Chapter
One
CALEB
Wednesdays were the worst because my dad worked from home.
Mom was always home, but she and I had reached a silent, mutual agreement to avoid each other as much as possible. My father, on the other hand, seemed to seek me out deliberately. Maybe he enjoyed the inevitable confrontation. Hell if I knew, but he never failed to appear just as I tried to sneak out.
“Caleb,” he called from the kitchen.
I stopped in the hallway leading to the front door, my stomach an instant bundle of knots. “Yeah?”
Silence reigned, the air thickening with my father’s displeasure. When he spoke again, his tone held a sharp edge. “Could you come in here so I can see you when I speak to you?”
Sure thing.Swallowing a snarl, I hitched my backpack higher on my shoulder and rounded the corner. My father stood at the island, his salt-and-pepper hair, firm jaw, and black, square-framed glasses giving him the look of a conservative politician or superhero in disguise. I wasn’t sure if he ever had aspirations ofbeing the former. He’d been the latter when I was a kid, before I learned that his love was contingent on me being a proper son. As luck would have it, I almost checked all the boxes on his list of criteria.
But thealmostwas a big fucking box. Empty. No check.
“Yes, sir?” I asked, avoiding the urge to examine my reflection in the glass sliders that led to the deck. I looked fine. My hair was fine. My tie was fine.
“Your tie is crooked,” my father said, wiping his hands on a paper towel. A package of uncooked bacon sat on a plate in front of him, the plastic tinged pink with blood. The scent hit my nostrils and filled my lungs. Saliva flooded my mouth, and my insides quivered like a plucked guitar string.Next comes anger, a voice of warning whispered in my head. The rage got worse each time. Yesterday, I’d ripped a blanket in half. One of the thick ones my grandma made before she died.
I spun and headed for the front door.
“Caleb!”
My father’s rebuke froze me in place—and made me clench my jaw against the fury that rose hot and thick in my chest. Swallowing, I tightened my grip on my backpack strap. “I’m gonna be late for class.”
Footsteps. The scent of blood grew stronger as my father approached and stopped just behind me. Other scents joined the blood. Lemony shaving cream. Mint toothpaste. The body wash my mother had been buying in bulk since I was little. The scent never used to bother me. Now the chemicals underneath the lavender seared my nose.
The edge in my father’s voice sharpened. “You were supposed to meet with the dean about your internship this afternoon.”
I squeezed my eyes shut.Mistake.Losing my vision cranked up my olfactory system by about a thousand. I opened my eyesand stared at the sliver of front door visible at the end of the hallway that ran from the foyer to the kitchen. “Yeah,” I ground out. “Hence the tie.”
My father’s stare bored into the back of my head. “I don’t like your tone.”
“What else is new?”
His swift intake of air was like a gunshot in my ears. “Face me like a man or you can hand over your phone for the next week.”
The anger flared, taking my blood pressure with it. At least, I assumed it was my blood pressure. During summer two-a-days, Coach Gannon made the whole team wear a monitor during workouts. He claimed it was for safety reasons, but I think he was just trying to avoid anyone puking on the weight room floor. The pounding in my head now was similar to the intense, disorienting feeling that swamped me after hours of running plays in the July heat.
Face me like a man.The silent part—the assertion that I was no such thing—was just as loud as the spoken part.
Slowly, I turned around. “What do you want?” I asked, my voice rumbling in my chest.
Behind his glasses, my father’s eyes widened slightly. He was a big man, with broad shoulders that filled the hallway. Until a few months ago, I had to tip my head back to look him in the eye.
But no longer. Not since August.
For a brief moment, the disdain in his eyes flickered to something that might have been fear. But he covered it quickly, his expression going hard as he lifted a sheet of paper. The letterhead was emblazoned with Hale Valley Christian College’s gaudy red-and-gold crest. Dean Welch’s signature scrawled across the bottom, the blue ink like an accusation. The letter was addressed to me, but my father had no qualms about tampering with the US Postal Service. Not that it mattered. A copy of the letter had landed in my inbox two days ago.
“What do I want?” my father asked, shoving my question back at me. He shook the letter. “I want to know why your grades continue to slip.” Another shake, and the paper flapped, sending a gust of blood-scented air eddying around me. “I want to know why you’ve missed three days of lectures in the past two weeks and where you went when you were supposed to be in class.”
My heart thumped harder, each beat pushing more anger through my veins. “I haven’t been feeling well. I went to the park and lost track of time.”
“Garbage,” he snarled, and if the situation hadn’t been so serious I might have laughed at his inability to cuss like a normal person. He’d called me every slur under the sun. Called me names that made me feel lower than dirt. But he drew the line atbullshit. Good Christians might threaten to send their sons to “sexual wellness counseling,” but they never stooped to saying the F-word out loud.
