Page 80 of Saints & Sailors

Squeezing my eyes shut, I felt awful and whole at the truth of it all. “I’ve been so angry for so long, and I never knew why. And coming here I realized that I never knew myself, because I never knew my father. I have Scott’s temper. I have his eyes. He loves music. There’s so much about myself that makes sense now.”

That damn Harry Styles song circled my brain and I cursed Dreux. “I don’t completely know who I am, but I feel like I’m finding out.” God, here came the worst of it. “I want to learn more. I want…I want to know my father. I want to have a dad.”

Betrayal didn’t surface on my mother’s face. Instead, a smile, love—understanding. “Yeah?”

Scott was ashamed of himself for what he’d done to my mother, to himself. Twenty years old or not, he had been just a kid. I was just a kid, screwed-up, finding my way. In so many unknown ways, I was just like my father, just like Scott. Unlike me, he didn’t seem to have a spiteful bone in his body. Not the man who didn’t deny my coming to live here. Not the man who reached out to Dreux and gave him a place of refuge. Not the man my mother had once fallen in love with.

“I love you,” I told her. “You did the right thing in sending me here. I wasn’t on a good path back home. I see that now. And even though I want to stay, there with you, in LA, is home, Mom. Thank you for choosing me, for taking care of me, for loving me.”

Her hand fell upon her chest, over her heart. “Saylor.”

Slowly, I loosened up. “God, look at us, so sappy.”

She chuckled. “Stop, it’s been a long time coming. I love you, too, honey.”

“We get a week off at the end of the month, maybe I can come visit?”

“The door is always open.”

I told her I loved her once more and we soon ended our call.

Better. I felt better. Full. Deep down, I’d probably always feel like shit for the way I’d mistreated her, but this was a fresh start. So many incredible things were still possible.

Soft knocking on the wall behind me turned me around.

There, awkwardly, in the doorway, was Scott. He hung his head, gazing at my cream carpet. “I, uh, heard you crying…was worried.”

I cleaned my face. “I’m okay.”

“Didn’t mean to eavesdrop.” His brown eyes found mine, matching my own. “She said you could go back?”

“Yeah.”

“And you’re choosing to stay?”

I was. “I get my strength from her and my fight from you. I barely know you, Scott, but I’d like to. I have my mom and she’s my rock, the one person constantly in my corner. But I need a dad.”

Scott came more into the room. “You don’t know how sorry I am for what I did in leaving Maddie—Madeline. When she said you could come back home, I got scared that you would. I missed seventeen years of you, and I just got you back.” He looked around my room, at my newly black walls. “You’re my kid, Saylor, through and through. I’d love to have my daughter, because I need you, too.”

On my nightstand was the teddy bear he’d gotten me as a welcome present.

The first guy who got me a teddy bear was my father.

I stood from my bed, going and throwing my arms around him, burying my face in his strong chest, feeling tingles when he wrapped his arms around me, firmly, as if he’d never let me go.

I needed that. To never be let go.

Fleetwood Mac was playing Friday as I laid back on my bed going over the day I’d had at school. Cameron had been unusually down and just the thought told me what I had to do.

Still, it was so new to be this outgoing, this thoughtful, this caring.

I was getting soft.

And maybe that wasn’t a bad thing.

Cameron had been nothing but nice to me ever since I got to Meadow Grove. It felt natural to offer to hang out this weekend when she’d told me about her breakup yesterday. The thought of keeping my word felt good.

But first I had to get permission from Scott. I was grounded after all.