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Alex: Dad, that’s bullshit. Just let me go with you.
Hugh: No. You’ve got eight months to prepare, but I’m leaving, and that means my financial support is too. Figure it out.
Alex: There really isn’t any way that you could just stay here and work? I thought you liked your job…
Hugh: I’ve made up my mind. I’m taking this job in California because I’m doing what I want for once in my life, not worrying about someone else. Again, figure it out, Alex.
I do a bit of quick math in my mind, feeling like I’m going to vomit at any second. All this time, Hugh has been planning on leaving and hasn’t mentioned it to me, not once. And if my math is correct, he’ll be leaving…
In three weeks.
I press the back of my hand to my mouth, giving Alex the phone back with my other. Tears threaten to well up in my eyes, but I blink them away. Alex is the last person I want to see me cry.
“See? I told you,” he insists. “Dad has just been enjoying sleeping with a younger woman and playing house when he’s been planning on leaving all along. Don’t you get it?”
“Alex,” I snap, turning my face away from him. “You need to leave.”
He looks flustered. “You’re joking! Are you really going to stay here and wait for him to make excuses? He’s using you!”
Alex has to yell the last words because I’m already in the house and locking the door behind me. Finally, alone, I lean against the door and slide down to the floor, covering my face with my hands and giving in to the awful urge to cry. How could I be so naive? How could I believe a successful, amazing man like Hugh would want me?
I sob, alone in the house, while my ex tries to plead his case from outside the door. I don’t hear anything he has to say, though, all of my thoughts taken up by how absolutely stupid I’ve been.
And to think…I fell in love with Hugh. Even now, I love him, and that just makes the heartbreak so much worse.
6
HUGH
It’s a thirty-minute drive from the hospital to my house.
When I see my son on the security camera, I make it in twenty.
My fucking idiot child is still pounding on my front door when I skid into the driveway, leaving the keys in the car as I all but run to grab him. He has to hear me coming, but Alex is so far gone in whatever mania has made him show up here that he doesn’t even try to get away.
With my hands closing on the hood of his sweatshirt, I jerk him backward and throw him aside like he weighs nothing. He skids on the concrete porch, landing right on his ass and gaping up at me like a fish.
“How fucking dare you, you little shit?” I growl, voice rough with how hard I’m working to control it. “Did you not hear me last time? Huh? Why the hell are you here?”
“I came here to tell her the truth!” Alex yells, having no semblance of the control I’m fighting to maintain. “Haley deserves to know that you’re planning on leaving!”
Fuuuuck. Of course, Alex would find a way to pull something like this over on me. He probably sat for days trying to come up with some dirt on me—as some sort of sick revenge against the father who has loved him his whole life—just because I happened to get the girl that he wanted. Now Haley is inside, probably upset, and Alex is out here struggling to his feet, with a smug expression of victory on his face.
Where did I go wrong with this kid?
I let him stand, watching him brush his clothes off before staring at me once more, waiting on a response. I cross my arms, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of an answer, until he finally blurts out, “Well? Aren’t you going to say something, Dad?”
I’ve never been so angry in my entire life. If Alex was anyone else in the entire world, his life would be in danger right now. But he’s my flesh and blood, and that’s the only reason he’s not leaving my property with multiple broken bones. If he wants to act like a child, though, I’ll treat him like one.
He opens his mouth to speak again, but I snake my arm out and grab the collar of his sweatshirt so quickly that he doesn’t even have time to react. I don’t choke him, but instead drag him off the porch and down the driveway, hearing his legs scrambling in the gravel as I do so. Alex is no match for me, and I manage to get the door open on his piece of shit car and throw him inside roughly enough that he cries out, landing in his seat with his limbs all over the place.
I grip the top of the car door opening now, leaning in so my face is close enough to his that he can see exactly how fucking pissed off I am. “Alex, if I catch you on my property again, it will be the last time you ever see me. You are so fucking close to losing any future relationship we may have as father and son that if you say one wrong thing to me right now, it’s done.”
He gulps but stays silent, so I continue.
“Haley is my woman. And if I get my way, she’ll be my wife. You will never, and I mean never, disrespect her again. Did you know I’m on probation at work for knocking the fucking teeth out of one of my coworkers for just saying something about her? And you think you’re okay to come to my home and berate my woman?”
Alex has gone pale, and he shakes his head once, whispering, “I’m sorry.”
