“Yeah.” Otter frowned. “Probably. But we told him we’d follow him whatever his choice was, and he chose to come here. Maybe it had to do with Dom and Stacey, and maybe it didn’t. But he was hurt either way, and we did the best we could. He made his choice, and we went with it.”
“Doesn’t mean it’s not going to blow up in our faces,” I muttered against his chest.
“We’ll deal with it when the time is right.”
“We can’t leave it for the last possible second. I don’t want us going back to Seafare without him knowing. That would probably just make things worse.” The thought of him finding out by seeing Ben for the first time scared the hell out of me.
“Okay,” he said easily. “We’ll figure it out. Promise.”
His hand was in my hair, and I knew he had let it go, but for some reason, I couldn’t. “The binder.”
He tensed. Just a little. “Yeah?”
“Can you… hold on to it? For now. Don’t—don’t get rid of it. But, maybe just set it aside? Just for a little while.”
“I can do that,” he said, like it was nothing. “I can definitely do that.”
“It’s not like I don’t—”
“Bear, it’s okay. I promise. It’ll hold.”
Sometimes I thought Otter was our reward for all the crap that had been slung on me and the Kid in our short, complicated lives. And if he was, he was the best thing I could have ever asked for. It sucked that he got the shit end of that deal. “Sorry about dinner.”
He kissed my forehead. “It happens. We have all the time in the world.”
2. Where Bear Finds Out
I SHOULD have seen it for what it was.
And maybe I did. Maybe I saw all the signs but chose not to believe them. Maybe I subconsciously ignored them, because I knew the Kid couldn’t be that stupid. He couldn’t be. He was the Kid. He was the smartest, bravest, fiercest person I’d ever known. His convictions were ironclad, his heart strong, his head in the right place. I knew that. I knew all of that.
“How’s school going?” I would ask him.
“Fine,” he would always say. “Good. Real good.”
Later: “Figure out a major yet? What you want to do with your life?”
“Not yet. I’ll get there. It’s early yet.”
And later still: “Not on the Dean’s List?”
“You know how it is, Papa Bear. Competition is hard-core. I can’t do it every time.”
“No, it’s okay. I know. Just… you know you can talk to me, right? If you need to? I’m here.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I know.”
Dom’s name was never mentioned, at least not by or to the Kid. And aside from the time Dom had shown up on our doorstep demanding to see Tyson, I hadn’t really talked to him. Sure, there were texts every now and then, congratulations on the baby and the wedding. There was the how is everything going? and no, doesn’t look like we’ll be coming home this summer, sorry, but Otter was the one that kept in contact with him. I didn’t blame Dom for what had happened or the choices he’d made, because I couldn’t. I’d been the one to introduce him and Stacey. I’d been the one to start all of this, and maybe the
reason we never talked about Dom was because I was too worried the Kid blamed me for everything.
And later, after the truth had been told, I’d think how if Dom had been there, if he’d still been a part of the Kid’s life, that he’d have seen it. He’d have known. If it’d happened at all.
And that… well.
That hurt too.
THE DOORBELL rang one summer afternoon. I was home sick, curled up on the couch with a blanket, surrounded by discarded tissues, tea cooling on the coffee table in front of me. I was zoned out in front of horrible daytime TV, unsure why the panel of women were shrieking at each other when just a moment before they’d seemed like they were the best of friends.