Chapter 32
THIRTY-TWO
CALEB
I stand outside Bruiser’s bedroom door at eight in the morning, with Harper’s hand trembling in mine.
It’s been a week since we told him Z died, and it’s been a week of watching my nine-year-old son grieve for a man who called himself “Dad” while I lived just four hours away without even knowing I had a son.
“Ready?” Harper whispers.
My heart pounds against my ribs in a steady rhythm, and I count each beat to keep myself grounded.
“No,” I say honestly. “But let’s do it anyway.”
She squeezes my hand before knocking softly on the door.
“Bruiser? Baby, we need to talk to you.”
A groan comes from inside. “What time is it?”
“Early,” Harper says. “But it’s important.”
I hear the bed creak, followed by footsteps, and then the door opens.
Bruiser stands there in his pajamas with his hair sticking up in every direction, eyes still heavy with sleep.
“What’s wrong?” he asks immediately, because at nine years old he already expects something bad when we wake him up like this.
“Nothing’s wrong,” I say quickly. “We just need to talk. Can we go downstairs?”
He studies both of us with suspicion before giving a small nod.
We settle in the living room, and Bruiser chooses the armchair, putting space between us, while Harper and I sit side by side on the couch facing him.
My son.
The words still don’t feel real to me.
Bruiser pulls his knees up to his chest and makes himself smaller, and I can see the defensive posture immediately. His eyes are rimmed red, and I know he’s been crying when he thinks we can’t hear him. Every night this week, I’ve stood outside his door listening to him cry into his pillow.
The past week presses in on me whether I want it to or not.
Seven days ago, we were in this same living room when Harper sat him down. “We have something we need to tell you.”
Bruiser’s whole body had gone immediately alert.
Harper’s voice broke as she told him, “Baby, Z isn’t coming back. He died.”
I watched the confusion on Bruiser’s face shift in understanding, and then into devastation.
“Dad’s dead?”
That word hasn’t stopped echoing in my head since.
Dad. For Z.
He saved her life, so I have gratitude for the man. But for the hell he put her through, I can’t deny that I still hate him.
The days that followed blurred together, filled with questions that a nine-year-old can’t fully understand, nightmares that woke him in the middle of the night, and Harper holding him while he cried.
I stood in the doorway more times than I can count, feeling completely helpless as I watched my son mourn.
Yesterday, he asked, “Was Z a bad guy?”
Harper did her best to explain something far too complicated for a child’s understanding.
“He made bad choices, but he loved you. Both things can be true.”
I said nothing.
I stayed silent because I couldn’t yet give him the truth he deserved, which is that he still has a father. I’m right here. I don’t want to replace what he had with Z, and I know that I can’t—but he still deserves to know where he comes from.
Last night, after Bruiser finally fell asleep, Harper and I sat on this same couch.
“Tomorrow,” she said.
“We’ll tell him tomorrow,” I agreed.
Tomorrow has finally arrived.
I force myself back to the present and focus on the boy sitting across from me, because this is the moment that will change everything.
“Bruiser,” I begin, but my voice comes out rough, so I clear my throat before trying again. “I know this week has been really hard.”
His expression shuts down immediately. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“We’re not going to make you,” Harper says gently. “But we do need to tell you something about your family and about where you came from.”
Bruiser’s eyes narrow. “What do you mean?”
I take a slow breath because there is no easy way to say this.
“Z raised you,” I say carefully. “And he loved you. But he wasn’t your biological father.”
Silence fills the room.
Bruiser stares at me, and I can see him trying to process what I just said as he searches for something that makes sense.
“What?” he asks.
Harper leans forward slightly. “Caleb is your biological father, baby. You came from me and him.”
Another stretch of silence follows.
Bruiser looks at her, then at me, and then back at her again.
“You’re my dad?” he asks.
“Yes.”
The word settles between us, heavy and final.
My chest tightens as I think about the first time I saw Harper, when we were both teenagers and everything between us was off-limits. I remember the way she looked at me, like I was both the enemy and someone who might understand her.
I think about every rule I made to keep myself from wanting her, and every time I broke those rules anyway.
Loving her always felt like stepping off a cliff, something terrifying and inevitable at the same time.
This moment feels the same.
I watch Bruiser’s face shift through confusion, disbelief, and something sharper that builds beneath the surface.
“Why didn’t anyone tell me?” he demands. “Why didn’t you tell me?” His face swings toward his mom.
“I should have,” Harper says quickly. “I didn’t know until a couple of weeks ago, I swear. I was scared—”
“Did Z know?” Bruiser cuts in as he turns to look at me. “Did he know you were my dad?”
“Yes,” I answer, because we had decided to give him whatever truths he asked for. “He knew.”
Bruiser stands abruptly and begins pacing, his hands curling into fists at his sides.
“So he lied to me?” he says, his voice cracking. “My whole life, he lied?”
“He loved you—” Harper starts.
“Everyone keeps saying that!” Bruiser shouts, his voice shaking with anger. “But he lied!”
He points at Harper. “You lied!”
Then he points at me. “And you—were you just pretending to be nice to me this whole time?”
The accusation lands hard.
I stand because I need him to hear this.
“No,” I say firmly. “Never. I have loved you since the day I met you, Bruiser, from the very first moment I saw you.
“I didn’t know you were mine at first, and I didn’t know your mom was pregnant when we got separated all those years ago by things neither of us could control.
“But when I found out, everything made sense. You have your mom’s eyes and my stubborn streak. And the way you count things when you get nervous is something you got from me too. You’re my son, and you have always been my son.”
“Then why weren’t you there?” The question comes out broken, and it hits me harder than anything else has.
“Why did Z get to be my dad and you didn’t?”
I sink back onto the couch and brace my elbows on my knees, clasping my hands together as I look up at him.
He’s angry and hurting, and he deserves better than what he’s gotten.
I know enough to know things can get twisted in kids’ heads, too. I think about all the years I believed I wasn’t enough to keep my mom from getting sick, or to make Harper stay. How I wasn’t enough to be the person people chose.
Now I hear the question underneath what my own son is asking me, the same one that I asked a thousand times: was I not enough to stay for?
But I know now that it’s the wrong question.
“Because I didn’t know,” I say, and I let him see all of it: the regret and the truth of the words.
“We got separated before your mom knew she was pregnant with you. By then, Z was already in your life, and I should have fought harder to clear up misunderstandings and be there from the beginning. That’s on me. I failed you, and I’m sorry.”
Bruiser is crying now, tears running freely down his face.
“He was my dad. I miss him so much.”
Harper moves toward him, and this time he doesn’t pull away. He lets her wrap her arms around him, and I watch her hold our son while memories press in on me. I think about every time she tried to run from me, and every time she thought loving me meant she would ruin me.
I remember the way she looked at me in that basement all those years ago when she said she wanted strings attached with me, as if it was something she was afraid to admit, almost apologizing for it.
Now we are here, building something out of everything that should have destroyed us.
There’s still so much we don’t know.
Like where the hell Silas is, if he’s still alive, or how the hell we can get him back.
We have people working on it, but between that and worrying about Bruiser, Harper’s barely had a full night’s rest since the showdown with Senior.
It’s been a lot, but she’s more determined than ever to be there for our son, and so am I.
“Did you love Z?” Bruiser asks into her shoulder, his voice muffled.
“I loved him.” Harper’s voice shakes as she says it. “Maybe not always the way he wanted me to, but I loved him. And he really and truly loved you. That part was real, baby. That part was always real.”
Bruiser pulls back and sinks into the armchair, pressing his hands over his face.
The silence stretches between us, and I count the seconds without meaning to. I used to count everything because I thought it would give me control over a world that refused to be controlled. I thought if I followed the right rules, I could keep people safe and alive. Keep them from leaving me.
“Do I have to call you Dad now?” Bruiser asks quietly, without looking up.
My chest tightens so sharply that it’s difficult to breathe.
“Only if you want to,” I say. “There’s no pressure.”
“What if I don’t know?”
I slide off the couch and lower myself onto the floor in front of him so that we’re at the same height, close enough that he can see I mean every word I’m saying.
“Then we’ll figure it out together,” I tell him. “I’ve waited nine years to be your father, so I can wait as long as you need. I’m not going anywhere.”
He finally looks at me, really looks at me, searching my face for any sign that I might disappear the way other people in his life have. I let him look, and I don’t hide anything from him.
I let him see my certainty that I’m his and that I’m staying.
“You promise?” he asks. “You’re not leaving?”
“I promise,” I say. “I’m yours, buddy. I have always been yours, even when we didn’t know it.”
Something shifts in his expression. Not acceptance yet, but the beginning of something softer.
He nods slowly and wipes his face with the back of his hand.
Harper watches both of us with her hand pressed to her mouth, and I can see that she’s barely holding herself together.
“Okay,” Bruiser says at last. Then, more quietly, “Okay.”
The rest of the morning unfolds in careful, quiet movements. Harper makes breakfast, pancakes, because they’re Bruiser’s favorite. He picks at them at first, but ends up eating more than he has all week. We don’t push him to talk and we don’t force anything.
We simply sit together in the same space and let the truth settle.
Around noon, Bruiser goes to his room. Harper and I clean the kitchen in silence, passing dishes between us with an ease that comes from knowing each other so well. We have been doing this long enough that we don’t need words for the small things.
“You think he’s okay?” she asks softly.
“I think he will be. Eventually.”
She nods and sets the dish towel aside before leaning into me. I wrap my arms around her and hold her close, breathing her in as I think about how completely she changed my life.
She made me believe that wanting something didn’t have to mean I would lose it.
That afternoon, I’m in the garage working on the Mustang when I hear footsteps behind me. Bruiser stands in the doorway with his hands shoved into his pockets.
“Can I help?” he asks, his voice uncertain.
I look up from under the hood. “Yeah, you can grab that wrench over there.”
He does, and then he comes to stand beside me. We work together in silence for a while as I point out parts and he hands me tools. I think about all the moments we’ve missed and all the ones we still have ahead of us.
“Do I look like you?” he asks suddenly.
The question catches me off guard, and I take a second to really look at him.
“Yeah.” My throat tightens. “That’s how your mom figured it out. She saw a picture of me as a kid, and we might as well be twins when I was your age. I loved Fibonacci numbers when I was a kid, too.”
“That’s weird,” he says, but there is a hint of a smile.
“Yeah,” I say. “It is.”
The silence that follows feels easy instead of heavy.
“Z used to let me help with the car sometimes,” Bruiser says quietly.
“Yeah?”
“He wasn’t very good at it.” He hesitates for a second. “You’re better.”
It’s a small thing, but it feels like everything.
“Thanks, kiddo.”
We keep working, and I show him how to check the oil and how to listen to the engine to tell when something is wrong. He pays attention with an intensity that feels achingly familiar.
My son.