“I had to, Dad, it’s my—”
“Don’t tell me it’s your research!” Ford bellowed, unable to look at Dalton without scowling. “It isn’t worth your life.”
“I’ll see you at the office tomorrow, Kev,” Andrew said, moving cautiously out of the corner. “It’s going to be a long night.”
“You are never putting yourself in that type of situation again, do you understand?” Ford growled in a firm, fatherly tone.
“I’m not a kid,” Dalton countered, slowly wrapping his fingers with only the occasional flinch. They looked black and angry and would probably swell. “You can’t ground me and tell me how to live my life.”
Ford smoldered like his eruption was only the beginning, which made Andrew wish he weren’t present for thisconversation. “Why is this research so important to you? There will be other opportunities. You can start over. You can move onto something else.”
“No, I can’t,” Dalton said, for once devoid of any smile.
“What does it matter?” Ford pushed. “The research can be recreated. It’ll all still be there weeks, months, years from now.”
“Not for everyone!” Dalton shouted, causing the silence that followed to turn stifling. He didn’t elaborate, but now Ford looked even more conflicted.
“What does that mean?” he demanded.
“I just… I need a minute, okay?” Dalton turned to leave the room.
“Dalton—”
“I’m going to the bathroom! Are you going to follow me in?”
A door slammed in the hallway once he’d left, and the ache in Andrew’s chest stayed present. He was used to this sort of thing between him and Steven, but he’d never seen Ford and Dalton like this before.
He watched in sympathy as Ford gripped the back of the sofa like he wanted to wrench it in two, those blue eyes even brighter when angry, echoed so similarly in Dalton’s, and so very intense when they turned to Andrew.
“I, uhh… I know I should probably leave, catch up with Steve, but… can I say something?”
“By all means.” Ford gestured dismissively.
“You love Dalton.” Andrew moved closer, almost all the way to Ford’s side. “You don’t want to see him hurt. But you can’t change who he is. Being your son puts him at risk—period. I know how frustrating that can be. My entire family was in law enforcement. My brother still is, at risk all the time. But you have to accept that Dalton is going to make his own decisions for his own reasons. You’ll still always do everything you can to protect him. And so will I.”
Agony was a strange emotion to see on Ford’s face when he was usually so controlled. “He won’t tell me why this is so important.”
Andrew was pretty certain he knew, had from the beginning, he just hadn’t realized Ford didn’t or what it would push Dalton to do. “Then maybe you need to keep trying. Though probably not the way you were acting just now. If Dalton is as stubborn as you are, and I know he is, that’s only going to make him hold back more.”
“Coz you know me so well?” Ford said with a familiar challenge that Andrew was happy to meet.
“Yeah. I do.”
Ford smirked, but his amusement drained quickly, eyes growing damp. “I’m making it worse, ruining everything like I knew I would. Sooner or later, he’s going to realize I’m not worth his time. I just wanted to keep him safe before that happened.”
“Isaac…” Andrew used his given name before he realized it, moved by his openness.
“It’s cancer research.”
Andrew and Ford whirled around to see Dalton in the doorway.
“What?” Ford asked.
“I’m looking into absolute zero to freeze cancerous cells, freezing time at the subatomic level so that the affected cells can no longer grow or spread, without destroying the healthy tissue. That’s what my research is about. Curing cancer.”
“For your mother?”
“I’m maybe not as okay about her being gone as I pretend.” Eyes already damp like Ford’s, a few immediate tears spilled down his cheeks, and he furiously wiped them away.
