Page 103 of Cut Off
“The judge now thinks I’m an asshole.”
Dad’s expression doesn’t change.
I try to rephrase, get more strategic: “There’s not enough evidence to prove I’m better for Eli. The court’s just going to look at history, and I don’t have it. I’ve only been his dad for five weeks, one of those while he was in foster care.”
Silence. The kind that’s not patient but inevitable.
Something sours in my stomach. I try again, lower, more raw. “It’s gonnabe a bloodbath.”
Dad gives me the old coach stare. He could wait out a clock.
My throat closes. The words pile up behind it, hot, desperate, too big to hold in.
And then I break.
The sound that comes out is not a sob—not at first. Just this low, gutted sound, almost a cough, then another behind it. My hands are over my face, but it doesn’t matter. My shoulders go—shaking, then full-on tremor—and I can’t stop it. For a minute, the only thing in the room is me falling apart. My breath rasps. All the sweat from the run floods my eyes, or maybe that’s just the crying, but I can’t make it stop.
“I’m afraid,” I choke out, “that he’s going to decide I’m not good enough.”
Dad’s there, hand on the back of my neck, solid and steady. He doesn’t say a word.
I keep going, because once it starts, there’s no shutting it down. “He’ll just—he’ll grow up, and look back, and all he’ll remember is that I showed up too late. And I lost. And then he went back to another house, and I’m just…” I can’t even finish the sentence. I shake my head. “I’m just one more asshole who left.”
The words hollow me out. More than the skating, more than anything Gwen could throw. It’s the truth, and it burns.
I sit and let it burn through me. Dad’s hand doesn’t move. It’s the same grip I put on Eli’s shoulder in the closet, the same way I held him in the fort.
It’s a long time before I calm down. When I finally surface, the gym is silent again—just my breath, ragged and slowing, and the absolute absence of any excuse.
Dad clears his throat.
“You know what being a father really is?” he says. The tone is almost bored, but the pressure of his hand says otherwise. “It’s not the good nights, Jonah. It’s not Lego sets or bedtime or the days that make you feel you’re doing something right.”
I’m silent. Not because I don’t have thoughts, but because I’m not capable of speech.
He goes on. “It’s this.Exactlythis. Getting your ass kicked and showing up again, anyway. Staying in it after you lose—after you’re embarrassed, after you’re scared shitless. Because if you quit, that’s the only thing your kid will ever remember.”
He waits, lets that sink in.
“Eli sees you. The way you see him. That kid is smarter than any nine-year-old I’ve ever met. And that ‘I believe in you’—he said it because he meant it. He knows what you don’t.”
I stare at the floor. The rubber mat is stained, shredded at the corners.
“I want to fight,” I finally say, voice like gravel. “I just—I don’t know how.”
Dad swings around to face me square-on. “You remember what that social worker said?”
I blink, knowing that he’s going to bring back the thing I fucked up royally. The memory grinds up through the rest—my threat to Gwen that made me lose my child.
“Going to anger management,” I say.
He raises his brows, like I’ve just solved a riddle. “Did you?”
“No.” The word tastes like concrete.
Dad shrugs. “So do it. As soon as possible.”
He stands up, slow, joints popping. He raps my shoulder once—hard enough to get my attention, not hard enough to hurt.
