“You’re home early,” Aaron’s voice drifted through the darkness.
“Not so early that you should be awake.”
“Why do you even care?”
Evander winced at the coldness of his son’s words, not to mention the sharpness of his tone. For a while there, he and Aaron had grown closer, developing what Evander had always imagined a real son and father relationship might be like.
Now, sadly, it was withering, and day by day, he felt them growing apart.
“Of course I care…” Evander sighed as he walked into the room. “How could you think otherwise?”
“You never did before.”
Evander winced again. When he reached the bed, he considered standing, almost afraid to get too close in case his son rejected him. But he breathed in deeply, steeled himself, and sat down. Aaron was tucked under the covers, but he curled his body up nonetheless.
“I have always cared for you, Aaron,” Evander said. “I just… There are times when I struggled to show it.”
“I don’t believe you. If you did care, then you…You…” He heard his son sniff. “You wouldn’t have sent Miss Finch away.”
“Aaron…” Evander’s chest tightened with guilt. “I did not send her away. I explained to you why she had to leave. It was not because of something that she did. It is a good thing what happened to her. And Henry, too. You should be happy for them.”
“I’m not,” he said. “I didn’t want them to go.”
Evander hesitated. He very nearly dismissed his son’s concerns as childish and shortsighted. Always, when Evander was forced to defend himself, he lashed out and doubled down. He did not like to lose, and acting this way is who he was.
But he considered his son’s words… just as he considered his own feelings. Denying what he knew was right, refusing to admit the truth, that was what had gotten him here in the first place. Why was he so determined to be this man when he hated these things about himself?
When he had learned who Octavia was, there had been a moment when Evander had felt relief. For so long, he had worried about what might happen between them, knowing deep down that nothing ever could because of her birth and his status. But if she were a lady of the peerage, would that not solve everything?
Typically, such feelings did not last.
Evander realized quickly that her new status would force her to move away. What was more, it would force Evander to act, to announce his feelings, to declare that he wanted her before itwas too late. And that level of emotional vulnerability… well, it terrified him.
So, rather than doing the right thing, he did as he always had done. He withdrew, he refused to accept what he knew in his heart, and he burned the bridge between them… he broke his heart, as he knew he had broken Miss Finch’s.
“Do you want to know the truth?” Evander said as he rested a hand on Aaron’s body. “I… I did not want them to leave either.”
“R – really?”
“Of course, really,” he sighed. “But it was not my choice to make.”
“You could have stopped them,” Aaron said. “You could have… You could have asked them to stay.”
That was true, but once again, Evander just wasn’t that type of man. He wanted to be. He wished that he were. But that simply wasn’t his reality.
“Miss Finch made her choice, and we must accept it,” he said.
“You promised that Henry would be allowed to visit,” Aaron continued, his voice thick with tears. “But he doesn’t. You won’t let him!”
“I…” Evander’s voice became choked. “Tomorrow, I will write to him and ask if he wishes to.”
“Liar!”
Evander winced again. It had been a lie. To write to Henry would be to write to Octavia, and after what he had said to her tonight, he knew the easiest thing to do would be to forget about her. That was the only way that he could move on.
He wanted to ease his son’s suffering. He wanted to do the right thing. However, faced with such hostility, Evander did as he always had done. That being the worst of things.
“Enough of this, Aaron,” he said sharply. “You are almost eight, and this behavior is that of a child.”
