I didn’t rise from my seat.
“I knew once she came back that this would be inevitable.” He ran his hand through his dark brown hair that was greying on the sides. My father stood around six-two, same height as me. Even in his late fifties, he was broad as hell.
“Never thought I’d see the day when one of my grown sons would look at me with disdain in his eyes.” He almost sounded sincere, regretful even.
Fuck him. He’d known what he’d done for years and never said anything.
“I never thought I’d see the day when my wife would tell me what the fuck you said to her.”
Heat flushed through my body while I rose to my feet. I did my best to remember this was the man that raised me. It was for that reason alone I hadn’t struck out already.
Not many other people walking this Earth could say what he’d said to my wife and get away with it.
“How the hell could you?” I demanded.
Joel dipped his head and stared at the kitchen floor before peering back up at me. “What do you want me to say?”
“Something. Say fucking something that would make it okay for you to go to my wife six weeks after she had to hold our dead son in her arms and tell her it was her fault.”
I got in his face, poking at his chest. “Tell me anything that would make it okay for you to tell the woman I love beyond reason that she was the cause of all the pain in my life.”
Joel’s body went rigid, and he sucked in his cheeks. He didn’t say anything for a long, drawn-out minute. When he did speak, his response proved insufficient.
“There are few men who’ve ever talked to me like that or put their hands on me and lived to tell the tale.”
I spread my arms wide. “And?” It strained against my very instincts to protect what was mine. My wife. The same instincts he’d instilled in me.
“A woman is to be sheltered, cared for, loved. Isn’t that what you told me?” I seethed through gritted teeth. “Aren’t those the very same fucking words you said to me when I came to you after Savannah and I got married?”
I remembered it like it was yesterday. He told me I was too young, too immature to take care of a wife and family the way I needed to.
“You were full of shit,” I spat out. I could barely look at my father. He’d raised me, loved me, but for the past sixteen years, he’d been a source of my deepest pain, and I never fucking knew it.
He knew it, though, and had looked me in the eye all these years and never said a word.
My father took a step back and shook his head. He turned and went over to the refrigerator, pulling it open.
I watched as he pulled out two bottles of water. He tossed me one. I caught it before slamming it on the kitchen island.
“Drink the water. It’ll calm your ass down.”
“Fuck your water. I need an explanation.”
The tension between us was at the highest it’d ever been. I was two seconds from doing something I never believed I could do to my father. Amid my anger, I wanted him to say something, anything that would make this better. There had to be some explanation.
“Your mama had died, Ace,” he finally said after a long silence.
I reared back. “What does that have to do with it?”
He recapped his bottle and sauntered over to the kitchen island. “Your mother was—is—the love of my life. She was my entire world. I fell apart when she died.”
I thought back to the painful period of my mother’s death. I knew Joel hadn’t handled it well. The night after her funeral, I remember Joel had gone upstairs while Gabe, Micah, Savannah, and I remained downstairs.
We could hear Joel’s cries from up there. Hours later, when he finally emerged from the bedroom they shared, he was stone-faced. There was a blank look in his eyes as if someone had turned off a switch.
Joel inhaled deeply. “All I saw was that she was gone. I was angry, pissed as hell. At everyone and everything. Except for you three.” He paused and studied my expression. “I’ve done a lot of shameful things in my life, but there’s not much of it that I’m ashamed of. What I said to Savannah is one of them. I’m sorry.”
My hands tightened into fists at my sides. Joel’s gaze dipped to my hands, and his shoulders dropped.
