Chapter 34
Chapter Thirty-Four
YOU MADE ME LOVE YOU BACK
LOUISIANA
Dallas kicks off his muddy sneakers by the back door, same as always—one shoe landing sideways on the mat, the other skidding halfway across the floor.
He’s got grass stuck to his socks and dirt on his shirt.
A little scrape on his elbow, but he’s smiling.
Not wide, not showy, just that small, hard-earned smile he only gives when the world feels safe—for a moment.
“Hey Louis! Did you pick up fishing bait? I bet Bash five bucks I’d out fish Henry today.” His voice is bright, cocky, playful in that way only a kid finally learning how to be a kid can sound.
Then he sees us.
Sees the way Henry’s jaw is clenched too tight. The way I can’t quite meet his eyes. The air shifts—thickens.
His smile slips, slow and uncertain. “What’s wrong?”
I try to answer, but my throat tightens. Words ball up behind my teeth like broken glass.
Henry stands, and his voice is gentle, but that gentleness feels like a warning. “C’mere, D.”
Dallas doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink. His arms fall to his sides, fists already curling in.
“Did I do something wrong?” His voice pitches, fragile and tight.
“No, Dally, no,” I choke out, taking a step toward him, but he flinches—not from me, from the unknown behind whatever we’re about to say.
Henry kneels, eyes level with him now. “We need to talk to you about something important.”
Dallas doesn’t sit. Doesn’t budge. Just stares straight through us.
I glance at Henry, and he gives me a nod. A tired, gut-wrenched nod. “A man came forward,” I start, and the second I say it, Dallas takes a step back.
“No.”
“Dallas—”
“No!” he shouts, louder this time. “Don’t! Don’t you dare say it.”
He knows.
His chest starts to heave, and he shakes his head so hard his blonde hair whips across his face. “He’s not real. You said they couldn’t find him.”
“I know,” I say, stepping forward again, hands raised like I’m trying not to spook a wild animal. “Baby, I know. We didn’t think they ever would.”
He backs up until his shoulder hits the wall and then slides down it, knees pulled up to his chest, hands clawed into his scalp.
“No. No, no, no,” he whispers, rocking. “He’s not real. He’s not real.”
He screams—a raw, wounded sound that cracks something inside me wide open.
“He didn’t want me! Nobody did. He left me with her—he left me with her!” His voice cracks, not just from anger, but panic. Pure terror.
“No, no, no. He doesn’t get to come back now. He doesn’t get to pretend I’m his! He didn’t come when I was hungry! Or when she locked me in the closet! Or when—” His breath gives out with a sob. “Or when my brother died.”
Right then, it feels like the whole house caves in.
He curls in tighter, sobs tearing through him like they’ve been waiting years for permission.
“I didn’t ask you to love me,” Dallas suddenly spits, voice jagged and sharp, “but you did, and you made me love you back! Now you’re just going to let him take me?”
Henry moves toward him, slow. Careful. “Dallas—look at me.”
Dallas barely lifts his eyes.
“Look at me, D.” Henry’s voice is low, steady, like a lifeline.
Dallas’s gaze flickers reluctantly.
Henry kneels, closer now, reaching out but not forcing.
“We love you, you’re ours, okay?” Henry whispers. “You’re my boy. You hear me? That’s not changing. Not ever.”
Dallas’s lip trembles, and his whole body shakes like a storm breaking loose. Tears pour down his face, hot and unrelenting.
The words hit me like a punch to the gut. I reach out, trembling, but he shrinks away. I drop beside him and pull him into my arms, even as he thrashes, even as he screams into my chest.
“I’ve got you,” I whisper again and again, the same way Henry once did. “I’ve got you.”
“I don’t want to go,” he sobs, fists knotted in my shirt. “Please don’t make me go.”
Henry sinks down next to us, his face wrecked, eyes bloodshot, hands shaking. “You’re not going anywhere,” he says, voice hoarse. “You hear me? Not anywhere.”
Dallas curls tighter between us, wedged in that small space where we all feel powerless—but still together. Still holding on, and for now, that’s all we can do.
Just hold on.
Dallas hasn’t spoken a full sentence in three days.
Not since that day.
Not since his whole world shattered again beneath his feet.
He moves through the house like a ghost—silent, careful, as if any noise might break something fragile. The only sounds are the soft scrape of his socks on the hardwood and the faint click of doors closing just a little too gently.
Sometimes I catch him frozen in the hallway, eyes empty, shoulders drawn tight like he’s bracing for a blow that never comes.
He barely eats. Picks at his food, pokes at it as if trying to figure out what it even is. Last night, Maggie dropped off his favorite—chicken and dumplings. He just stared until the dumplings turned cold, then pushed the plate away without a word.
He won’t sleep in his room anymore.
The first night, I found him curled on the laundry room floor, wedged between the dryer and the wall, clutching that damned hoodie like a shield. His eyes were open, but he wasn’t there.
Henry didn’t say a word. Just sat down beside him and stayed.
Since then, he hides in a new place every night—under the kitchen table, behind the recliner, once even in the tub, his pillow soaked with silent tears. Every night, one of us finds him, and we sit. No questions. No rushing to fix it. Just being there.
What breaks me the most is the way he looks at us now. Like he’s memorizing us, as if unsure we’ll still be here tomorrow.
He flinches at the sound of his name.
Today, when I brushed his hair back, he recoiled like I’d hit him.
I locked myself in the bathroom afterward, burying my face in a towel to keep the sobs quiet.
Henry’s quiet too. I see it in the way he clutches his coffee mug like it’s the only steady thing left, in the stubble shadowing his jaw, in the hushed tone he uses whenever Dallas is near—like he’s scared to scare him away for good.
We’re both walking on shattered glass, trying not to break.
This afternoon, I found Dallas on his bed. Not hiding this time, just sitting there with a notebook on his lap. The pen rested between his fingers, but he wasn’t writing. The pages were already filled—tiny, cramped letters repeating over and over:
Don’t take me. Don’t take me. Don’t take me.
I sat down beside him, reached out. This time, he didn’t pull away.
That small mercy cracked me open.
“I don’t want to go,” he whispered, voice raw and small.
“You’re not,” I promised, though the words felt like ash on my tongue. Because I didn’t know, and that terrified me.
He looked up, really looked, and in his eyes was a raw emptiness—like a part of him had already given up.
“But I always do.”
I didn’t have anything to say to that.
It’s late.
The kind of late where even the shadows seem softer, where the world has gone quiet and the house feels like it’s holding its breath with me.
I’m curled on the couch, knees to my chest, a book open in my hand I haven’t turned a single page of. The only sounds are the gentle hum of the fan and the soft clink of ice melting in Henry’s glass across the room.
Down the hall, Dallas’s door is cracked—just like it has been every night since. He won’t close it. Doesn’t say why. Just won’t.
I don’t hear footsteps.
Just the faint creak of floorboards shifting…and then the smallest sound.
A sniffle. Fragile. Barely there.
But enough to hollow my chest.
Henry hears it too. He’s already setting his glass down when Dallas steps into view.
He’s a mess of mismatched socks and that worn-out hoodie he refuses to let me wash, the sleeves stretched from anxious hands twisting the fabric into knots.
His eyes are glassy, rimmed red, dark crescents blooming beneath them from too many sleepless nights.
He looks small—like someone scraped him raw and left him trying to hold himself together with just breath and will.
Henry stands slow, deliberate, like he’s trying not to spook a scared animal. He doesn’t say a word. Just waits.
Dallas hesitates, jaw trembling, breath hitching—then moves.
No warning. No words.
Just hurls himself across the room and into Henry’s chest like he’s falling and Henry is the only thing that could ever catch him.
And Henry does.
He catches him like it’s instinct—like it’s the easiest thing he’s ever done. One hand cradles the back of Dallas’s head, the other presses firm against his shaking back, like he could hold every shattered piece in place by sheer will.
Then the dam breaks.
Dallas starts to cry. Really cry.
Not soft, not pretty. No polite tears here.
These are the deep, gut-wrenching sobs of a kid who’s carried too much for too long. Who’s finally too tired to pretend he’s okay. Who's terrified, heartbroken, and nine years old with nowhere else to put all that pain.
Henry drops to his knees right there on the living room floor, pulling him into his lap as if he were rocking a much smaller version of Dallas—one when monsters lived under beds instead of in courtrooms and bloodlines.
He rocks him gently, whispering into his hair like a prayer. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you, buddy. I’ve got you.”
I cover my mouth, try to keep my own sobs in, but they still come—quiet and aching.
Because this is it.
This is fatherhood. Not DNA. Not paperwork. Not shared last names.
This.
This man—on his knees, with his arms around a broken boy he chose to love—is the only father that matters.
Not the one who disappeared.
Not the one who came back too late with claims and custody papers.
This one. The one who stayed. The one who never stopped showing up.
Dallas’s sobs eventually soften into hiccups, his small fists still clinging to the front of Henry’s shirt like letting go might break him again. His voice comes small, cracked and barely audible against Henry’s chest.
“You’re not going to let him take me…are you?”
Henry’s breath shudders. His voice is gravel and steel when he answers. “Not a God damn chance.”
Dallas nods slowly, tucks himself closer. Like that promise might be enough to keep the cracks from widening.
And tonight…maybe it is.