Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
CAL
T here was a shift between us. A good one. There were no more secrets, and I felt like I had a better picture of my father and his motives. Once she got all the tears out, Sabrina and I lay in my bed and talked for hours, starting with my description of the night my dad had shown up in Vegas with all his threatening promises. He’d laid out his attack for me and spun the tale of how much Sabrina and her father would hate me, how they’d see me as the bad-luck streak that had invaded their lives.
I could have Sabrina hating me for being an asshole; I could come back from that. Pain like that could be healed. But if her life had been decimated, along with her father’s, because of me, how do we overcome that? The strain and hurt would have eventually shredded us to pieces. And that I could never come back from.
Then Travis had gotten sick, and I knew I had to say something. He had to know.
As she snuggled up next to me, her swollen ankle propped up on my leg, she made her declaration. “You were right, you know. To do what you did.” She looked up at me, and expecting to see acceptance, I saw hurt in her eyes. “I’m lying here, thinking about how I just want all this to go away. How I’d kill for a fresh start to figure out what we should do next, me and you, but I know we can’t do that. Your dad is out there with attacks already in the works. I’m tired and I’m scared and I try to picture what life would look like had you told me that day in Vegas and I can see the cracks. I can see how it could have destroyed us. And I for sure know I couldn’t have withstood this sort of attack while my dad was sick. Even now I don’t know if I can handle more blows.”
I ran a hand over the top of her head, pushing the hair out of her face. “Okay, what do you want to do?”
“That’s just it. I don’t think it matters what I want to do. I think now that I’m back on your dad’s radar, I’m gonna stay there regardless. What happened between him and my parents is unfinished business to him, and now he has a chance to finish it. He’s not going to stop, no matter what I do—what we do.”
She was right, of course.
“He’s taken away my one dream.” Her voice was raspy from unshed tears.
“Actually, I was thinking about this. He’s taken away one avenue toward your dream. But I was doing some research, and there are other routes to adoption.”
“But once he finds out about that, he’ll attack me there.”
This was also true.
She sat up and stared down at me. “We have to see this through to the end, don’t we? Not just for your company and app but to even have a chance at living a life without his interference.”
This was the part I hated. I must have always known this battle with my dad would have to have a grand finale. A final battle.
I nodded and picked up a lock of hair to wind it through my fingers. “We’re stronger together. I see that now.”
She studied me as she worried her lower lip, then gave a clipped nod as if she’d made up her mind. “Okay, then. We need to up our game. We need to stop playing like there are some rules to this war, because he’s not doing that. I think we can punch back harder and still keep our ethics.”
And then she laid out a plan.
When we shared it with Paul, he loved it. I spent the morning making the rounds on the morning show via satellite. I told the world that my father was behind the attack and smear campaign, and I explained how our app would be different. How the app conception had begun because of Citra’s sister. I talked about Casey at the community center and how the app gave her a solid checklist of ways to protect herself. And I had friends in the industry back up what I taught about personal safety, though no one was willing to back me up personally, and I got that. It hurt, but they were scared of it affecting their businesses, which fed their families, and that was understandable. Cowardly, but understandable. Standing up and taking heat was not a pleasant experience. Ask me how I know. I ended by explaining how my company’s goal was other people’s safety, and how the smear campaign had endangered other people.
We ended the shows on a high note when they asked about Sabrina. I wasn’t going to declare my feelings on TV before I could say them to her, but as people scrolled through her Instagram feed and asked questions about us, I didn’t have to say much—the pictures spoke for themselves.
One female host clutched her chest and swooned when I said, “Some things are meant to be. They don’t always come easily or freely, but they come. Sabrina is my meant to be. She always has been.” And then I went on to slam my dad’s attack on her father.
Afterward, I stood at the corral’s fence and fed my horse an apple. Sabrina came up beside me and leaned against the fence. She was wearing yoga pants, a sweatshirt, and one of my heavier jackets as the fall wind was blowing in. Her ankle was wrapped, and she wore slip-on shoes.
“How’s the ankle?” I handed her an apple from the bag at my feet, and she held it out to the paint she’d ridden.
“Almost like new.” Sabrina beamed. I got a contact high just watching her. “It’s like waiting for the war to break out, isn’t it?” she said. We’d picked up our weapons and pointed them at my father. Now he was either going to flinch or fire. “Can you even guess what his next move might be?”
I shook my head. “I think he wants to take things away from me. I think he’s going to come after you more.”
She shrugged. “I don’t see how. He’s already hit me hard.”
“I think we need to open our imaginations and come up with some wild ideas before we say he can’t do any more harm.”
One of the ranch’s SUVs pulled up close to the house, and Rod jumped out of the back before the vehicle had come to complete stop. I glanced at my watch. School had two more hours before letting out. Mrs. Claudia came to stand out on the porch, and Rod took one look at her, turned, and ran to the barn.
“Was his shirt ripped?” Sabrina asked.
I thought I’d seen blood on his face. We looked at each other, and I bolted toward the barn. I stopped briefly to wait for her, but she waved me on. When I got into the barn, Rod was on the hay bales where we’d sat the night before. He was crying.
I sat down next to him, and he turned away. I didn’t know what to say. This felt more like a Sabrina situation than one I could deal with. So I sat next to him and let him cry.
She walked in a few minutes later, eyed us both, then took a seat on Rod’s other side and started rubbing his back. He flinched at first but settled when she moved from stroking his back to his head.
He was wearing a flannel shirt in muted fall colors, so the blood on the sleeve wasn’t hard to miss. Neither was the tear at the shoulder. Who does this to a seven-year-old, and if it’s another kid his age, what the actual fuck is wrong with people?
“Did I ever tell you my dad was a professional gambler?” Her voice was soft and soothing. She didn’t wait for him to say anything. “After my mom died, we moved around some. I think it was hard for my dad to stay in one place because then he would think about her. We moved to this small town in Texas called Brewster. Cori is from there.” She looked at me. She was telling us both the story. “My dad always liked high-stakes games, but after my mom died, he avoided them, like maybe they reminded him of her, or maybe he thought his luck had run out or something. He never said. In this town, there was this really mean girl named Cami. I think she was around my age. Her dad was one of the wealthy guys in town. Big fish in a small pond.”
Rod’s sobs had subsided.
Sabrina continued to soothe him. “She was really mean, and I hated her guts. She was always saying terrible things to us, like how Cori’s teeth were ugly and made her look like a crazy rabbit. This was before she got braces. Or how it must be hard to know how to be a girl with no mother around. It was like she knew what would hurt the most. I wanted to smack her in the face.”
Rod picked up his head. The tears had streaked a path on his dirt-and-sand-covered face. His upper lip was busted, and he had the beginnings of a bruise on his right cheek. “Did you?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t slap her. I clocked her upside the head with my book bag. She’d pushed me too far that day. She said terrible things about why my mom died. And to this day, I can’t even bring myself to repeat them even though I know she was wrong. Just pointing out the fact that my mom was gone was terrible enough.”
“He said my dad left because he couldn’t look at me. That I was the reason why my mom was dead.” Fresh tears ran down his face.
Rod’s mom had died in childbirth.
“When he said all that, what did you do?” I asked.
“Nothing at first. I tried to walk away because my dad says it takes more courage to do that than to fight.”
“But…?”
“But he followed me and wouldn’t shut up, so I just turned around and charged at him like a bull. I knocked him down. Then I hit him.”
Sabrina scooped him up and tucked him into her lap. “You know that’s not true, right? About your mom and your dad.”
“He’s not here, is he?”
Rod’s statement was too mature for a kid his age. When I was seven and my dad would let me visit, I’d spend at least the first twenty-four hours trying to be the perfect son—a solid day of me trying to win his love and affection before the anger and rejection set in. It was a wonder I hadn’t gotten into more fights.
“Do you think your dad loves you, Rod?” Sabrina asked.
He nodded. “I guess. It’s hard when he’s not here.” He moved his hands to his lap, and I saw that his thumb was swollen.
“That’s all you have to know. Hold on to that. Who knows why he’s not here right now? Only he can tell us, and maybe he doesn’t even know. Being an adult is hard too. Mrs. Claudia says he loves you, and as we know, Mrs. Claudia never lies.”
I pointed to his hand. “What happened here?”
“I tried to punch him.”
I was not one for violence. My whole job was to prevent it the best we could. But I was in favor of protection, and that started with people protecting themselves.
“With your thumb tucked into your fist?” I asked.
Rod nodded.
I stood and scooped him up. “Come on. Let’s go inside and get you cleaned up and put some ice on that hand. Then I’m going to show you how to punch. Never tuck your thumb in your fist. Ever.”
Rod nodded.
“But I think you know that now,” I said.
“Is punching something we need to learn?” Sabrina stood too.
“Rod’s dad is right. Walking away is far harder, but there might be a time when you are going to have to punch someone, so you’d better know how to do it right.”
Rod wrapped an arm around my neck. “Mrs. Claudia is gonna yell at me.”
“Only because you scared her,” Sabrina said. “But I bet she makes a dessert you like.”
His eyes went large, and he looked at me. “I asked for Boston cream pie.”
I smiled and started for the door. “Attaboy.”
“That’s your favorite.” Sabrina fell into step with us. She poked me in the biceps. “Did you put him up to it?”
“I maybe mentioned it, and Rod wants to try new things, don’t you?”
Rod nodded. “It has pudding in it. I like pudding.”
Crème, pudding—I wasn’t going to split hairs.
“Nice job, by the way,” I said.
“Nice job for what?” she asked.
I did a small nod toward Rod. “You calmed him down instead of making him cry. Much better than how you were with the calves.”
“Oh, shut up.” She punched me in the arm. But she was smiling, and I knew that was exactly what she’d needed to hear.