Page 58 of Crashed (Driven 3)
I take a step back and in a flash. He’s right back in my face. “Nothing? Nothing, Colton?” His voice shouts out into the room. “You gave me everything, son. Hope and pride and the goddamn unexpected. You taught me that fear is okay. That sometimes you have to let those you love chase the fucking wind on a whim because it’s the only way they can free themselves from the nightmares within. It was you, Colton, who taught me what it was to be a man … because it’s easy as fuck to be a man when the world’s handed to you on a silver platter, but when you’re handed the shit sandwich you were dealt, and then you turn into the man you are before me? Now that, son, that’s the definition of being a man.”
No, no, no, I want to scream at him to try and drown out the sounds I can’t believe. I try to cover my ears like a fucking little kid because it’s too much. All of it—the words, the fear, the fucking hope that I just might in fact be a little bent and not completely broken—is just too much. But he’s not having any of it, and it takes every ounce of control I have to not take a swing at him as he pulls my hands from my ears.
“Uh-uh.” He grunts with the effort it takes. “I’m not leaving until I’ve said what I came to say—what I’ve pussyfooted around saying to you for way too long—and now I realize how wrong I was as a parent not to force you to hear this sooner. So the more you fight me, the longer this is going to take so I suggest you let me finish, son, ’cause like I said before, I’ve got all the fucking time in the world.”
I just stare at him, lost in two warring bodies: a little boy desperately begging for approval and a grown man unable to believe it once he’s been given it. “But it’s not poss—”
“No buts, son. None,” he says, turning me around so he’s not touching me from behind knowing I can’t handle that still all these years later, so he can look into my eyes … so I can’t hide from the absolute honesty in his. “Not a single day since I met you have I ever regretted my choice to choose you. Not when you rebelled or fought me or drag raced down the street or stole change off of the counter …”
My body jolts from the comment—the fucking little boy in me devastated I’ve been caught—even though he’s not angry.
“… Did you think I didn’t know about the jar of change and box of food you hid beneath your bed … the stash you kept in case you thought we were going to not want you anymore and kick you out on the streets? You didn’t notice all the change I suddenly left everywhere? I left it out on purpose because I didn’t regret a single moment. Not when you pushed every limit and broke every rule possible, because the adrenaline of the defiance was so much easier to feel than the shit she let them do to you.”
My breath stops at his words. My fucking world spins black and acid erupts like lava in my stomach. Reality spirals at the thought that my biggest fear has come true … he knows. The horrors, my weakness, the vile things, the professed love, the stains on my spirit.
I can’t bring my eyes to meet his, can’t push the shame far enough down to speak. I feel his hand on my shoulder as I try to revert back to focusing on the numbing blur of my past and escape the memories tattooed in my fucking mind—on my fucking body—but I can’t. Rylee has made me feel—broken that fucking barrier—and now I can’t help but do anything but.
“And while we’re clearing the air,” he says, his voice taking on a much softer tone, his hand squeezing my shoulder. “I know, Colton. I’m your dad, I know.”
The fucking floor drops out beneath me, and I try to pull my shoulder out of his grip but he doesn’t let me, won’t let me turn my back on him to hide the tears burning my eyes like ice picks. Tears that reinforce the fact that I’m a pussy who hasn’t handled anything at all.
And as much as I want him to shut the fuck up … to leave me the fuck alone … he continues “You don’t need to say a word to me. You don’t need to cross that imaginary line in your head that makes you fear an admission will make everyone leave you, will prove you to be less of a man, will make you the pawn she wanted you to be …”
He pauses and it takes every ounce of everything inside of me to try and meet his eyes. And I do for a split second before the fucking door to the patio, the sand beneath my feet, and the burn of oxygen in my lungs as my feet pound down the beach calls to me like heroin to an addict. Escape. Run. Flee. But I’m fucki
ng frozen in place, secrets and lies swirling and colliding with the truth. The truth he knows but I still can’t bring myself to utter after twenty-four years of absolute silence.
“So don’t speak right now, just listen. I know she let them do things to you that are vile and repulsive and make me sick.” My stomach pitches and rolls, my breath shuddering at hearing it aloud. “… Things no one should ever have to endure … but you know what, Colton? That doesn’t make it your fault. It doesn’t mean you deserved it, that you let it happen.”
I slide down the wall behind me until I am sitting on the floor like a fucking little kid … but his words, my dad’s words … have brought me back there.
Have scared me.
Changed me.
Fucked with my head so memories start pushing through the wormholes in my fucked up heart and soul.
I need to be alone.
I need Jack or Jim.
I need Rylee.
I need to forget. Again.
“Dad?” My voice is shaky. The sound of a little bitch asking for permission and fuck me, right now, isn’t that what I am? On the fucking floor once again about to throw the fuck up, body shaking, head racing as my stomach revolts?
He’s sitting on the floor beside me like he used to do when I was little, his hand on my knee, his patience calming me some. “Yeah, son?” His voice is so soft, so tentative, I can tell he’s afraid he’s pushed me too far. That he’s broken me more when I’ve already been fucking shattered and held together with scotch tape for way too long.
“I need—I need to be alone now.”
I hear him draw in a breath, feel his resigned acceptance, and his unending love. And I need him to go. Now. Before I lose it.
“Okay,” he says softly, “but you’re wrong. You may have never said the words aloud—may have never told me you loved me—but I’ve always known because you have. It’s in your eyes, how your smile lights up when you see me, the fact that you’d share your beloved Snickers bars with me without asking.” He chuckles at the memories. “How you would let me hold your hand and let me help you chant your superheroes as you lay in bed so you could fall asleep. So words, no, Colton … but you told me every day in some way or another.” He’s silent for a moment as a part of me allows the fact to sink in that he knows. That all the worry I’ve had over all of these years that he didn’t know how much I felt didn’t matter. He knew.
“I know your worst fear is having a child …”
The elation that lifted me is choked by fear with his words. This is all just too much—too much, too fast when for so long I’ve been able to hide from it. “Please don’t,” I plead, squeezing my eyes shut.
