Beckett took a deep breath. “My father died when I was nineteen. Heart attack. It was unexpected, and I... didn’t handle it well.”
Something in his tone made her look at him more closely. There was a familiar pain there, one she recognized.
“First, I started getting into minor trouble, then I went a bit wild,” he continued. “Started hanging out with a different crowd. One of them was a guy named Mitchell. He seemed to understand what I was going through. His own father had died a few years earlier.”
He paused, taking a sip of his hot chocolate. “We became friends. Or at least I thought we were friends. One night, he asked me to drive him to a convenience store. Said his car was in the shop and he needed to pick something up.”
She could guess where this was going, but she remained silent, letting him tell his story.
“I waited in the car. Had no idea what he was planning. Then I heard shouting, and Mitchell came running out with a gun in his hand.” His voice remained steady, but she could see the tension in his shoulders. “He jumped in the car and told me to drive. I panicked. Did what he said.”
“What happened next?”
“We were caught about an hour later. The clerk had been shot, but thankfully survived. Mitchell claimed I was in on it from the beginning. That I was the mastermind.” A humorless smile crossed his face. “The jury believed him. He had a better lawyer, a cleaner record. I got fifteen years. He got seven.”
She studied him across the space between them. His face was open and unguarded. There was no plea for sympathy in his eyes, just a quiet acceptance.
He met her gaze directly. “Anyway, you deserve to know who’s living in your father’s house. I’m not hiding who I am or what I did. Or more accurately, what I failed to do.”
“What you failed to do?”
“I failed to see Mitchell for who he really was. I failed to stop the robbery. I failed to make better choices.” He set his mug down again. “But I served my time. I’ve spent the last fifteen years trying to become someone my father would have been proud of, even if I was inside prison walls.”
The conviction in his voice was unmistakable. Whatever else Beckett Cole might be, he wasn’t trying to escape his past or pretend it hadn’t happened.
“I understand grief,” he said more softly. “I understand how it can change a person. Make them shut down when they should open up. Make them push away the people they need the most.”
The words struck too close to home. She looked away, focusing on the dancing flames in the fireplace. “Is that what you think happened with my father and me?”
“I think grief affects everyone differently. And sometimes it’s easier to blame the living than to accept that the dead are really gone.”
She felt a lump forming in her throat. “You don’t know anything about my relationship with my father.”
“You’re right,” he agreed readily. “I don’t. But I do know Stan. And I know he keeps your graduation photo on his nightstand. I know he saves every card you send him in a box in his closet. I know he watches for the mail carrier on his birthday, Christmas, and Father’s Day, hoping for something from you.”
Each word was like a small stone dropping into still water, creating ripples that disturbed the surface of everything she thought she knew.
“I’m not telling you this to make you feel guilty. I’m telling you because I think you should know that whatever happened between you two, he never stopped caring.”
She wrapped her hands tighter around her mug, trying to ground herself in its solid warmth. “After my mom died, he just... shut down. It was like he couldn’t see me anymore. Like I wasn’t enough.”
The admission surprised her. She hadn’t meant to say it out loud, hadn’t meant to reveal that old, deep hurt to this stranger.
“I doubt that was it. From what I’ve seen, Stan isn’t good at showing what he feels. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t feel it.”
“You sound like you know him pretty well.”
He shrugged slightly. “We’re both men who made mistakes and lost years we can’t get back.”
The parallel hadn’t occurred to her before. Her father had lost years to grief just as surely as Beckett had lost years to prison.
“I’m not asking for your trust, Tessa. I know I haven’t earned it. But I wanted you to know the truth about me. No secrets, no surprises.”
She studied him, this quiet man with his steady gaze and careful words. There was something solid about him, a groundedness that seemed at odds with the story he’d just told. “Thank you for telling me. I appreciate your honesty.”
He nodded, accepting her response without pushing for more. They sat in silence for a while, finishing their hot chocolate as the fire crackled and the snow fell outside.
“I should probably turn in. Morning comes early,” Beckett said eventually, rising from his chair.
