said. “The part about bigots? You mean you being gay? Man, I don’t get that. You were out. The town and the school, we all supported and accepted you. Tell me what you mean by bigoted. Not my mom, I know that for sure.”

Luke shook his head. She’d done something much worse than that. She’d ignored some of what she’d seen. That was a sin far worse in Luke’s mind.

“Being gay and out was as easy as it could be in a small town,” Luke said. “But try being the son of the town loser, the son of the man that owed money everywhere. The offspring of the one that stole money yet sat on a goldmine with his investment in the Cabins. Then you’ll see intolerance and bigotry.”

“Listen—”

“I’m back to get the place listed for sale, giving your family first chance to buy it
whatever
their sins. Then I’m gone.” He couldn’t help the hate that spilled from inside him. He’d had ten years to let it build despite thinking he’d put a lid on it in counselling sessions.

“Jesus,” Daniel snapped. “Whatever their sins? What do you mean by that?” He took a few steps closer and gripped Luke’s upper arms in a firm hold. “Calm the fuck down, man.”

“I can’t,” Luke said. “This fucking town…”

“You’re being irrational.”

“You don’t know what it was like to have people ignore what was happening. No one helped me.” Luke was aware rational was not on his side. He wasn’t making any sense even to himself. He was just taking out everything that was going to eventually come out on the first person he met, someone who he didn’t even really know.

“So your dad was a waste of space—”

“You know about my dad?”

“Small town, Luke. But fuck, you need an intervention if you’ve been carrying this shit around this long. Whatever their sins? What the fuck are you on? You’ve been watching too much day time television, Mr Dramatic.”

He probably wasn’t, but it sounded to Luke like Daniel was laughing at him, belittling what he had gone through, sneering at the pain inside his head. As simple as breathing and just like he’d known he would as soon as he’d passed into this toxic space, he snapped.

Shaking himself free and with his fist clenched, he threw a punch before he could stop himself—ten years of hate in the aim and force. Daniel was clearly not expecting it as he didn’t move and took the full force of Luke’s punch straight on the cheekbone. Time stopped as Daniel stumbled a step back then regained his balance. Daniel’s eyes widened then just as quickly his gaze narrowed.

“You want to start this here, Fitzgerald?” he said calmly.

“Shit,” Luke said. He couldn’t say sorry. He didn’t feel sorry. He wanted to be sorry. The satisfying thud of his fist into flesh was just what he had received in the past and he’d needed to do it. What did that make him? He’d only been here two days and he was turning into his old man. Suddenly terrified at the temper inside and the need to hurt he backed away from Daniel then when every ounce of energy left him in an instant, he collapsed to the ground in a heap.

Daniel didn’t move, simply looked down at him with that cool assessing gaze.

“You can go,” Luke said. He didn’t want the other man standing there watching him.

“You want to tell me what the hell that was all about?”

“Go. Please.”

Daniel crouched down next to him and Luke flinched at the movement. Any minute now the rough tough looking big guy was going to retaliate. Luke cursed inwardly. He knew better than to poke in a hornet’s nest.

‘You’re not living, Luke, you’re frightened of shadows and you keep most of yourself back and what little I get is enough. We can just be friends. I can be a good friend.’

Zach’s words rang in his head. His ex was a kind guy, a nice guy, despite him ending up fucking a stranger in their bedroom. Zach was the sort of man who stepped back and allowed you to work through your issues. Just what Luke needed. Until, actually, it was exactly what he hadn’t needed. Losing his job because of department cuts and suffering from the ‘last in, first out’ rule he had gone home to find his ex in bed with another man and what had he done?

Shaken the lover’s hand. Introduced himself and apologised for interrupting.

Who the hell did that?

“You gonna be okay down here?” Daniel’s voice was low and infuriatingly calm. The tone of it threw Luke. “Because we do need to set a time when we talk about your plans.”

“Selling.”

“Selling. Right. Who to, is what concerns us. My mom has put her heart and soul into the resort. We have a staff, loyal local people, and a good trade. We’re not selling to a corporation or one of these chain places that homogenise everything.”

“I’ll sell to who I want to sell to,” Luke said. “And I’ll be putting it on the market today.”

“All I’m asking for is that we get some say in who gets the other half—”

“Who I sell to is my business,” Luke said. He was pushing Daniel. Poking and prodding and forcing a reaction on that otherwise handsome yet impassive face. Luke didn’t deal well with calm and rational when it came to emotion. He was either flat and closed off or riled and emotional. No freaking middle ground.

“Then I guess we’ll need to be instructing our lawyers,” Daniel said.

“You do that,” Luke snapped back.

Daniel didn’t go. He wasn’t leaving. Luke shuffled on the hard and slightly damp ground. This was so not the place to have a mini meltdown. He saw Daniel move in his peripheral vision and some kind of acceptance washed over him. This was Daniel’s reaction. He braced himself for a blow. Instead though Daniel placed fingers under Luke’s chin and tilted his face up. Daniel had pushed his sunglasses up on top of his head revealing the clearest green eyes that Luke had ever seen. Those eyes were filled with compassion and questions.

“Why are you pushing me?” Daniel asked gently.

Luke was on emotion overload and he cursed the town and the thoughts he’d had that coming back here may lay some ghosts to rest. All it was doing was exposing his raw nerves. “Do you need me to get angry?”

For a minute Luke couldn’t move. This stranger was staring right into his soul and asking questions he didn’t want to be asked. This town was playing with his head. With a muttered “
fuck you”
he scrambled to his feet then, at a jog, he climbed the slope to the buildings of town then on to the hotel. Only when he was back in his room did he realise what he had done and how badly he had fucked it all up. He needed to phone someone. Talk to a friend. Talk to Zach, his lover. Only… He’d driven everyone away. He didn’t have friends. Or a lover. Or family. And soon he wouldn’t even have his birth-right.

He was happy that way.

Chapter Three

“Mom?”

“In here, Daniel.” Her voice came from the kitchen at the back of the reception and Daniel found his mom up to her elbows in soapy water. She had the radio blaring and was shimmying along to Bryan Adams and his
Summer of Sixty-nine
. She didn’t stop even when Daniel tried to hug her from behind. Instead she turned, pulled him into a wet soapy hug and encouraged him to dance with her until finally, blessedly, the song segued into the flavour of the year boy band and she stopped to turn it down. She looked up at him and frowned.

“What did you do?” she asked with a sigh. Tracing what Daniel knew would be a growing bruise she looked half worried and half indulgent. He’d been getting into scraps since he was little. He’d known when to quit though, which made him ideal soldier material in fact. A little hardness, a lot of edge, all ringed by iron control.

“I got hit.”

“I can see that.”

“Long story.”

“It always is with you, sweetheart.” She returned to washing up whatever was hidden under the mountain of bubbles in the sink.

“Mom, can we talk?”

She smiled over at him then took a second look. Whatever was on his face was enough to have her pulling down a towel and drying of her hands.

“One cookie or two?”

“Definitely two.” They had this system. One cookie for minor problems. Two for serious debate. She made coffee then pulled over the cookie jar. Rummaging inside, Daniel pulled out two and placed them in front of him. Idly he picked at the chocolate chunks and wondered where the hell to start. Best he started at the beginning probably.

“I met Luke Fitzgerald today.”

“I heard he was here,” his mom said carefully. “Staying at the hotel, pretty much in his room. Widow Jenn said he stood for hours on the top road. Did you talk to him about not being able to get in touch with him?”

“I did. He’s selling.”

Brenda shrugged. “It was unlikely he would decide to stay here and manage the other fifty per cent, he has a life in Richmond. Do we know who he’s selling too?”

“From what he said it isn’t on the market yet.”

“Well that at least gives us a chance to meet prospective owners.”

“He nixed that one. Said, and I quote, ‘who he sells to is his business’.”

Brenda nodded thoughtfully. “I’m sure he doesn’t have a lot of love for the business or the town.”

“Or his dad?”

“Or his dad.” Brenda sipped her coffee but immediately placed the cup back down. “Poor Luke didn’t have the best start.”

“Kieran and Finn said his mom left and that his dad was a bit heavy on the discipline.”

“Luke’s dad…Mike…used to be a good guy, worked up here with
his
daddy. When he inherited the cabins, his fifty per cent, I think it changed him. Add in his wife leaving and he found more and more of his life at the bottom of a bottle of JD. Luke was sixteen I think when his mom left and when Mike started drinking like it was an Olympic sport.” Brenda paused and looked past Daniel at some distant point behind him as she thought of what to say next. “He handled his dad well. Proud boy. Never once did he complain or moan or act like the teenager he was. To me and the others who were in his life, he was the most well-adjusted kid despite what he was going through.”

“What he was going through?”

“Do you remember him from school? He would have been a senior when you were a freshman?”

“I remember him.”

Brenda’s green eyes were bright with unshed tears and Daniel gripped her hand tight. “He spent as much time as he could at the school, worked with the youth sport’s teams, worked hard here but didn’t matter how much he smiled or laughed the emotion of happiness never reached his eyes.”

Daniel didn’t want to say that even ten years on there was very little happiness in Luke. Although he’d seen the closed down defensive act before—not just in himself, but also in other guys who he’d talked to who had seen war. PTSD wasn’t just something that people in war suffered from, although that was where the most emphasis was put. Victims of any crime, personal or not personal, every single human had the ability to lose themselves in the pit of emotions.

“Kieran said Luke was abused. By his dad.”

“Yes,” his mom said gently. “He was. We didn’t know. Not until too late, then he left for college and he didn’t come back till now. There isn’t a day when I don’t think about the serious boy from the cabin up the road. Maybe if I hadn’t been grieving for your father, maybe if I hadn’t been so busy protecting the cabins even when Mike drank the profits, then I could have done more. We all should have done more.”

“I think he hates you. And the town.”

“He has every right to hate us all for not seeing. We should look after all our children.”

“I don’t get it, though. Luke isn’t a small guy, he’s only an inch shorter than me and I remember him being tall even at school.”

“He was still a child, Danny, even at sixteen, and he adored his dad. I don’t know what happened. I think Mike used him as a punching bag, but he was never hit where you could see, not until that last time anyway.”

“Tell me.”

“I found him unconscious on my doorstep. He’d somehow managed to get over to my place, despite cracked ribs, a concussion, cuts and bruises. I called Thomas Dexter and he came over and between us we got him to the hospital. Mike had disappeared. The next morning I went to the hospital and Luke had left in the night against medical advice. I think the doctor dealing with him had something to do with that although I could never pin it down. Never saw him again although I checked in at his college and he had started there. Sherriff said he wasn’t pressing charges and wouldn’t say who hurt him. I knew, and Thomas knew, exactly who had hurt him. Mike holed himself up for weeks, then… Well you saw what he was like ten years in a bottle and no son.”

“So Mayor Dexter knew, and you knew, but it was too late.”

“I wish I could tell you otherwise, Danny.”

Daniel looked into his mom’s eyes and saw absolute truth in them—exactly what he had expected to see. Luke should know this. If Luke knew people were taken in by his act of nothing being wrong then maybe he wouldn’t judge everyone, or the town, so harshly. Maybe Daniel could get Luke to understand this then he and his mom could have input into whom he sold the cabins too.