“Why are we stopping?” I ask as he pulls into a lot.
I find the courage to finally turn and look at him.
My voice is steady.
Calm. Even.
Like being next to him doesn’t do things to me.
It’s a lie, but it’s all I got.
Because the truth is, inside I’m anything but calm and steady.
Benji doesn’t look at me right away.
His hands tighten slightly on the wheel, jaw set, eyes fixed on the sky ahead like he’s already somewhere else entirely.
“Because it’s about time I bury the past. Time I tell my father exactly what I think of him,” he says, voice low, controlled in a way that feels dangerous.
I swallow.
“That’s not exactly something you do casually, Benji.”
A muscle in his jaw ticks.
“I’m not doing it casually.”
No, he’s not.
And I can see that.
I can feel it.
The tension rolling off him in waves.
The barely contained fury sitting just beneath the surface.
“Time I stop living under the shadow of being his bastard,” he adds.
And that hits.
Hard.
Because I’ve heard him talk about his father before.
The disgust.
The anger.
The deep, bone-deep resentment that never quite faded, no matter how far he got from that man’s shadow.
The older, married man who seduced his teenage mother.
Got her pregnant.
Walked away like it meant nothing.
And now?
