Chapter Seventeen
Derek
I stared at Haizley’s front door, afraid to knock. Afraid to confront what I had done, and how disappointed in me she would be. I didn’t want Haizley to think I’d pissed on all the work she’d done to help me since I started seeing her.
I raised my hand to knock, my eyes catching the bruised and torn skin on my knuckles, expecting something to wash over me—guilt, remorse. There was nothing but satisfaction.
The door opened and Haizley stood in the entrance, her hands on her hips. She took a deep breath and stepped out of the way, allowing me inside.
I sat on the couch and waited for her to speak.
Three days had passed since I’d beaten the fuck out of Richard on his front lawn. Three days since I’d felt his windpipe collapse under my hands. Three days since Jack and Gunner had dragged me off him before I finished what I started.
Haizley studied me with the clinical expression she wore when she was trying to read my mind. Her pen tapped against her notepad, the only sound in the room.
“You want to tell me what happened?” she finally asked, sounding like a mother confronting her disobedient son.
“You already know what happened.” My voice came out flat, emotionless. “Your old man was there.”
“I want to hear it from you.”
I leaned forward on the couch, my elbows on my knees, hands clasped together and my head hanging down. “Kat told me what he did,” I began. “She told me what he did to Frankie.”
I looked up at her. “I went there to beat the shit out of him. I know it was wrong, but I didn’t fucking care. What he did...” I took a deep breath the way Haizley had taught me. “He deserved to be punished.”
I waited a beat for Haizley to argue that three years in prison was his punishment. She stayed quiet, watching me, waiting for me to continue.
“I watched him for three days, and I began to wonder if maybe prison had changed him. Then that bitch went to work. She worked the night shift at the hospital, and less than thirty minutes after she left, he walked into that girl’s room.”
The words stuck in my throat. Not from guilt. From rage that still simmered just beneath my skin, ready to boil over again if I let it.
“When I broke into the house, I heard her begging him to stop. He made her call him daddy. I yanked him off her and dragged him outside. Then I beat the shit out of him until Jack and Gunner pulled me off.” I met her eyes, unflinching. “That’s what happened.”
“And how do you feel about what you did?”
“I feel like I did exactly what needed to be done.”
Her pen stopped tapping. “No guilt? No remorse?
“For protecting a fourteen-year-old girl from a predator?” I leaned back against the couch and looked her in the eye, my voice dropping to that dangerous register that made grown men take a step back. “Not a fucking ounce.”
Haizley set her pen down carefully. Too carefully. Like she was handling something volatile. “Derek, we’ve spent months working on your anger management. On controlling your violent impulses. On—”
“This wasn’t a fucking impulse.” The words came out sharp, cutting through whatever therapeutic bullshit she was about to feed me. “This was a choice. A conscious, deliberate fucking choice to stop a man from sexually assaulting a child.”
“By nearly killing him.”
“By making sure he could never fucking do it again.” I held her gaze, refusing to back down. “You want me to sit here and tell you I’m sorry? That I wish I’d handled it differently? Called the cops and let him finish what he was doing while we waited for them to show up?”
“That’s not what I’m saying.”
“Then what are you saying?” I demanded. “Because it sounds like you’re telling me I should feel guilty for protecting an innocent kid from a fucking monster.”
Haizley exhaled slowly, and I recognized that breath. It was the one she took when she was recalibrating her approach. “I’m saying that you lost control. You’ve told me yourself that losing control is your greatest fear. That becoming your father—”
“She thanked me, Haizley.” The words came out like a growl, low and lethal.
“She fucking thanked me for doing what no one else did. What her fucking mother didn’t do.
My father beat my mother because she burned dinner.
Because she spoke to another man. Because he was drunk and bored, and she was there. He hurt people because he enjoyed it.”
I stood up, unable to sit still anymore. The energy coursing through me needed an outlet, and pacing was better than putting my fist through her wall.
“What I did wasn’t about enjoyment,” I snapped.
“Don’t get me wrong, I fucking enjoyed every minute.
But it wasn’t about power or control or getting off on someone else’s pain.
” I turned to face her, my hands clenched at my sides.
“It was about protection. It was about teaching that motherfucker a lesson he’ll never forget. ”
“And if you’d killed him?”
“Then those girls would be safe. Frankie would be safe.” I said it without hesitation. Without doubt.
Haizley’s expression shifted, not quite approval, but something close to understanding. “You know I can’t condone that.”
“I’m not asking you to condone it. I’m asking you to understand why I had to do it.” I resumed pacing, my boots heavy against her wooden floor. “You want me to dig deep and find some guilt? Some remorse? It’s not there. I’d do it again. Right now. Without thinking twice.”
“That’s what concerns me.”
I stopped mid-stride and looked at her. “Why? Because I’m willing to protect the people I love?”
“Because you’re willing to cross lines you swore you’d never cross again.
” She leaned forward, her voice gentle but firm.
“Derek, you came to me because you were terrified of your own capacity for violence. You told me you never wanted to lose control like that again. That you never wanted to become the man your father was.”
“This is different.”
“Is it?” She tilted her head, studying me. “Or is that what you’re telling yourself to justify what you did?”
The question hit harder than I expected. I sank back onto the couch, my jaw clenched so tight I could feel my teeth grinding together.
“It is different,” I said finally, my voice quieter but no less intense.
“When I lost control, when I hurt Sam, it was about me. My pain. My rage. My inability to handle my own shit.” I looked down at my bruised knuckles, remembering the satisfying crunch of Richard’s bones breaking under my fists.
“This wasn’t about me. It was about that girl.
About stopping something that never should have happened to my kid. To any kid.”
“And you don’t see how those two things might be connected?” Haizley asked. “How your past trauma might have intensified your response?”
“Of course it did.” I met her eyes again.
“You think I don’t know that? You think I don’t understand that hearing her beg him to stop triggered every fucking nightmare I’ve ever had about my own childhood?
” I dragged a hand through my hair, frustration bleeding into my words.
“But that doesn’t change the fact that what I did was necessary.
That someone needed to stop him, and I was there. ”
Haizley was quiet for a long moment. When she spoke again, her voice was measured. “I’m not saying you shouldn’t have intervened. I’m saying the level of violence you used—”
“Was exactly what he fucking deserved.”
“—suggests that you weren’t in control.”
“I was in control.” The words came out hard, definitive. “I stopped when Jack and Gunner pulled me off. If I wasn’t in control, he’d be dead right now.”
“And that’s supposed to reassure me?”
I laughed, but there was no humor in it. “I can’t pretend I’m broken up about this, that I’m struggling with what I did.” I shook my head. “I’m not. The only thing I’m struggling with is how Kat will react when she finds out.”
There it was. The truth I’d been dancing around since I walked into her office.
Haizley’s expression softened. “You’re afraid she’ll see you differently.”
“I’m afraid of the same damn thing I’ve always been afraid of.”
The admission felt like ripping open a wound. But even as I said it, I knew that wasn’t the whole truth. The real truth sat like a stone in my gut, heavy and cold.
“That she’ll find out about Sam,” Haizley filled in for me when I couldn’t say the words. “You can’t keep this from her forever. Not if you want to have a relationship with Frankie.”
It wasn’t just Frankie I wanted a relationship with. I wanted them both. I wanted to be a father to Frankie, the one I should have been ten years ago. But I wanted Kat, too.
“What if she can’t forgive me?”
“Then she can’t forgive you,” Haizley said. “But that has no bearing on whether you forgive yourself. You’ve done the work, Derek.”
“How do I do that when I just proved I’m still capable of the same violence?”
“By understanding the difference between protective violence and destructive violence,” she said.
“By recognizing that what you did to Richard came from a place of love and protection, not rage and insecurity. By accepting that you’re human.
That you have limits. That you’re capable of violence when someone you love is in danger. ”
She paused, her eyes holding mine. “What you did to Sam was wrong. But you’re not that man anymore, Derek. You’ve changed. You’ve grown. And you deserve the chance to prove that to Kat. To prove it to yourself.”
I wanted to believe that. I wanted to believe I was different. That I’d changed. That I wasn’t the same violent man who’d left Sam bleeding on the floor.
But the fear was still there, coiled tight around my ribs.
Because Richard was easy to defend. Richard was a predator, and I was a protector. That story made sense.
Sam was different. Sam was the story of a man who beat a pregnant woman in a jealous rage. A man who left her bleeding on the floor because he couldn’t control himself. A man who was exactly like his father.
And that story? That story made me exactly the kind of man Kat was trying to protect Frankie from.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” I admitted.
“Yes, you can,” Haizley said firmly. “You’ve already done the hardest part.
You’ve acknowledged what you did. You’ve done the work to understand why you did it.
Now you just need to be brave enough to let Kat see all of you.
The good and the bad. The protector and the destroyer.
And trust that she’s strong enough to make her own decision about what that means. ”
I stood up, my body heavy with dread.
“What if her decision is to walk away?”
“Then you let her go,” Haizley said. “But you give her the chance to make that decision with all the information. You owe her that much.”
I nodded, unable to find words.
As I walked toward the door, Haizley called out, “Derek?”
I turned back.
“For what it’s worth,” she said, “I think you did the right thing with Richard. I think you saved that girl from something terrible. And I think Kat will see that too. But I also think you need to prepare yourself for the possibility that saving one girl won’t erase what you did to another.
That being a protector now doesn’t undo being a destroyer then. ”
She paused, her voice softening. “You can’t control how Kat sees you.
But you can control how you see yourself.
And right now, you’re still seeing yourself through your father’s eyes.
Through the eyes of a traumatized man who didn’t know love without destruction.
It’s time to see yourself through the eyes of the people who have forgiven you. ”
I nodded, my throat too tight to speak.
Because the truth was, I didn’t need Kat to forgive me for Richard.
I needed her to forgive me for Sam.
I needed her to forgive me for Frankie.
And I needed to forgive myself too.
And I had no idea if either of us ever would.