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I laid an extra mental layer of bricks, building another wall in front of the three already stacked there. I couldn’t let him break me again. I couldn’t let him see that I was broken already.
“Cole keeps showing up at Josephine’s,” I said. Franky nodded as if he’d suspected this.
“The two people he depended on the most are gone,” he said. “He needs time—”
“He needs more than time,” I snapped, then softened my tone to something more sympathetic to his pain. “He needs his father.”
“I can’t be there for him,” he said.
“You’re all he has left,” I stressed, stepping around the loveseat and moving closer to where he stood with his back straight.
“I can’t,” he said, adopting a glacial façade as if that would make me back down.
“Why not?” I asked, but he was unwilling to answer. “Why not, Franky?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“He’s your son. You have to—”
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can.”
“Leland—”
“You have to—”
“I can’t!” he yelled, his overgrown hair flopping onto his forehead. “I amincapable.” The confession had been torn from him, and he sagged against the door at his back as if he’d used up whatever reserve of strength he’d been holding on to, or pretending he had in the first place, to admit it.
Had I been anyone else, he would’ve fought to the death to remain stoic and on his feet. I hated how good it felt to know he could still be weak in front of me, despised how much I wanted to shoulder his weight, how much I wanted to take him into my arms and relieve his excruciating pain.
“It can’t be me,” he whispered.
I tilted my head, narrowing my gaze. “Do… Do youknow?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said.
“About Jasper, and about Selene?” I specified, needing to be sure we were talking about the same thing.
“Yes, and yes,” he said. “I can’t be what he needs me to be. And he needs you more than I do,” he said meaningfully, and I had to feel around internally to make sure my guards were still up. They were, and he’d seen beyond them anyway.
As if a trap door hiding my dirty secret had opened up in my mind, it suddenly occurred to me that I didn’t want to commit to a friendship—or a commiserationship—with Cole, because if Franky was going to come for me, I didn’t want the added complication of befriending his son in our way. I understood Franky would need time. I wasn’t completely heartless or insensitive to his situation. But even now, I wanted him to choose me.
What I’d been doing these last couple years, who I’d had to turn myself into… It wasn’t to toughen me up, to make me immune to the pain, immune tohim.I’d simply done what was necessary to get by, to survive in hopes that one day he would come for me.
“You’re just like your father,” I said, lashing out, embarrassed that he’d seen through me. “I used to tell you that wasn’t true, but it is. This is what you do, right? You can’t connect with your kids because of your own issues, so you find someone who can give them what you lack.”
“That isn’t true,” he said.
“Oh no? So you’renotgiftingme to him now? Like you gifted him Selene?” I was sorry the minute I’d said it. It needed to be said, but it didn’t mean I wasn’t sorry it hurt him. Regardless of how I felt, he was hurting enough, his pain was real.
Franky flinched as if the verbal strike had physically touched him.
“Isn’t that what your father did with Gloria?” I asked softly. “Allowed Gloria and her family to raise you so that he wouldn’t have to be bothered with facing you, only removing them when it got in the way of his life plans for you? And then what? He avoided you until the day he died.”
“It isn’t the same,” he said, but I could see he was considering it.
“Except it is the same, Franky. At the very least it’s eerily, fucking similar.” I couldn’t be his therapist. Not when some would say I needed one of my own. He’d need to come to his own conclusions in his own time. If ever. “Believe what you want to believe,” I said, resigned. “I’ve gotta get out of here.”
