The fucking floor drops out beneath me, and I try to pull my shoulder out of his grip but he doesn’t let me, won’t let me turn my back on him to hide the tears burning my eyes like ice picks. Tears that reinforce the fact that I’m a pussy who hasn’t handled anything at all.
And as much as I want him to shut the fuck up … to leave me the fuck alone … he continues “You don’t need to say a word to me. You don’t need to cross that imaginary line in your head that makes you fear an admission will make everyone leave you, will prove you to be less of a man, will make you the pawn she wanted you to be …”
He pauses and it takes every ounce of everything inside of me to try and meet his eyes. And I do for a split second before the fucking door to the patio, the sand beneath my feet, and the burn of oxygen in my lungs as my feet pound down the beach calls to me like heroin to an addict. Escape. Run. Flee. But I’m fucking frozen in place, secrets and lies swirling and colliding with the truth. The truth he knows but I still can’t bring myself to utter after twenty-four years of absolute silence.
“So don’t speak right now, just listen. I know she let them do things to you that are vile and repulsive and make me sick.” My stomach pitches and rolls, my breath shuddering at hearing it aloud. “… Things no one should ever have to endure … but you know what, Colton? That doesn’t make it your fault. It doesn’t mean you deserved it, that you let it happen.”
I slide down the wall behind me until I am sitting on the floor like a fucking little kid … but his words, my dad’s words … have brought me back there.
Have scared me.
Changed me.
Fucked with my head so memories start pushing through the wormholes in my fucked up heart and soul.
I need to be alone.
I need Jack or Jim.
I need Rylee.
I need to forget. Again.
“Dad?” My voice is shaky. The sound of a little bitch asking for permission and fuck me, right now, isn’t that what I am? On the fucking floor once again about to throw the fuck up, body shaking, head racing as my stomach revolts?
He’s sitting on the floor beside me like he used to do when I was little, his hand on my knee, his patience calming me some. “Yeah, son?” His voice is so soft, so tentative, I can tell he’s afraid he’s pushed me too far. That he’s broken me more when I’ve already been fucking shattered and held together with scotch tape for way too long.
“I need—I need to be alone now.”
I hear him draw in a breath, feel his resigned acceptance, and his unending love. And I need him to go. Now. Before I lose it.
“Okay,” he says softly, “but you’re wrong. You may have never said the words aloud—may have never told me you loved me—but I’ve always known because you have. It’s in your eyes, how your smile lights up when you see me, the fact that you’d share your beloved Snickers bars with me without asking.” He chuckles at the memories. “How you would let me hold your hand and let me help you chant your superheroes as you lay in bed so you could fall asleep. So words, no, Colton … but you told me every day in some way or another.” He’s silent for a moment as a part of me allows the fact to sink in that he knows. That all the worry I’ve had over all of these years that he didn’t know how much I felt didn’t matter. He knew.
“I know your worst fear is having a child …”
The elation that lifted me is choked by fear with his words. This is all just too much—too much, too fast when for so long I’ve been able to hide from it. “Please don’t,” I plead, squeezing my eyes shut.
“Okay … I’ve thrown a lot of shit at you, but it was time you heard it. And I’m sorry I probably fucked with your head more than you needed me to, but, son, only you can fix that now—deal with it now that all of the cards are on the table. But I have to tell you, you’re not your mother. DNA doesn’t make you a monster like her … just as if you were to have a child, your demons won’t be transferred to that new life.”
My fists clench and teeth grind at the last words—words that feed off the worst of my fears—the urge to break something returning. To drown the pain that’s back with a vengeance. I know he’s pushed me to the breaking point. I can hear his quiet sigh through the screams of every ounce of my being.
He stands slowly and I tell myself to look at him. To show him that I’ve heard him, but I can’t make myself do it. I feel his hand on the top of my head, like I’m a little boy again, and his uncertain voice whispers, “I love you, Colton.”
The words fill my fucking head but I can get them past the fear lodged in my throat. Past the memories of the chant I used to say that was followed by the brutality and unspeakable pain. As much as I want to tell him—feel the need to tell him—I still can’t.
See, perfect example, I want to tell him, to demonstrate how fucked up I am. He just bared his fucking self to me and I can’t give him a goddamn response because she stole it from me. And he thinks I could be a parent? She made my heart black and my core rotten. There’s no way in hell I could pass that on to someone else if there were the remote chance it could happen.
I hear the door shut and I just remain on the floor. The outside light fades. Jack calls to me, tempts me, allows me to drown myself in his comfort, no glass needed.
Confusion fucking swamps me. Drags me under.
I need to clear my fucking head.
I need to figure my shit out.
Only then can I call Ry. And God I want to call her. My finger hovering over the fucking Call button. Hovering there for well over an hour.