Stu looked up at me as we walked, shading his eyes from the late sun with his little hand.“You’re my dad, aren’t you?”
“Wh-what?”
My legs stopped working, and they felt like they might buckle beneath me.Instinctively, I leaned on Bax’s fishing pole for support but felt it bend and realized quickly that it wouldn’t hold me up.
Shit.Fuck.
Had I said something?
Curious blue eyes, carbon copies of mine, stared back at me carefully while I tried to process what he’d just asked.Bax is gonna fuckin’ kill you,Dixon, you idiot!
“Why would you ask that?”
Stu was too young to figure it out on his own.I must’ve said something.I promised Bax I wouldn’t, but maybe it slipped out?The secret ate at me every single minute of every single day, so it wouldn’t have surprised me, but the anger I felt at myself for breaking the biggest promise I’d ever made roared inside me.
Bax would never forgive me now.
“Stu?What would make you ask me that?”
He shrugged and slipped his hand inside mine, like he might find comfort in my touch.Was this what comfort looked like to a little boy?
Kneeling in the dirt in front of him, I took the fishing pole out of his hand, laid both on the ground beside him, and set Bax’s tackle box next to them.“Stuart, I really need you tell me why you asked.It’s important.”
His voice came out a whisper, like he might be afraid that admitting the truth would get him into trouble.“I heard it.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” I assured him.“And it’s okay for you to ask, but I really need to know where you heard it.”
“At school.”
“A kid at school told you I was your dad?”
He nodded, watching my face as if he expected answers to show on my skin.
The truth itched beneath it, desperate to be freed, but the promise I’d made to my brother couldn’t be rescinded.If I broke it now, with everything bad that had happened flowing between Bax and me like a rabid river rushing down a mountain after a storm, he’d never forgive me.He might have, if we had more time, maybe come around to forgiving me for all the shit I’d pulled in the past.
But if I told Stu the truth now, my brother would never accept another sorry from my mouth.
I looked at my son, at the faint freckles popping on his cheeks and the way the fine, sun-lightened baby hairs around his temples curled a little in the heat, and the decision seemed easier than breathing.
I couldn’t lie to him.Not to Stu.I would never forgivemyselffor that.
I cleared my throat.“And if I were, y’know, your… dad?How would you feel about that?”
He thought for a minute, and the contemplation in his eyes was so serious, but absolutely adorable.We might’ve looked like twins, but right then, Bax was written all over Stu’s face.
“Could I have two dads?”he asked, innocence radiating out of him like sunshine.“My daddy would be sad if he couldn’t be my daddy anymore, but I don’t want you to be sad either.”
“I would never take you away from your daddy, kid.”Resting my hands lightly over his shoulders, I promised, “Not ever.I swear it to you.”
Stuey nodded and reached up to hold onto my shoulders, too, huddling us together like conspirators.
“But Iamyour dad.”
The rush of endorphins when I said it, the release of the secret I thought I would carry to my grave, threatened to take me out.My heart thudded behind my ribs painfully, and for a second, I worried all the shit I’d crammed into my body for so long had weakened it.My hand twitched toward my phone in my pocket to call Bax, so I could admit to him that I was just as afraid as he was for Stu to know the truth.I’d dragged Bax into my mess, and now, part of me wanted my big brother here to help me.
But no.This secret, this release of truth felt right.It needed to come from me, and I knew that if I confessed it to my son with anything less than total confidence and conviction, he would doubt it for the rest of his life.
He would doubt me.
