“And you haven’t talked to her since?”

“What is this, Dad? Twenty fucking questions? Does it look like I have my shit figured out yet?” I snort out a derisive laugh. One step forward and then fucking twenty steps backwards. “Is Tawny still fucking pregnant? Have the test results come back yet? Yes, and a big fucking no … So no, I haven’t called her back yet. Chalk it up to just another thing for you to hold against me.”

He just stares at me. “Is that what I’m doing? Holding your shit against you? Because it looks like you’re doing a damn fine job of it yourself, son. So let me ask you the question you should be asking yourself: Why haven’t you pulled your head out of your ass and called her?”

I blow out a loud breath. Fuckin’ A. “I don’t want to go there right now, Dad.” Just go away. Let me down the next bottle of Jack while the clock ticks for the doctors to take their sweet ass time to decide if I’ve just fucked up the life of an unborn child. Because if the kid’s mine, fuck, he’s already starting off with a tainted soul and that—that’s something I can’t have on my conscience.”

“Well I do want to go there, so pull up a chair to your own pity party, Colton, because I’m not leaving until we finish talking. Understood?”

My mouth falls open, and I’m transported back to fifteen years ago and my one night in custody for drag racing. To that moment in time when he picked me up, raked me over the proverbial motherfucking coals, and told me how it was going to be from there on out. Fuck me. I’ve got chest hair and houses and shit now, but he can still make me feel like a teenager.

Anger flashes through me. I don’t need a fucking shrink right now, I need a negative fucking blood test. And Rylee wrapped around me with a soft sigh falling from her lips as I sink into her. The ultimate pleasure to bury all of this bullshit pain.

“So,” he says, pulling me back to him instead of thoughts of her. “You’re seriously going to let her go without a fight? Let her walk out of your life because of Tawny?”

“She’s not walking away!” I shout at him, upset that he would even think she would. Would she?

He just quirks an eyebrow. “Exactly.” My eyes snap up to meet his. “So quit treating her like she did. She’s not your mother.”

I want to scream at him that I fucking know she’s not. To not even put her in the same sentence as my mother, but instead I play with the seam on the couch as I search for the answer I think he wants to hear. That I’m trying to convince myself is the truth. “She doesn’t deserve this … the shit that comes with me. My past … now my possible fucking future.”

He makes a hum in his throat, and I hate it because I can’t figure out what it means. “Isn’t that up to her to decide, Colton? I mean you’re making decisions for her … shouldn’t she get a say?”

Shut up, I want to tell him. Don’t remind me what the fuck she deserves because I already know. I already fucking know! And I know because I can’t give it to her. I thought I could … thought I might be able to and now with this, I know I can’t. It’s reinforced all of the things she said … all of the things I’ll never be able to cleanse from my fucking soul.

“You say she’s not going to leave you when things get tough, son, but your actions are telling me something completely different. And yet you didn’t see her fighting for you every damn day you lay in that hospital bed. Every damn day. Never leaving. So that leads me to believe this little dilemma you have here isn’t about her at all.”

Every part of me revolts against the words he says. The words that said by anyone else would have me ready to rage, but respect has me holding back from yelling at the man who’s words are hitting a little too close to home.

“It’s about you.” The quiet resolve in his voice floats out in the room and slaps me in the face. Taunts me to take the bait, and I can’t hold back anymore.

And I don’t want to do this any more than I want to spend another night without Rylee in my bed. Looking too close causes dead ghosts to float to the goddamn surface, and I don’t have any more room for ghosts because my closet’s already full of fucking skeletons.

But the match is lit, gasoline thrown. Fire inside fucking ignited and all of the frustration and uncertainty and loneliness from the past week comes to a head, explodes inside of me. I wear a hole in the goddamn floor pacing as I try to fight it, try to rein it in, but it’s no use.

“Look at me, Dad!” I shout at him while he perches on the couch. I hold my hands out to my side, and I hate myself for the break in my voice, hate myself for the unanticipated show of weakness. “Look what she did to me!” And I don’t have to explain who she is because the contempt dripping from my voice explains enough.

I stand there arms out, blood pumping, temper raging, and he just sits there, calm as can fucking be and smirks—fucking smirks—at me. “I am, son. I look at you every day and think what an incredible person you are.”

His words knock the wind out of my sails. I yell at him and he comes back at me with that? What kind of game is he playing? Fuck up Colton’s head more than normal? Shit, I hear the words but don’t let them sink in. They’re not true. Can’t be. Incredible and damaged don’t go together.

Incredible can’t be used to describe a person that tells the man molesting them that you love him, whether the words are forced or not.

“That’s not fucking possible,” I mutter into the silence of the room as vile memories revive my anger, isolate my soul. I can’t even meet his eyes because he might see just how fucked up I really am. “That’s not possible,” I repeat to myself, more emphatically this time. “You’re my dad. You have to say that.”

“No, I don’t. And technically, I’m not your dad, so I don’t have to say anything.” Now that stops me dead in my tracks … brings me back to being a scared kid afraid to be sent back. He’s never said anything like this to me before, and now I’m fucking freaked out about the direction this conversation has taken. He stands and walks toward me, eyes locked on mine. “You’re wrong. I didn’t have to stop and sit with you on the doorstep. I didn’t have to take you to the hospital, adopt you, love you …” he continues feeding into every childhood insecurity I’ve ever had. I force myself to swallow. Make myself keep my eyes locked on his because all of a sudden I’m fucking scared as shit to hear what he has to say. The truths he’s going to admit. “… but you know what, Colton? Even at eight years old, scared and starving, I knew—I knew right then the amazing person you were, that you were this incredible human being I couldn’t resist. Don’t you walk away from me!” His voice thunders and shocks the hell out of me. From calm and reassuring to angry in an instant.

I stop in my tracks, my need to escape this conversation that’s causing so much shit to churn and revolt within me begging me to keep walking right on out the door to the beach below. But I don’t. I can’t. I’ve walked away from every fucking thing in my life, but I can’t walk away from the one person who didn’t walk away from me. My head hangs, my fists clench in anticipation of the words he’s going to say.

“I’ve waited almost twenty years to have this conversation with you, Colton.” His voice is calmer now, steadier, and it freaks me out more than when he rages. “I know you want to run away, walk out the fucking door and escape to your beloved beach, but you’re not going to. I’m not letting you take the chickenshit way out.

“Chickenshit?” I bellow, turning around to face him with years of pent up rage. Years of wondering what he really thinks of me coming to a head. “You call what I went through the chickenshit way out?” And the smirk on his face is back, and even though I know he’s just goading me, trying to provoke me so I take the bait and get it all out, I still take it. “How dare you stand there and act like even though you took me in, it was easy for me. That life was easy for me!” I shout, my body vibrating with the anger taking hold, the resentment imploding. “How can you tell me I’m this incredible person when for twenty four years you’ve told me a million goddamn times that you love me—LOVE ME—and not once have I ever said it back to you. Not fucking once! And you’re telling me you’re okay with that? How can I not think I’m fucked up when you’ve given me everything and I’ve given you absolutely nothing in fucking return? I can’t even give you three fucking words!” When the last words leave my lips I come back to myself and realize I’m inches from my dad, my body shaking with the anger that’s eaten me whole for a lifetime as tiny flecks of it are being chipped away from my hardened fucking heart.

I take a step back and in a flash. He’s right back in my face. “Nothing? Nothing, Colton?” His voice shouts out into the room. “You gave me everything, son. Hope and pride and the goddamn unexpected. You taught me that fear is okay. That sometimes you have to let those you love chase the fucking wind on a whim because it’s the only way they can free themselves from the nightmares within. It was you, Colton, who taught me what it was to be a man … because it’s easy as fuck to be a man when the world’s handed to you on a silver platter, but when you’re handed the shit sandwich you were dealt, and then you turn into the man you are before me? Now that, son, that’s the definition of being a man.”

No, no, no, I want to scream at him to try and drown out the sounds I can’t believe. I try to cover my ears like a fucking little kid because it’s too much. All of it—the words, the fear, the fucking hope that I just might in fact be a little bent and not completely broken—is just too much. But he’s not having any of it, and it takes every ounce of control I have to not take a swing at him as he pulls my hands from my ears.