Crashed

“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.