Driven Collection

by K. Bromberg

  “And what does Rylee think of all of this?”

  I stop and turn to look at him. What? I didn’t expect that to come out of his mouth. “What do you mean?”

  “I asked, what does Rylee think about all of this?” He leans forward, elbows on his knees, eyes questioning me beneath arched brows.

  “Hell if I know.” I grunt and my dad shakes his head. God, I hate having to explain myself. But it’s my dad. My end game superhero, how can I not? “She was here when Tawny dropped the bomb. We got in a fight because I was taking everything out on her, being an inconsiderate ass. Bitching about a baby I don’t want when she can’t have one. I was in stellar form,” I tell him with a roll of my eyes. “We agreed to a few days apart to get our heads straight again. Get my shit together.”

  “And you haven’t talked to her since?”

  “What is this, Dad? Twenty fucking questions? Does it look like I have my shit figured out yet?” I snort out a derisive laugh. One step forward and then fucking twenty steps backwards. “Is Tawny still pregnant? Have the test results come back yet? Yes, and a big fucking no … So no, I haven’t called her back yet. Chalk it up to just another thing for you to hold against me.”

  He just stares at me. “Is that what I’m doing? Holding your shit against you? Because it looks like you’re doing a damn fine job of it yourself, son. So let me ask you the question you should be asking yourself: Why haven’t you pulled your head out of your ass and called her?”

  I blow out a loud breath. Fuckin’ A. “I don’t want to go there right now, Dad.” Just go away. Let me down the next bottle of Jack while the clock ticks for the doctors to take their sweet ass time to decide if I’ve just fucked up the life of an unborn child. Because if the kid’s mine, shit, he’s already starting off with a tainted soul and that—that’s something I can’t have on my conscience.”

  “Well I do want to go there, so pull up a chair to your own pity party, Colton, because I’m not leaving until we finish talking. Understood?”

  My mouth falls open, and I’m transported back to fifteen years ago and my one night in custody for drag racing. To that moment in time when he picked me up, raked me over the proverbial motherfucking coals, and told me how it was going to be from there on out. Damn. I’ve got chest hair and houses and shit now, but he can still make me feel like a teenager.

  Anger flashes through me. I don’t need a fucking shrink right now, I need a negative blood test. And Rylee wrapped around me with a soft sigh falling from her lips as I sink into her. The ultimate pleasure to bury all of this bullshit pain.

  “So,” he says, pulling me back to him instead of thoughts of her. “You’re seriously going to let her go without a fight? Let her walk out of your life because of Tawny?”

  “She’s not walking away!” I shout at him, upset that he would even think she would. Would she?

  He just quirks an eyebrow. “Exactly.” My eyes snap up to meet his. “So quit treating her like she did. She’s not your mother.”

  I want to scream at him that I sure as shit know she’s not. To not even put her in the same sentence as my mother, but instead I play with the seam on the couch as I search for the answer I think he wants to hear. That I’m trying to convince myself is the truth. “She doesn’t deserve this … the shit that comes with me. My past … now my possible fucking future.”

  He makes a hum in his throat, and I hate it because I can’t figure out what it means. “Isn’t that up to her to decide, Colton? I mean you’re making decisions for her … shouldn’t she get a say?”

  Shut up, I want to tell him. Don’t remind me what she deserves because I already know. I already fucking know! And I know because I can’t give it to her. I thought I could … thought I might be able to and now with this, I know I can’t. It’s reinforced all of the things she said … all of the things I’ll never be able to cleanse from my damned soul.

  “You say she’s not going to leave you when things get tough, son, but your actions are telling me something completely different. And yet you didn’t see her fighting for you every damn day you lay in that hospital bed. Every damn day. Never leaving. So that leads me to believe this little dilemma you have here isn’t about her at all.”

  Every part of me revolts against the words he says. The words that said by anyone else would have me ready to rage, but respect has me holding back from yelling at the man who’s words are hitting a little too close to home.

  “It’s about you.” The quiet resolve in his voice floats out in the room and slaps me in the face. Taunts me to take the bait, and I can’t hold back anymore.

  And I don’t want to do this any more than I want to spend another night without Rylee in my bed. Looking too close causes dead ghosts to float to the goddamn surface, and I don’t have any more room for ghosts because my closet’s already full of fucking skeletons.

  But the match is lit, gasoline thrown. Fire inside fucking ignited and all of the frustration and uncertainty and loneliness from the past week comes to a head, explodes inside of me. I wear a hole in the goddamn floor pacing as I try to fight it, try to rein it in, but it’s no use.

  “Look at me, Dad!” I shout at him while he perches on the couch. I hold my hands out to my side, and I hate myself for the break in my voice, hate myself for the unanticipated show of weakness. “Look what she did to me!” And I don’t have to explain who she is because the contempt dripping from my voice explains enough.

  I stand there arms out, blood pumping, temper raging, and he just sits there, calm as can fucking be and smirks—fucking smirks—at me. “I am, son. I look at you every day and think what an incredible person you are.”

  His words knock the wind out of my sails. I yell at him and he comes back at me with that? What kind of game is he playing? Fuck up Colton’s head more than normal? Shit, I hear the words but don’t let them sink in. They’re not true. Can’t be. Incredible and damaged don’t go together.

  Incredible can’t be used to describe a person who tells the man molesting him that you love him, whether the words are forced or not.

  “That’s not fucking possible,” I mutter into the silence of the room as vile memories revive my anger, isolate my soul. I can’t even meet his eyes because he might see just how messed up I really am. “That’s not possible,” I repeat to myself, more emphatically this time. “You’re my dad. You have to say that.”

  “No, I don’t. And technically, I’m not your dad, so I don’t have to say anything.” Now that stops me dead in my tracks … brings me back to being a scared kid afraid to be sent back. He’s never said anything like this to me before, and now I’m fucking freaked out about the direction this conversation has taken. He stands and walks toward me, eyes locked on mine. “You’re wrong. I didn’t have to stop and sit with you on the doorstep. I didn’t have to take you to the hospital, adopt you, love you …” he continues feeding into every childhood insecurity I’ve ever had. I force myself to swallow. Make myself keep my eyes locked on his because all of a sudden I’m scared shitless to hear what he has to say. The truths he’s going to admit. “… but you know what, Colton? Even at eight years old, scared and starving, I knew—I knew right then the amazing person you were, that you were this incredible human being I couldn’t resist. Don’t you walk away from me!” His voice thunders and shocks the hell out of me. From calm and reassuring to angry in an instant.

  I stop in my tracks, my need to escape this conversation that’s causing so much shit to churn and revolt within me begging me to keep walking right on out the door to the beach below. But I don’t. I can’t. I’ve walked away from every fucking thing in my life, but I can’t walk away from the one person who didn’t walk away from me. My head hangs, my fists clench in anticipation of the words he’s going to say.

  “I’ve waited almost twenty years to have this conversation with you, Colton.” His voice is calmer now, steadier, and it freaks me out more than when he rages. “I know you want to run away, walk out the fucking door and
escape to your beloved beach, but you’re not going to. I’m not letting you take the chickenshit way out.

  “Chickenshit?” I bellow, turning around to face him with years of pent up rage. Years of wondering what he really thinks of me coming to a head. “You call what I went through the chickenshit way out?” And the smirk on his face is back, and even though I know he’s just goading me, trying to provoke me so I take the bait and get it all out, I still take it. “How dare you stand there and act like even though you took me in, it was easy for me. That life was easy for me!” I shout, my body vibrating with the anger taking hold, the resentment imploding. “How can you tell me I’m this incredible person when for twenty four years you’ve told me a million goddamn times that you love me—LOVE ME—and not once have I ever said it back to you. Not fucking once! And you’re telling me you’re okay with that? How can I not think I’m fucked up when you’ve given me everything and I’ve given you absolutely nothing in return? I can’t even give you three goddamn words!” When the last words leave my lips I come back to myself and realize I’m inches from my dad, my body shaking with the anger that’s eaten me whole for a lifetime as tiny flecks of it are being chipped away from my hardened fucking heart.

  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 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 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 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 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 mind—on my fucking body—but I can’t. Rylee has made me feel—broken that goddmamn 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 hell 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 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 fucking 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 little kid … but his words, my dad’s words … have brought me back there.

  Have scared me.

  Changed me.

  Messed 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 shit, right now, isn’t that what I am? On the damn 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.

  “Okay … I’ve thrown a lot of shit at you, but it was time you heard it. And I’m sorry I probably messed with your head more than you needed me to, but, son, only you can fix that now—deal with it now that all of the cards are on the table. But I have to tell you, you’re not your mother. DNA doesn’t make you a monster like her … just as if you were to have a child, your demons won’t be transferred to that new life.”

  My fists clench and teeth grind at the last words—words that feed off the worst of my fears—the urge to break something returning. To drown the pain that’s back with a vengeance. I know he’s pushed me to the breaking point. I can hear his quiet sigh through the screams of every ounce of my being.

  He stands slowly and I tell myself to look at him. To show him that I’ve heard him, but I can’t make myself do it. I feel his hand on the top of my head, like I’m a little boy again, and his uncertain voice whispers, “I love you, Colton.”

  The words fill my fucking head but I can’t get them past the fear lodged in my throat. Past the memories of the chant I used to say that was followed by the brutality and unspeakable pain. As much as I want to tell him—feel the need to tell him—I still can’t.

  See, perfect example, I want to tell him, to demonstrate how fucked up I am. He just bared his self to me and I can’t give him a goddamn response because she stole it from me. And he thinks I could be a parent? She made my heart black and my core rotten. There’s no way in hell I could pass that on to someone else if there were the remote chance it could happen.