Like Father, Like Son ✔

Chapter 40 - Luke's Father

CHAPTER 40

NICK

His shirt was sticking to his skin and it was becoming a challenge to keep his breathing steady, but Nick didn't stop. Blow after blow, his fists made contact with the punching bag.

"Are you trying to kill yourself?" asked one of the men that attended his gym, an older guy named Chuck. They didn't interact anywhere else, and Nick never felt the need to tell him his life story, but they were definitely what you might call gym buddies. "Or are you imagining that's somebody's face you're rearranging?"

"Yeah, something like that," Nick panted.

They got the call just a few days after Derek and Kassie's wedding to let them know the date they'd have to be in court. It came like a ton of bricks after a weekend not really thinking about it, and now as the week progressed it was slowly eating up at him. The worst part was trying to reassure his girlfriend that everything would be okay, because she was an even bigger mess than he was, despite Sullivan's confidence that they had it in the bag.

"We don't know that for sure," Cat whispered just last night when they were talking about it after Luke had gone to bed. "His family knows people, they could pull some strings... these things aren't always fair."

Nick knew that. He'd heard stories about people getting off with nothing more than a slap on the wrist for some awful crimes... but a part of him liked to be optimistic that their judicial system wasn't completely fucked up, and that there were some decent folks out there that didn't want to separate a child from his mother just because the father had more money than she did.

On top of everything though, it'd been a really long day at work, so all Nick could think to do now in order to unwind was punch the shit out of bags at the gym.

It was helping a little.

He only stopped when he felt like his lungs were about to collapse in his chest. Wiping sweat from his brow with the bottom half of his shirt, he proceeded to gulp down half of the contents from his water bottle. He then grabbed his bag off the ground, reached for Duke's harness on the floor at the foot of a bench and went back toward the locker rooms.

He showered, dressed and grabbed his cell phone from inside his locker, just now getting around to checking if he had any missed calls or text messages. He shoved a pair of earbuds into his ears, pulled his gym bag higher up on his shoulder and made his way to the main lobby.

The robotic voice in his ears told him he had a few text messages from Cat, none of which were urgent. She was at her parents' house with Luke and each of her messages left Nick smiling wryly. She was giving him a very detailed play-by-play of her day as she had brunch with her family for the first time in three and a half years.

He was texting back what he thought was a cute and rather charming reply to get her through the difficult ordeal when he bumped shoulders with somebody: a man most likely, as they were shoulder-to-shoulder.

"Sorry, man," Nick said quickly.

"Don't worry about it." There was a brief pause. Nick was about to start walking again but a hand on his shoulder made him stop dead in his tracks. "Listen, Nick... I need to talk to you," the man said abruptly, and it took no more than a second for Nick to place the voice: it was distinctively James.

Well fuck, his day just had to get worse.

"I shouldn't be talking to you," Nick said curtly, the tone of his voice telling James that he wouldn't have any of his shit today. Luke wasn't here to hold him back from doing anything stupid either, so it'd be in the other guy's best interest to back the fuck off.