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Devil
“So you let your temper get the best of you?” Sonya asked as she chopped vegetables for dinner.
After Hailee had left for work, I’d gone for a long ride to clear my head and then found myself at Sonya’s place. The kids had been a good distraction for the afternoon, and she’d asked me to stay for dinner.
“Yeah.” I’d just finished telling her about the way I’d reacted to Wayne when he showed up at Hailee’s home.
She glanced up at me. “Why? We worked so hard on getting it under control, and I thought you were doing better. Why all of a sudden did you snap?”
Just thinking about Wayne stirred my anger again. I took a couple of deep breaths while I tried to work through it. “I can’t explain it. Well, not the initial trigger. That seemed to come from an urge to protect Hailee. But after that, when he started badmouthing both of us, it sparked all those old feelings of being worthless that Dad used to make me feel. It put me right back there with him.” Sonya was the only person I ever spoke so honestly with about all this shit. Having been my brother’s high school sweetheart, we’d grown up together and she’d lived through my hell with me.
Anger to me was like alcohol to an alcoholic. Or at least it had been for more than a decade. I’d used it to numb the hurt and the shame of not feeling wanted by my parents.
I held Sonya’s gaze while I said, “What kind of parent wants a child enough to create them, and then abandons that child when they decide it isn’t good enough for them? How can a father do that to his son?” He’d kicked me out of home and ran me out of town when he didn’t approve of my choices in life. And I still lived with that hurt.
She stopped chopping the carrots and put her knife down. Moving to me, she enveloped me in a hug and said, “Ivan Ford is a fool, Dom. We’ve already discussed this. Why are you allowing yourself to be dragged back down by him?”
It always felt safe with Sonya. She was my safe place. Even though Campbell took issue with my choices in life and made it hard for me to be close to his family, she’d never once let me down. We’d spent the last few years working on my temper and angry outbursts, and she’d guided me every step of the way. Her mother was a psychologist in Tamworth, and Sonya had relied on her advice to help me. However, regardless of all that, my internal walls were up, and I couldn’t access my own damn feelings. I didn’t know why this was all surfacing.
I moved out of her embrace. “I have no fucking clue. I haven’t heard from him or even really been thinking of him lately, so I don’t know why all of a sudden he’s in my fucking head.”
She turned quiet for a moment, thinking. “Maybe it’s finally time for you to go back,” she said softly.
“You’re not serious?” She couldn’t be. “You’ve seen the way Campbell still treats me. He gets that from Dad. Campbell fucking hangs off every word Dad says, so there’s no way in hell Dad has changed his mind where I’m concerned if Campbell still thinks that way. And besides, I have no interest in going back there.
“I’m not suggesting you go back because anything has changed with your father. I’m suggesting it because maybe you need the closure. I think you’ve been holding on all these years hoping he’d come to his senses. You need to see for yourself what his thoughts on the matter are now. And then hopefully you can either close that door or decide you’re okay with still leaving it open.”
“That fucking door is closed.” It fucking slammed shut years ago when he ran me out of the town I grew up in.
Kylie ran into the kitchen then, flying straight into me. Her little arms wrapped around my legs as she squealed, “Uncle Dom, you’re still here!” Sonya had put Kylie and her brother to bed earlier, and she’d been upset at the thought of me not being there when she woke up.
I pulled her up into my arms and gave her a huge smile. “Of course I am, baby girl. I told you I would be.”
She almost choked me in a hug as she squished her arms around my neck. “I wanna go on the swing!”
I met Sonya’s gaze. “You need me to help with dinner?”
She shook her head. “No, you guys go play. It’ll give me some peace and quiet.”
“Okay,” I said to Kylie, “let’s go find your brother. We’ll play for a bit and then it’s bath time before dinner.”
Her glee was infectious. Fuck, I loved playing with kids. They made me forget all the ugly shit in the world. “Yay, yay, yay!”
That excitement and the love she never failed to give me was exactly the medicine I needed after spending the afternoon beating myself up.
I pressed a kiss to her forehead as I carried her out of the kitchen. “I love you, kid.”
She buried her face in my neck. “I love you, too, Uncle Dom.”
Exactly what I needed.
My Sunday plans to get Hailee into a bikini had to be changed when she woke with a sore throat and fever. She could hardly move, so I figured there was no getting out of bed for her.
I placed my hand on her forehead and frowned. “No bikini for me today.”
“I told you, there is no bikini for you ever,” she croaked.
I fought a smile and bent to give her a quick kiss. “Oh, there will be a bikini. I’ll make sure of it.”
