Locke
Bang! Bang! Bang!
I bolted upright on the couch, my eyes flying open. The sun streamed in through the windows, far too bright, and whoever the hell was knocking on the door was doing it far too loudly. I grimaced, getting to my feet. I was still wearing my clothes from yesterday.
Dad?
I hurried to the door, instantly worried something was terribly wrong. I flung it open, relieved to see him standing there—no blood, no bruises, no tears. I let out a sigh of relief, tension draining out of me. Whatever it was couldn’t be that bad.
He frowned at me. “Took you long enough.”
“Sorry,” I muttered, rubbing the sleep from my eyes now that my pulse had stopped racing. “I didn’t know you were coming.”
“It’s not like you to still be sleeping at this time of day,” he said, walking straight through the door and into my living room. He glanced around—from the couch, scattered with yesterday’s work notes, to the coffee table packed with rubbish—dropping his hands to his hips.
I smoothed my hair back a little self-consciously. “I was up late looking at the specs for the West Lothian property again. I guess I just passed out at some point.” I fought off a yawn. I hadn’t been sleeping well lately. “Were we supposed to be meeting today?”
“No, your mother called me,” Dad replied, shaking his head and clicking his tongue as he turned to face me.
Mum had called him? That was the surprise of the century. I honestly didn’t think Graeme and Nicola Fraser had spoken in years. “What for?”
“She’s worried about you. Looking at you now,” Dad gestured from me to the coffee table, covered with take-away containers, “and looking around this place, I can see why.”
I bristled, offense very much taken. “What the hell does that mean?”
“It means you look like shite; not to mention, you’re clearly eating like shite.” He marched into the kitchen, grabbed my rubbish bin from under the sink, and returned to sweep the take-away mess into it.
Confusion rattled around inside my head. Dad had blown in here like a storm to insult me and then clean up my mess? Christ, I was too exhausted for this.
“Have you been getting any real sleep?” he continued. “Something more than naps on the couch when you pass out? You’ve been sending me work updates and questions at all hours lately.”
“I always pop you the occasional question,” I argued, following him back to the kitchen.
“Not usually at four in the morning,” Dad said, setting the rubbish bin down. “It’s like you’re working around the clock.”
“What does it matter when the work is getting done as long as it is getting done?” I scrubbed at the back of my head, feeling ambushed.
I still didn’t know what the hell he was doing here—except that it was apparently on my mother’s orders.
And since when did she call Dad to discuss me? What was I—twelve?
“I’ve been chatting with some of the old guard,” Dad said. “They said you’ve been more irritable and stressed at the office.”
My CFO and several of the team leads were still holdovers from when Dad was in charge. I knew they kept in touch, but I didn’t know it was to spread inane office gossip. I huffed, crossing my arms as I leaned up against the counter. “What is this?”
Dad looked at me pointedly. “This is me making sure you’re all right.”
“I’m fine,” I insisted. People ate take-out all the time. It was hardly an indicator of a breakdown. And since when was he the type to stage an intervention? That wasn’t like him at all. Me and Dad. We didn’t do this—whatever this was.
Dad yanked my fridge open, shaking his head again. He pulled out an old kebab wrapper. Actually, that one wasn’t that old. I’d only ordered it the other night. But he found more, and his expression grew more concerned with each one.
“You only eat this kind of junk when you’re upset or stressed,” he said, dropping the wrappers on the counter next to the fridge.
“It’s convenient,” I argued. “I’ve been busy.”
Dad wasn’t buying it. “You’ve done the same thing since you were a teenager. Don’t you remember when you sat your Advanced Highers? Your mother and I thought we were going to have to give in and buy a kebab shop to keep you stocked.”
I scoffed, rolling my eyes. He was blowing everything out of proportion.
“Look, I may not be great at communicating all the time,” Dad said, using his serious tone on me. “But I do pay attention. I know when you’re hurting, Locke. And so does your mother, even from all the way in Dorset.”
I lifted my shoulder, trying to shrug off his words as a sharp pang flared between my ribs. I didn’t want to discuss this right now.
“Nicola also spilled the beans about the baby, assuming I already knew,” Dad said. “Congratulations, by the way.”
I winced, rubbing my face. Now I felt like a right arse. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I was going to…It just hadn’t come up yet.”
Dad sighed, slumping back against the counter.
We stayed like that, on opposite sides of the kitchen, that divide hanging between us.
“That’s the problem, isn’t it?” he said eventually.
“You should have been buzzing to tell me about the baby. But neither one of us really knows how to talk to the other about anything other than work, do we?”
“…I suppose we don’t,” I said.
He nodded. “And that’s my fault.”
I jerked back. “How’s it your fault?”
“I should have worked harder to build a relationship between us where we could talk about anything,” he said.
“The kind you used to have with your mum. I just…That was never my strong suit. And after the divorce, it was easier to crack on with work than it was to pick at things that sat deeper. Especially since my own feelings were so raw. I didn’t want to start conversations that might cause either of us pain.
” Dad rubbed at his jaw. “I made a real mince of that, and it’s coming back to bite me now. I feel like such a failure.”
I frowned at him. How could Dad think he could ever be considered a failure? “Dad, you’ve made an enormous success of yourself. Look at all you accomplished for the company. Even when you were going through the divorce, you never missed a stride. You have to know how much I admired you for that.”
“Then I taught you to admire the wrong things, to prioritize the wrong things,” Dad said, looking sad. “I’m sorry.”
My jaw tightened, his words echoing Isla’s. Prioritize. Prioritize. Prioritize. “What would have been the right things to prioritize?” I asked.
“My family,” he stated, without hesitation.
“But you still have me,” I reasoned. “You didn’t lose me because you worked hard.”
“And I’m grateful for that every day,” Dad said, stepping forward and squeezing my shoulder.
“But we don’t have the relationship I would have wanted for us.
Look, son, me shutting down emotionally for all those years, throwing myself into one project after another, means that here I am on the wrong side of sixty with a life that’s a whole lot emptier than I’d like it to be. ”
Hearing him admit to exactly what my mum had been so worried about hurt, and I fought the sting behind my eyes suddenly.
“I don’t want that for you,” Dad continued.
“Especially since you’re about to have a son of your own.
” He looked into my eyes, and for the first time in my life, I could see the loneliness clearly.
It was the same expression I saw these days when I looked at myself in the mirror.
“Learn from my example,” he said. “Don’t be like me. Be better than me.”
My jaw trembled as I nodded. I wanted to be a good man, a good father. A good partner. But did I even know what that looked like? And if I could figure it out, would Isla be willing to see it?
“What if it’s too late?” I asked, voice thick.
“All you can do is try,” Dad said, his hand tightening on my shoulder. “Teach your son not to shut himself away from those that matter most. Give him that example to follow.”
“Okay,” I said. Dad was right. No more hiding. No more distractions. It was time to risk my heart for the woman I loved.