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I should have known he wouldn’t let me dodge it.
“I’ll live.”
“Raye,” he warned.
I sighed.
“That was a lot,” I admitted.
“I take it you sought therapy, but your parents didn’t get it for you.”
“Oh, we talked to somebody. Family counseling. Mom was so vague, if I was old enough to consider it, I would think she was drugged. Her not engaging just made Dad madder. So, obviously, it didn’t work real great.”
“It fucks me to say this.”
It might fuck him, but he didn’t say it.
So I asked, “What?”
“He loves you, Raye. He loves you a lot.”
I shoved my face in his throat, because last night Dad had made that obvious. “Yeah.”
I just wasn’t sure what to do with it.
“I got no advice,” Cap started. “Got no idea what you should do. Only thing I know is, he really fucked it up, but he was giving it a shot. He wants to reconnect. And it’s obvious he’s wanted that a long time.”
I tipped my head back, and he dipped his chin down to look at me.
“Yeah.” I slid my hand up his chest and asked, “Do you think, this late in the game, I can get my dad back?”
“All I can say is, fifteen years ago, I had the clothes on my back, a dead best friend, an alive one who was as lost as me, both of us headed down the worst path in life there could be, and that was it. Overnight, and that’s no exaggeration, overnight all of that changed. And now I got a beautiful woman and a huge family. So I think anything can happen.”
I nodded and shoved my face in his throat again.
“As for Jacob,” he said over the top of my head, “he wanted to tell me he met up with you at a sleazy motel to give you a universal key to uncuff a woman he was pretty sure was a sex worker, and warn me to keep an eye on that shit.”
“Jacob’s a good guy.”
“Jacob’s a good guy,” Cap agreed. “You made yourself a huge family too, you know.”
Oh, I knew.
I sighed again, contentedly that time.
Cap pulled me closer.
Safe in his arms, “Dreams” drifting through the room, I contemplated last night.
And then I noted, “He didn’t give me much advanced warning he was coming because he was scared, if he did, I’d have time to find an excuse not to see him.”
“Yes,” Cap agreed in a way I knew he’d already figured this out.
“And he looks better than I remember seeing him since Macy. Healthier. More alert. Deb gives him something. He isn’t healed, you can never heal from that, but having her has brought him back to life. He needs her. She’s his touchstone. That’s why he wanted her at dinner with us, because he was worried about seeing me again, he loves her, and he needed her at his side.”
“Yes,” Cap agreed again.
He’d figured that out too.
