Honey Pie (Cupcake Club) - By Donna Kauffman Page 0,25

His boat had been parked right out back, in easy reach to work on when there weren’t any cars in for servicing. And simply to look at when the frustrations of the job got the better of him. Someday he’d get her out on the water, but he was perfectly content to keep tinkering on the boat until he had her restored to the vision he’d pictured in his mind the day he’d laid eyes on her.

He could still recall his brother Mickey sneering at his decision to blow all the money he’d saved up for an old Mustang on a boat instead. Too drunk to hold his tongue, his old man had stood up for him, and had paid the price for it. Mickey had stopped accepting parental feedback the day he’d figured out he was bigger, stronger, and faster with his fists than the old man. Since their dad was usually on his way to passing out drunk, or already passed out, even Dylan, who was six years Mickey’s junior, could hold his own against the old man by the time he hit puberty.

Of course, Donny Ross hadn’t always been a drunk. There’d been a time when he’d been a pretty damn good mechanic and a decent man to boot. Better than his own old man or his uncle. Dylan’s grandfather, Tommy, had been proud of his son . . . but of his own brother, Uncle Dick, not so much. Then again, Dick usually had a beer in one hand and a nasty observation at the ready, so it wasn’t a surprise that he’d felt threatened by the father-son duo. Dick was a mean son of a bitch who’d never married, much less procreated—a fact that Dylan, in the short time he’d known the man, had thought was perhaps the only fortunate thing that had ever happened to the guy. In fact, the story went that Dylan’s father had been proud of the fact that he hadn’t followed the Ross family tradition, in which at least one member of every generation lost the battle with the bottle.

Unfortunately, that had changed after the sudden death of Donny’s father, followed by his wife—Dylan’s and Mickey’s mother—abandoning them, and Dick landing himself in jail for shooting a jealous husband who’d come after him when he’d found out Dick was the guy who’d banged and banged up his wife. Fortunately Dick hadn’t killed the guy.

With his dad dead, Dick in jail, and his wife gone without looking back, unable to deal with Mickey’s temperamental outbursts and having another small one underfoot, Donny had cracked.

By the time Dick had gotten out of jail, Donny had claimed a permanent place on the Ross Family Drunk roster. He wasn’t a mean drunk, just a sad, sorry, pitiable one.

And Dick was back to drinking again before his first parole meeting.

Mickey was fourteen when Uncle Dick wrapped his car around a tree . . . and he rose up to become the man of the house. Young Dylan had quickly learned that life could, in fact, get worse. He used to dream of the day he could run away from home.

When that day came, he’d stayed. Someone had to protect their dad from Mickey’s rages. With or without alcohol, Mickey made Dick look like a choir boy when it came to getting himself into trouble.

For years, the islanders thought it was Donny abusing Dylan, and that Mickey was just a chip off the Ross family block, brawling with his old man. There had been no point in explaining that Donny was as much a victim as Dylan was, and Mickey was the current tyrant in residence. When Dylan wasn’t feeling guilty for wishing his brother would do something bad enough to end up in jail like Uncle Dick had, he was feeling guilty for being so damn angry with his father. He couldn’t forgive his dad for not being strong enough to handle life, to handle Mickey. To love and take care of Dylan.

“And why in the hell I’m thinking about any of that mess, I have no idea,” Dylan said, scrubbing a hand over his face. What he did know was that fifteen years ago, this boat had been his salvation. If he couldn’t leave home and leave his dad behind, he could, at least, run away to work on the boat. Many a night he’d slept on board, behind the repair shop, lying on his back on the deck, looking at the stars, listening