“Now I can only hope to love my own kids like that, or be half the father he is. If he won’t let you do it now, he must have his reasons, and it’s not just to keep you home. And baby you’re forgetting, it doesn’t matter how long I have to wait for you, I’m always going to be here, we can wait. Now let’s go before he comes looking for us.”
LYON
“Kat, why did you tell that kid he can go up to her room?” I’ve asked her that shit twice already and she refused to answer me both times, like she thinks I’m playing around with this shit.
“Colton, I told you it’s fine. I trust my daughter and Todd’s a good kid. Now how about you tell me what happened at the principal’s office.”
I hadn’t even given any thought to that shit since coming home. Not after seeing what the boy did in the schoolyard. Before I asked him I pretty much guessed who the ox was that he’d taken down, he could only be the kid that had messed with my daughter, but how did he know?
That’s all I could think about as I rode home behind them. If Caitlin was telling him shit that she wasn’t sharing with me that shit would’ve pissed me off. But I believe him when he says she wasn’t the one. The boy has never lied to me before and I’ve checked his shit on more than one occasion.
Hearing him say it helped untie the knots in my gut I got when I thought my daughter had ran to him with that shit instead of telling me like I’ve told her to a hundred times before. My other issue is that he’s no longer the little snot nosed kid I first met four years ago. Fucker’s almost as tall as I am and he’s all man. The fuck!
I saw the way my little girl ran and jumped into his arms, the way he helped her into the jeep and even strapped her in the way I do with her mother. I get the feeling the kid’s been taking pointers from me over the years, which if true, means my ass is in trouble.
I decided to can it for now and answer my wife before she nagged my ass to death. “Some kid was messing with Caitlin and they think Mengele did some shit to him. Serves his ass right.”
“Colton, what did she say? What exactly did your daughter do to the people’s child?” She rubbed her temple like her head was hurting. Good for her, now she knows what that shit feels like.
“First of all, he’s no child. Fucker looks like he shoulda been outta school ten years ago. And second, they don’t know that she’s responsible for that shit so it’s dead.”
She looked at me all suspicious and shit like I was the one who put her daughter up to her fuckery. I’ll ask her later what exactly it is that she did but I have to deal with this shit first.
“By the way, how come I didn’t hear anything about Caitiebear going to the prom?”
“She can’t go to the prom if she’s not part of the graduating class. And since you said no, that’s another dream she had to squash.”
I gritted my teeth and held my tongue, which apparently gave her leave to keep running her yap. “I really don’t get it Colton. Those two have been together for the past four years. If they stuck it out this long after all the crap you did to that poor boy I’m pretty sure they’re not gonna break up. Why don’t you give those poor kids a break?”
“We’ve gotten off track, I don’t want that boy in my kid’s room, not alone together like that, in fact, not ever.
“Too bad, and he’s spending the night here so you’d better get use to it.” Something in my brain went on the fritz.
“What the fuck did you just say? Who’s spending the night where?”
‘Todd, I promised his mom that I’d oversee the cleaners at their house before he came home, but he’s at least a week early and nothing’s done. I’m not letting him go there alone like this his first day back when I don’t know how everything is over there. He can stay in one of the guestrooms here for one night.”
“The fuck he is!”
“I don’t see why not, we have guests all the time.” She went back to putting shit in the oven like I wasn’t about to spaz the fuck out on the kitchen floor.
“Kat, I know you have better sense than this…”
Just then Caitiebear and her shadow came waltzing in. I was about to blast the kid and put the fear of hell in his ass but then I got a good look at the necklace around her neck. Fuck me!