Chapter 28 Collin
COLLIN
The line goes dead, and I stand frozen in my kitchen, phone still pressed against my ear as if somehow Iris might suddenly return to the other end.
The silence that follows feels physical—a weight settling across my shoulders, pressing against my lungs until each breath becomes an act of deliberate will.
“Fuck,” I whisper, the word disappearing into the empty space of my apartment.
I redial immediately, muscle memory guiding my fingers across the screen.
One ring. Two. Three. Then straight to voicemail.
Her warm, slightly hesitant voice suddenly replaced by its recorded counterpart.
The contrast is jarring, like reaching for someone in the dark only to find empty air where they should be.
“Hi, you’ve reached Iris. Leave a message and I’ll call you back.” I end the call without speaking. What could I possibly say that would matter now?
Rain pelts against the windows, turning Seattle into a watercolor blur beyond the glass.
My apartment suddenly feels sterile. Unlived in.
A showroom rather than a home. It’s the kind of place designed to impress but not to hold warmth.
Not to hold memories. Not to hold someone like Iris, who brings color and chaos and life wherever she goes.
Ace whines from his spot on the couch, head resting on paws as he watches me.
Even my dog knows something fundamental has shifted.
My gaze drifts to the refrigerator, where Jamie’s crayon drawing is secured with a magnet.
The drawing blurs as I stare at it, colors bleeding together through the film of unexpected tears.
I blink them away, angry at the weakness, at the raw vulnerability that seems to have crept into every corner of my life since Iris crashed into it like a meteor, leaving nothing unchanged in her wake.
I pace the length of my living room, energy humming beneath my skin with nowhere to go.
Turn. Repeat. My feet make soft, shuffling sounds against the floor, the only noise besides the rain and my own uneven breathing.
“I should go over there,” I say aloud, pausing mid-stride.
Ace’s tail thumps once against the couch cushions in response.
“I should make her listen.” But then her words echo in my mind.
The defeat in her voice had been unmistakable.
The resignation. As if she’d been expecting this outcome all along, just waiting for the other shoe to drop.
I resume pacing, fingers raking through my hair, catching on the tangles I haven’t bothered to comb out since my morning shower.
This isn’t about the media circus. It’s about Owen’s poison finding its mark.
It’s about Iris believing, deep down, that she isn’t worth fighting for.
That she’s a burden. Damaged goods. And isn’t there a part of me—a small, dark part I keep locked away—that wonders if she might be right about me too?
About my ability to stay, to be what she and Jamie need?
My father’s face flashes in my mind—not the man who raised me, but the biological father who’d walked away.
The one I’d only ever seen in pictures. Anthony King.
A man I resemble more with each passing year, a fact my mother had pointed out when I was a teenager.
The man whose blood runs in my veins. Whose propensity for walking away might be encoded in my very DNA.
I shake my head. I’m not my father. I’ve proven that in a thousand small ways over the years.
In the way I’ve built lasting friendships.
In my loyalty to my team. In how I’ve cared for Ace, never once considering giving him up when life got complicated.
But a relationship? A family? Those are uncharted waters.
Dangerous ones. My phone rings, the sound cutting through the apartment’s hollow silence.
My heart stutters, then accelerates with painful hope.
I lunge for it without checking the screen.
“Iris?” Her name escapes me before I can stop it—a prayer, a plea, a single word carrying the weight of everything unsaid between us.
“Sorry to disappoint, kid.” Hal’s familiar voice flows through the speaker instead. Something collapses inside me. I sink onto the couch beside Ace, suddenly too tired to remain standing. The dog immediately shifts, pressing his warm bulk against my thigh in silent comfort.
“Hey,” I manage, the single syllable weighted.
“Well, you sound like hell.” Hal’s voice flows through the speaker—warm, familiar, grounding.
“Saw you on the news. Looking like you were about ready to throw down right there on the front lawn.” There’s no judgment in his observation, just that calm acknowledgment that has always been his way.
In the background, I can hear the soft domestic sounds of my mother’s kitchen.
The sounds of a life of quiet routines and shared spaces that feels impossibly distant from my current reality.
Despite everything, a rough laugh escapes me.
“Not my finest moment.”
“Looked pretty damn fine to me. Nothing wrong with standing up for your girl.” He pauses and I can see him smoothing over the gray stubble on his chin. “You wanna talk about it?” No.
“She ended it,” I say, the words still strange and unreal on my tongue, like speaking a language I’ve only partially learned. “Because of the media fallout. Said she won’t be the reason I lose everything I’ve worked for.” Hal grunts in response.
“Noble of her.”
“Bullshit is what it is,” I snap, then immediately regret the harshness. “Sorry. I just—I don’t care about the sponsors or the fucking morality clauses. I care about her. About Jamie.”
“Have you told her that?”
“Of course I have!” My free hand curls into a fist against my thigh, nails biting into my palm.
“But she won’t listen. Keeps talking about how she doesn’t want to be my mistake, how she has too much baggage, how I’ll realize what I’ve given up and resent her.
” My voice breaks on the last word. Silence stretches between us.
“You know,” Hal says, voice thoughtful, “that sounds an awful lot like fear talking.”
“Yeah, no shit.” I run a hand across my face, feeling the rough stubble I haven’t shaved.
My fingers press against my temples, seeking relief from the pressure building there.
“And I get it. I can’t even blame her. My track record isn’t exactly.
.. reassuring.” The admission costs me, each word peeled away like a bandage from an unhealed wound.
“She thinks I’ll get bored, move on. That I’m not in it for the long haul.
And honestly? That fear’s not coming from nowhere.
” Hal is silent on the other end in that irritating way he always was when I was growing up.
Trying to let me work through things on my own, untangle all my thoughts before he pitched in to help.
“What if I am just like him, Hal? What if it’s hardwired into me?
To walk away when things get hard? To destroy the things I touch?
” My voice catches, snagging on the fear that’s lived so long beneath my breastbone I’ve almost forgotten it’s there.
Almost. “I look in the mirror, and I see him staring back at me. His eyes. His jaw. Him. And I wonder if I’m carrying more than just his features.
” Ace shifts next to me, settling his head in my lap.
I sigh and scratch him behind his soft ears.
“I don’t know how to do this,” I continue, each word drawn from a well I’ve kept covered for years.
“How to be someone’s... someone’s everything.
How to be a father figure when I’ve spent my whole life defining myself by what I’m not—by who I’m not.
I don’t know the first thing about being someone’s steady boyfriend, never mind being someone’s father figure when I didn’t have one.
” My hands curl into fists against my thighs, knuckles whitening with pressure.
“What if—” The question sticks in my throat, too terrifying to voice completely.
“What if I let myself have this one thing, this one perfect thing, just to find out I’m exactly like him?
That no matter how hard I try, I’ll end up hurting them both in the end?
” Hal makes a noise somewhere between a scoff and a growl.
“You listen to me, Collin King, and you listen good. I’ve known you since you were six years old, standing on the rink in secondhand skates that were two sizes too big.
” The familiar story softens something inside my chest. “I’ve watched you grow into a man any father would be proud to call son. Any father with sense, that is.”
“Hal—”
“I’m not finished,” Hal interrupts, voice gruff with emotion. “That man—and I use the term loosely—that man who shares your DNA? He’s nothing. Less than nothing. He’s a cautionary tale, not a prophecy.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because I raised you,” Hal says simply, and the admission—for the first time spoken so plainly between us—steals my breath. “Not in the way I should have, maybe. Not officially. That’s on me, son. That’s my greatest regret.”
“What are you talking about?” Hal sighs, a lifetime of regret carried in the sound.