Page 46 of Worth the Risk

Short. Sweet. And no need for her to reply.

“Dad! Hey, Dad!”

I sit on the bed and yank a pillow over my lap. We’ve already had a talk about innies and outies. I don’t want to have to explain why my underwear is tenting.

“Yeah, Luke. What’s up?”

He walks down the hall, fingers fidgeting and a question written all over his face. Please, no more questions about vaginas.

“Last night at your hero party—”

“It wasn’t a hero party, bud. Just a party for some of my and your uncles’ friends to get together—”

“Whatever,” he murmurs and averts his eyes. Oh, shit. “Was my mom there?”

His voice is barely a whisper, but it throws me. Like, knocks the fucking wind out of me and squeezes a vise around my heart. He’s never asked something like that. He’s never wondered about her aloud.

“Luke?” It’s all I can manage with a lump the size of Texas lodged in my throat. I soften my voice. “Why would you ask that?”

“I just thought . . . never mind.”

“No! Wait!” I reach out to him and put my hand on his shoulder to keep him from running away. I squat in front of him so we’re eye to eye. “You just thought what, buddy?”

He stares at his fingers as he twists them together. “I just thought that maybe she would come back because she was proud of you and celebrate.” He pauses, and I can see his internal struggle, which makes every part of me hurt for him. “And there’s the mother-son picnic coming up soon, and I thought that maybe she would . . .” His words fade and tighten that vise so tight my chest burns.

“You thought she might take you to it?”

He nods but never meets my eyes as a tear slides down his cheek. “No, buddy. She wasn’t at the party. And I’m so sorry but she’s not taking you to the picnic . . . but Nana is, and you know how much fun she makes everything.”

“Yeah. Okay. Fine.” He tries to step back and break my hold on his shoulder, wanting to turn around and end the conversation, but for the life of me, I can’t let him go just yet. When he finally looks back up at me, his shaggy hair hangs over his forehead and there’s a gravity no kid should have in his stare. His bottom lip quivers, a short-lived moment of vulnerability before he shakes his head abruptly. “Never mind. It’s not a big deal.”

I could play all the baseball in the world with him. Tickle him and hug him endlessly. Build an infinite number of Minecraft worlds with him. Beat every Marvel superhero game there is. None of it would matter because I’d never be able to fill that hole Claire left him with.

Fuck you, Claire.

Fuck.

You.

That isn’t saying a goddamn thing about the hatred I feel for her because of what she did to me.

“Hey,” I call after him, but he doesn’t stop. He doesn’t look back. He just keeps walking down the hall.

Fuck you again, Claire. Seven ways from Sunday.

“My God,” I mutter as I press my fingers to my eyes for a second.

You’d think it would be simple. A click and drag here. A justification of the text there. A change in font size there. But I’ve been trying to master Rissa’s little challenge of the day—how to do a print layout of a magazine—and failing miserably.

Well, not miserably. Rather it’s just taking about ten times longer to do the print design than it takes the normal staff to do one. As in, my light is the only one still on in the office and everyone else is long gone home and the rest of my to-do list is left sitting there with nothing else checked off on it.

I jump when my cell rings.

“Sidney.”

“Dad? This is quite the surprise.”

“I was just calling to see what you were doing.”