AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I’m glad you found me, I think as I press a gentle kiss to the corner of her mouth.
“By the time we finally left, I wasn’t scared to scream back. I can still see the red in his eyes. Sometimes it feels like the sound of it is still echoing in my head.”
“I always wondered why you were so calm. Even when things got rowdy, you kept your cool.”
I work my jaw. Smooth the leg of my pants. Nod.
“Fake it till you make it. It’s taken a long time to work through, but I realized I was holding myself prisoner. I thought I’d locked it down, but I wasn’t really in control until I let it go.”
“But you’re still worried.”
“Wouldn’t you be? We all turn into our parents eventually.”
“You’re not going to suddenly morph into your dad one day. You’re a different man. Give yourself some credit.”
“Not much angers me anymore. Only the shit that really matters. But,” I huff out a harsh breath, “what if I meet him and it all comes back? All this work and nothing’s changed?”
“You can’t believe that.”
“I’ve been running for a long time, Bee. Maybe I need to face reality.”
She stands, then shoves the jar in my face. “Five dollars. No, twenty. Because that is some influencerapology level of bullshit you’re shoveling. I don’t even think a cactus could thrive in it.”
“Actually, they don’t need fertilizer.”
She points. “Jar, now.”
It’s impossible to look foreboding while wearing reindeer shorts—in spring, no less—but Bee almost manages it. In the most adorable way possible.
She slips her hand in mine. “Now, follow me.”
Her room is closer, and as soon as I crash onto her bed, I pull Bee close.
“Have you ever talked to anyone about your dad?”
She’s curled into me, trusting. It wraps around my heart, seeps into all the hidden spaces, patching the cracks. She’s too good for me, softness and warmth and life. I’m meant for the earth, where she should always soar. It’s impossible not to touch her. There’s this constant need to confirm she’s really here, with me. I trace the button nose she hates so much (I’d do anything to kiss it), then brush the back on my fingers along her cheek. Bee pushes closer, practically in my lap now, waking up the rest of my body in an instant. God, what I’d give to have this, have her, in every way I could. Mind, body, heart. It’d be an even trade since she already has all of me.
“Aiden’s heard enough, and my therapist helped me work through the worst of it a few years back.”
“You don’t have to see him, Sebastian. Regardless of what your mom says.”
“That’s what your brother keeps telling me.”
“But what do you want?”
I want what I can’t have, I think, tucking a wayward strand of hair behind Bee’s ear.
“You want to,” she says softly.
“I…” It rankles. Why the hell do I want anything from him? “I hate it, but I do.”
It all happened twenty years ago, but it might as well be yesterday. I still remember the hair trigger. The fucking electricity in the air. Mom and me on edge while Dad brooded, heavy breathing like a fucking bull at a rodeo. Anything could set him off. It made me paranoid, angry, and sick of walking on eggshells.
“When Mom started talking to him again, it took her six months to tell me. I didn’t speak to her for a week after. Fuck, I felt awful. Who am I to dictate how she lives her life? She went through so much more than I did, saw the worst of him. Who the hell am I to say she can’t move on? Find peace? If this is what she needs to get past it, I want that for her. Her happiness is everything to me.”
No, what bothers me is the idea that I owe Jonathon forgiveness simply because he’s getting better. Doing the work. Writing over the past with an apology as though he didn’t fundamentally change our lives.
“Do you know that when my mom left my dad, everyone took his side because she’d always been too afraid to tell anyone the crap he’d put her through? I lost count of the number of nights we had to find somewhere to sleep or camp out in the fucking car, because he’d drunk too much and she was terrified he’d do something. But no one ever knew. He’d never been violent, so she didn’t think anyone would understand it. And you know what? She was right. Because when she finally did say something, tried to explain herself, people told her that all couples fight. That she should have tried harder.Whodoesn’t get angry?they’d say. Who hasn’t had a few too many? But they weren’t there. They didn’t have to watch her shaking in fear, tears streaming down her face while she pleaded with him. All she ever wanted was a happy family, and in the end, when she did the best thing for all of us, people blamed her. It’s disgusting. So yeah, fuck society’s standards.”
