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Mom stepped closer and touched my cheek again. “You gave us a scare, Zachary. That could have killed you.”
I grinned. “Can’t get rid of me that easily.”
Dad grunted. Mom just shook her head.
I put my work boots back on, trying not to groan. I didn’t want my mom to worry more than she already did. And I didn’t want to admit I was in pain in front of my dad.
We left and headed for the exit. I smiled at the nurses as we walked out, winking at a few of them.
Habit.
The bumpy drive up to my parents’ place wasn’t pleasant. Too many bruises. They lived in a hand-built log home at the end of a long gravel driveway on a hill with views of Tilikum through the pine trees. It had been a cool place to grow up, especially for a restless kid like me.
My truck was parked outside the house. How had it gotten there?
“Did you guys get my truck?” I asked.
“Josiah and Audrey brought it up,” Mom said.
Huh. That was cool of them.
We went inside and I headed straight for the kitchen. I hadn’t eaten much in the past twenty-four hours and I was on the verge of getting hangry.
“Go sit down,” Mom said, shooing me out. “I’ll get you some lunch.”
I wasn’t going to argue with that. I kissed the top of her head. “Thanks, Mom.”
Dad seemed annoyed, although sometimes that was just his face. I went into the living room and gingerly lowered myself onto the couch. My phone buzzed with a text, so I got it out to check. It was a reply from the general contractor on the job I’d been working on. Finally. I’d texted him hours ago to let him know what had happened and that I wouldn’t be there today. True to form, his only reply was, OK.
Whatever. I didn’t expect him to give a shit about my brush with death.
Dad followed me in but he didn’t sit down, just leaned against the kitchen doorway. “So what happened yesterday?”
“Other than I got shocked all to hell?”
“I mean why did it happen?”
Defiant anger rose from the pit of my stomach. Of course he assumed it was my fault.
For once, it actually wasn’t. “Joe called me this morning. Turns out some genius ran two sets of wires through a shared pipe in the wall and managed to short the switch leg to the box. Marigold must have turned on the other light while I was touching it. Not her fault. She couldn’t have known.”
“Your mom was right, that could have killed you.”
I flashed him a cocky half-grin. “Could have, but didn’t.”
My flippant tone clearly pissed him off. His thick eyebrows drew together in a glare. I braced myself for him to blow up at me, but this time, he didn’t. Just grunted and left out the back door.
I didn’t know which was worse. When he yelled at me like I was still a teenager, or when he didn’t, like I wasn’t worth the trouble.
Lately it was hard not to feel like he’d given up on me.
I might have blamed my friction with Dad on the fact that, technically, he was my stepdad. When my parents had married, they’d each been a single parent to three boys. And despite the fact that my biological father popped up now and then, Paul was my dad. As far as I was concerned, he always had been. I was a Haven, end of story.
But that didn’t mean we got along. And I doubted my genes were the problem.
I was the problem.
Story of my life.
