Chapter 24 #2
It was a good hour before Eli came to check on us. Aleks helped me to my feet. I surprised him when I handed Willa back to him. “Do you think you can watch her for a while longer?”
“Yeah, sure,” he said, slightly confused.
I turned to Eli who seemed equally confused. “Don’t you want to take her home?” he asked.
“I need to do something first.” I pushed past him and went to the living room. As expected, I found Mav there. He got to his feet when he saw me.
“Everything okay?” he asked .
“No,” I said. “But it will be. I need you to take me to see my father.”
They were putting me in the same room with him.
I hadn’t been expecting that.
I’d assumed there’d be a pane of plexiglass separating us and we’d have to talk through phones.
Clearly, I’d watched way too much television.
The guard who’d explained the rules to me wasn’t the same one who was going to bring my father into the room, but both he and the guard with my father would stay to monitor us.
A fact I was supremely grateful for.
Because even though I was determined to do this, I was still scared shitless.
The guard had explained that because my father needed to be kept separate from the other inmates for his own protection, it would just be us in the room, despite there being several tables and chairs available so multiple visits could happen at once.
I hadn’t asked why my father was being kept separate, though I had a pretty good idea.
I had a feeling the crime shows I’d seen had gotten the part about suspected child molesters not doing well in prison right.
I hadn’t been allowed to take my phone into the room with me, so I had to use the clock on the wall to check what time it was.
By now Jace probably knew where I was, since I’d asked Mav only to wait to call him when he was sure Jace wouldn’t be able to get to the prison before us to stop me.
I’d have a lot of explaining to do to Jace, but I was prepared for it.
I might not have been as strong as he would have liked me to have been before doing this, but I needed it to be now. I’d told Eli not to let my father have so much power over him, but I’d been a hypocrite. The proof had been in my behavior before and after the hearing.
I’d had a lot of time to think as we’d made the trip to Magnus and Dante’s house, and interacting with Aleks and Willa had cemented the deal for me.
I didn’t need to know Aleks’s entire story to know how he must have suffered.
And yet he battled on every day to build a life for himself.
He’d spent more years being brutalized than not, and he was still here.
And Willa… Willa just changed the game entirely.
I’d spent the last four days not being there for her because of my father and his manipulations.
That just wasn’t acceptable to me on any level. It was like some of his ugliness was reaching through me and down to her.
No, it had to be today, now.
I forced myself to sit still and not reach for my right arm like I wanted as I waited.
When the door on the opposite side of the room opened, I felt my mouth go dry and a bitter chill ran through my body, then I suddenly went hot all over.
The need to run was great, but instead, I looked over at the guard.
I wasn’t sure, but I thought he sent me a little nod, like he wanted to make sure I knew he wasn’t going anywhere.
But I was probably overthinking.
I forced my eyes back to my father. Amazingly, he looked very different from when I’d seen him at the hearing. I knew it wasn’t possible for him to have suddenly aged dramatically overnight, so I had to assume I’d been seeing him through a child’s eyes at the hearing.
Now all I saw was an old, frail man. He’d clearly lost a considerable amount of weight and his skin was pale. He wasn’t wearing any cuffs on his wrists or feet, but he still moved slow for someone his age. It was hard to see any of the man who’d so often held me down as he’d brutalized me.
But the cruelty was still there in his eyes, which latched on to me the moment he entered the room and held on for the slow walk to me.
For once, though, I didn’t feel the urge to look away.
He settled in the chair across from me and I was supremely glad the table was wide enough that he couldn’t inadvertently touch my legs beneath it. He’d have to actually extend his leg to make contact with me and with the guards watching, I doubted he’d be that brazen .
My father’s face softened as he took me in, but it wasn’t real. His eyes were dark and cold.
“My sweet—”
“Shut up,” I bit out.
I was satisfied to see his eyes go wide for a moment. When he made a move to touch my hand where it was resting on the table, I said, “You sure you want to do that?”
At the same time, the guard called out, “No contact!”
My father’s brittle eyes held mine for a moment before he looked at the guard who’d escorted me into the room. “Sorry, Officer Phelps. I’ve just really missed my boy, here.”
Despite the silky smoothness of my father’s words, Officer Phelps didn’t relax his stance even a little. When the big man’s eyes met mine, I saw that thing again.
That silent message that gave me this weird boost.
Like the man knew what I was trying to do.
I turned my attention back to my father.
“Caleb,” he began, but I cut him off.
“They gave me fifteen minutes with you, but I only need two… if even that.”
My father’s mouth tightened a bit, but he remained silent.
“I keep asking myself how my father could do the things he did to me and still claim to love me.”
“Caleb, son, I didn’t do anything—”
“But earlier today when I was holding the little girl who will someday call me her father, I realized that you stopped being that to me the moment you laid eyes on me and no longer saw your son. Because fathers don’t do that shit to their kids.
Period. Monsters do, not fathers. So I don’t know the exact moment you stopped being my father and became that monster, but I know the exact moment I stopped being your son.
It was thirty seconds ago when you walked through that door and I felt absolutely nothing for you.
Not fear, not love, not regret, not even hatred.
I came here for some kind of closure, but looking at you now, I understand that to need closure gives you too much credit.
It means you still have some kind of hold on me. ”
I shook my head. “So do your worst, old man. Because nothing is going to stop me from showing up in that courtroom and telling the world what you did to me, to Eli, to Nick. And they’ll believe me,” I said confidently.
“Because you said it yourself. I was your sweet, perfect boy. No skeletons in my closet. But there are plenty in yours and I’m going to make sure the world knows about all of them. ”
I pushed my chair back, ignoring the fury in the eyes of the man across from me. The man I refused to even mentally refer to as being my sire.
“By the way, Eli is getting married in two weeks. Before the trial. Because he’s done trying to find closure too.
He’s done putting his life on hold for you.
It won’t be a small wedding, either. He and Mav are going to let the world know how much they love each other…
they aren’t going to slink off and hide because a handful of people believed your lies.
They’re even looking into having a baby.
They’re going to live their lives. We all are.
” I stood up and leaned down, hands pressed to the table.
There was barely a foot separating us and I repeated the words that I’d believed for so very long.
“ No one will ever love you like I do, my sweet boy. ” I held his gaze and said, “You’re right, they won’t. They’re going to do it so much better.”
With that, I turned to go.
“Caleb!”
I ignored his hoarse shout.
And the next one.
And every one that followed me out the door. I ignored the pounding on the door behind me and the shouts and muffled orders of the guard that was still in the room. The guard next to me didn’t say anything until we reached the waiting area.
“Good luck to you, Mr. Cortano,” he said.
“It’s Galvez-Christenson,” I said, figuring Eli and Jace wouldn’t mind me borrowing their names going forward. Caleb Cortano didn’t exist anymore.
As I made my way toward the parking lot where I knew Mav would be waiting for me, I smiled at how everything around me seemed different. Brighter, louder. It would definitely take some getting used to.
As I reached the final locked gate that guards had to let me through to get to the parking lot, I felt my mouth pull into a smile at the sight of the man waiting for me on the other side.
He looked like he could spit nails, but the second I stepped through the gate and walked into his arms, he closed them around me and took in a deep breath.
“You okay?” Jace asked.
“You have no idea,” I said as I tipped my head back to look at him.
“Found another piece, huh?”
I shook my head. “More like got rid of one.”
He kissed me again. I knew there was a lot he probably wanted to say to me, and I sure as hell had a lot I wanted to tell him, but when I said, “Jace, let’s go get our daughter and go home,” he simply nodded and took my hand in his and led me to the car.