Page 85 of What I Like About You

“Why is my coming back so important now?” he led off. “It’s not like you’ve cared these last three years.”

“I’ve cared—I was just letting you do your own thing. You were upset and needed your space.”

“And now?”

Big D closed his eyes and inhaled audibly. Dalton could see his father’s body tense. Obviously whatever he was going to say was something that was not easy for the man, and it made Dalton more than a little anxious.

"I'm dying,” he said, his blue eyes no longer the cold, ice blue that Dalton remembered from his childhood. They softened a little as he regarded his son and the news he’d just delivered.

“What do you mean you’re dying?” Dalton asked, not sure he fully understood.

“I have cancer. Not the same flavor that took your mother, but stage four nonetheless. Doctors think I have a year or so. Maybe less.”

“Bullshit,” he countered. He didn’t know what kind of sick game his father was playing, but this wasn’t funny.

“I can show you whatever scans and doctor reports you’d like,” the man offered. Dalton had always thought his father sounded a lot like Burl Ives in Cat On a Hot Tin Roof, and listening to him talk about doctors and being sick now only solidified that comparison.

“Then why is this the first I'm hearing of it? There's no way that if this is true that I wouldn’t have gotten frantic phone calls from Flick or BJ or someone else. Just because you can keep secrets doesn’t mean everyone else can.”

“Because I haven’t told them. You’re the first one.”

“You haven’t told your wife you have cancer?” Maybe he was a bigger bastard than Dalton realized.

“I seem to excel at keeping secrets from my wives,” he lamented.

“That’s a fucking understatement.”

“I haven’t told her for a lot of reasons. Not the least of which is that I wanted to be able to get affairs in orders first. That way things would be…solidified before she started to…meddle.”

“It’s nice to know that you trust your own wife,” Dalton responded, unable to help the bite in his tone.

“I trust her,” Big D said, trying to reassure Dalton. “She’s just not your mother.”

“Just one understatement after another…”

“Tripp, I have done a lot wrong in my life. Especially where my children are concerned,” Big D said, his voice wavering a bit. “I loved your mother more than anything. She was the reason I breathed. And when she got sick, I felt like I had been gutted. I didn’t handle it very well. Taking up with BobbiJo when I did was a mistake. I can admit that.”

“You married that mistake,” Dalton threw back.

“I didn’t say she was a mistake, just the point at which we got involved. There is a lot you don’t know about her, son. She was there for me in a way no one else was after we lost your mother.”

“What ways? Bent over the desk?”

“Don’t be crass,” Big D scolded. “No, she was supportive, listened to me as I cried. She did her best to help with you two, even though you and your sister fought it every step of the way. To do over again, I wouldn’t have married her so fast, but I can’t say that I wouldn’t have married her. I do love her. Not the same way I love your mother, but, I do love her.”

“And yet, you haven’t told her you’re dying,” he pointed out.

“BobbiJo doesn’t value tradition quite the same way your mother did. She won’t understand some of the choices I’m making in regards to my will. There are things that I am putting in place because it’s the legacy I want to leave. She is a passionate woman, and I know she will try to convince me otherwise, but my mind is made up. I simply wanted to make sure it was solidified before she knew, so that it was a done deal and nothing was left up to discussion.”

Dalton looked at his father quizzically. What the fuck was that supposed to mean?

“I'm not sure I follow.”

“Southland Holdings is yours, Tripp. Not just the Atlanta Rising—the whole company. Yours and yours alone.”

“What?” Dalton exclaimed. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He’d come here to talk to his father, maybe find a way for the two of them to be civil to each other. Now he was not only saddled with the knowledge that his father was dying, but that he was being handed an empire. He popped up from the chair and started to pace behind it, trying to make it all make sense in his head.

“You’re the heir. It’s what tradition dictates,” Big D said, as if it were completely obvious. “It’s what I’ve always wanted, and it’s what your mother would have wanted. It’s what your grandfather would have expected.”