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It was too much at that point. This shit killed my insides. I had to look away, and my dad got closer.
“Son?” he questioned, and I gazed up. Dad’s mouth parted upon seeing me, and I wasn’t surprised. I couldn’t fucking see him my eyes were so cloudy. He squeezed my arm. “Thatcher…”
It came out then. It all came out, and it was just like that day when I was twelve. I’d taken two buses to get back to my hometown that night after the fire. Coach had lived downstate, so I’d booked a ticket, a round-trip ticket. I’d handled my business and then come back, but I’d broken on the way. I held shit in, but the moment I got back into town, I called my friends. I’d broken down with my buddies around me, wailing, crying like a weak little shit. They hadn’t judged me. They were just there for me, my brothers.
I never cried in front of my father. In fact, only my brothers had ever seen me shed a fucking tear, but they were there now just like that day when I was twelve. I squeezed them out, but that didn’t stop the words from flying. I told my dad everything. The real reason that gunman had come to the hospital, how he was actually there for me, and how I’d ultimately gotten him to stop, turn himself in. The guy with the gun knew I’d told the truth about what had been done to me. He believed me.
And my dad did too.
I never questioned if my father would believe me regarding the abuse. His eyes on me, he held on to me during each and every word I said. His hold got stronger after every dark truth I shared, and it wasn’t his lack of belief that kept me quiet for all these years. I was just so scared of not being able to be like him. Not being able to be strong, and I didn’t want him to look at me like I wasn’t. Like I was lesser. I’d let someone hurt me for years.
I hadn’t been strong.
That wasn’t how he looked at me, though, as I admitted things. It wasn’t even how he looked at me after I explained the fire situation, then gone running to my friends. When I told him I’d cried and vomited, he only had one response.
“Thatcher…” I’d never seen my father cry, and I rarely saw emotion. He was a Reed and so strong, but when he blinked, I knew his eyes were just as cloudy as mine. He didn’t even bother to squeeze them before a tear blinked out. He let it fall, a single tear hitting his chest. He grabbed both of my shoulders. “Son…”
His voice cracked. I saw my old man crack, and I broke too. It was like that day when I was twelve, and like my friends had back then, my dad’s arms came around me. He hugged me so hard, fusing himself into me. He was shaking.
“Dad…” I felt my voice shake, my body shaking too. “Dad, I’m…”
“Son, I’m so sorry,” he said, apologizing when I’d been about to do the same thing. I didn’t know what my apology was for. Maybe because I wasn’t who he thought I was. I was a fraud and not all those things he said. I wasn’t open. I wasn’t vulnerable. His hand gripped my hair. “I’m so sorry, my son. Thatch… My boy…”
I didn’t know what my father was apologizing for, and maybe like me, he didn’t know. Maybe we just needed to be like this. Maybe we just needed to break together. Maybe it was high time. Maybe it was past time.
Maybe it was finally time.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-THREE
Two Months Later
Greer
The stands of Pembroke University’s Memorial Field roared, the football game in full swing. Things were close. Terribly close.
“I’m not sure we’re going to make it,” I said, my boy out there on the field. He and his friends were, and they made their mothers and fathers watch one of the closest games of the season. In fact, this was the closest, and I was kind of shitting bricks.
“They got this. They got this.” The whispers came from Aspen beside me, my son’s girlfriend. The pair of us watched together from a private suite at the stadium. My son and his friends had gotten it for their families to watch whenever any of us came to Pembroke’s football games. With our various schedules, it was rare the parents and families got to all be here at one time, but one person who always made the trek was my husband, Knight. He dropped everything for a game and didn’t work nearly as much anymore. He was here and always at the same table with his mom when she was well enough to come.
Today was a good day.
I gauged my attention from studying my husband and his mom to the monitors in the suite, and Knight did too. He helped his mom stay current on what was going on, pointing things out to her, helping her. Did it hurt him that she wasn’t always there and didn’t really know who he was? I was sure it did, but it didn’t stop him from showing up. He took every opportunity he could to be with her while she was on this earth. He loved on her while he could.
He always had so much love.
His love was there for me too. It was there for our son and daughter. It was there for our family and not every day was easy. There were still some nights I cried myself to sleep. It couldn’t be helped after discovering the full brevity of what had happened to our son so many years ago.
“Greer, I failed him. I failed him…” My husband’s voice had broken the night he’d told me. It’d been the same night we’d almost lost our son to a gunman. Knight had shaken his head. “I didn’t protect him, baby.”
My husband had taken the full weight of what had happened. He blamed it on his busyness, or various other things. Of course, what happened wasn’t his fault. It was a monster’s and a man our family put our trust in, and to find out that Thatcher had said nothing for years… had allowed this to happen to protect his friends from the same fate… Our son had thought he was protecting everyone, and we’d found all that out through family therapy. He’d told us.
Our son was so much like his dad.
There were so many similarities, that fierce protector who’d rather hurt than allow others to be caused pain.
I made myself the rock in our family after that. The beautiful men in my life needed it. I created a safe space for them to lay down their swords, to heal, and we told Bow once Thatcher was ready. The news had nearly broken his sister just like the rest of us. It had nearly shattered all of us, and there were still very hard days. Sometimes, I woke up to my husband sitting in the moonlight, so many thoughts behind his eyes as he stared outside. I held him close during those times just like he held me whenever I cried. We felt everything together, and after, we rose up for our family. Come to find out, Thatcher had been seeing his own counselors and therapist over the years. He’d wanted to handle everything on his own emotionally, he said, but he wasn’t alone, and Knight and I would never let him feel that way again. He didn’t have to be so strong. He could just be our kid, our boy.
