Total pages in book: 133
Estimated words: 125866 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 629(@200wpm)___ 503(@250wpm)___ 420(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 125866 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 629(@200wpm)___ 503(@250wpm)___ 420(@300wpm)
Only a second passed before he scoffed, and I could imagine him taking his glasses off, pinching the bridge of his nose in irritation the way he used to do when I’d want to ask him something while he was working.
“Are you trying to have some sort of therapy session? Because I’m busy and don’t have time for—”
“Me? Yes, I’m well aware. But you’re going to need to make time for this.”
“I don’t need to do—”
“Shut up!”
I heaved the words, my chest rising and falling with a painful echo through my ribs.
“I have stayed quiet and listened to you all my life,” I said. “I’ve listened to you tell me I’m worthless, heard you spit your vitriol more than a hundred times. I have felt your fist against my face and never once talked back to you. Because you’re my father, and I thought that alone deserved my respect. But it doesn’t. You don’t. You never did.”
“Is that all?”
He sounded bored, and damn, if it didn’t piss me the fuck off.
I sucked in a breath, ready to scream at him, but then realized how pointless it would be. Instead, I forced a long exhale, closing my eyes until I saw Madelyn there behind my lids — calm, poised, strong.
“I thought you were just trying to raise me as a tough man,” I finally said, choosing my words carefully. “Not that I loved getting hit, but I thought I understood you.” I shook my head. “Now, I feel like I don’t know you at all. I feel like… like you’re the type of evil Pastor Root used to warn us about.”
“So many feelings,” he murmured.
I chuffed a laugh.
He was never going to care.
This confrontation… it was for no one else but me.
“I don’t expect an apology out of you,” I started.
“Good, because I don’t have one to give.”
“But,” I continued. “I need to know. I need to hear you explain.”
“Explain what?”
“How you could lie straight to my face about my own child, and then move me away from the girl carrying that child, leaving her alone and leaving me in the dark about it all.”
For once, I had shocked my father silent.
I heard the distant sound of my mom crying in the background, which told me she could hear everything. Maybe I was on speaker phone. Or maybe she knew just by the look on Dad’s face.
“How,” I repeated, and my voice cracked before I cleared my throat and forced a breath. “Only a monster could do such a thing.”
“Wrong,” he said, and to his credit, he sounded so sure of himself, like he really didn’t have anything to be sorry about. “Only a father who cared about his son’s future could have done such a thing.”
“My future,” I snorted.
“Yes, your future. Are you that daft that you don’t understand what would have happened if I would have told you?”
“I would have stayed with Madelyn,” I said immediately. “I would have been there with her every step of the way to raise my child.”
“Exactly!” He roared, and even miles away, the sound made me flinch. “You would have thrown it all away! School, football… do you think you would have had a chance at going to college if you had a toddler to care for? Do you think you would have even been able to play ball through the rest of high school?”
My nostrils flared.
He was right — but I didn’t want to say it.
“So what,” I volleyed. “So I wouldn’t have had football. I would have been okay. I would have figured it out.”
“And you would have struggled. Both of you.”
“So, you were content to just let her struggle on her own?”
“Oh, don’t be dramatic. I know she lost the baby, Kyle.”
That shocked me as much as a punch to the nose would have.
I blinked, opening my mouth and then shutting it again before I let out a harsh laugh.
“Wow. So, you kept tabs on her?”
“Of course, I did. I’m your father. And whether you think so or not, I had your best interests at heart.”
“You were a selfish, horrible father then, and you are still.”
Dad barked out his own laugh. “Ungrateful brat. You always have been.”
“And Mom?” I said, knowing now that she could hear me. “You… you played along. You loved Madelyn. How could you do that to her, to us?”
Mom wailed harder, and I heard Dad shuffle to stand.
“Don’t you dare talk to your mother like that.”
“Or what? You going to hit me? Because I hate to break it to you, Dad, but I’m big enough to fight back now.”
The garbling noise he made told me he was getting angry, that his face was turning red.
“You want to think you know what’s best for you? For you at sixteen? Well, when you’re a father, you can talk to me again.”