Page 55 of Should Have Been Me

“I’ll be taking my father to his appointment,” I gritted out, refusing to allow her to finish that sentence. “I don’t know if you planned on staying in town for a while or not, but there’s a spare room down the hall and to the left. You’re welcome to stay, but only if you find a way to seriously shift your attitude in the next few hours. If you don’t feel you can do that, there’s nothing to stop you from leaving. But I made a commitment, and I’m sticking to it.”

With that, I spun on my heel and marched out of the kitchen, my mind reeling after only one interaction.

“Vaughn. Vaughn, son. You okay?” My father’s voice broke through the clouds inside my head, pulling me back into the present. I’d been so lost in thought, staring out the window of his little cubical area, I hadn’t noticed anything happening around me.

I blinked back into reality, turning around to notice he’d already been hooked up to his IV, a blanket covering his legs to keep him from getting too cold, and the remote to the small television on the arm of his chair at the ready.

“I’m sorry.” I did my best to shake myself out of the funk that seemed to be following me around since my mother showed up on my doorstep two hours earlier. “Were you saying something?”

Hershel shook his head, his brow furrowed with concern. “Nothing important.” He cocked his head to the side, studying me closely. “You okay, son?”

I massaged at the ache that had started behind my eyeballs and spread through the rest of my skull. “Yeah. Yes. I’m okay. I’m good.”

“You know, I might have believed that if you hadn’t insisted so many damn times.”

I let out a sigh, moving over and sitting in the hard plastic chair provided for the family or friends who came to keep their sick loved ones company so they didn’t have to go through these treatments alone. Leaning forward, I braced my elbows on my knees and rubbed at my temples, letting out a sigh that carried the weight of the world.

“Is it your girl?” he asked. “Is there anything I can do to help with that?” He sounded almost eager at the aspect of helping me with my girl problems, and I actually liked the idea of that.

“No, it’s not Jolie. She’s... good. Great actually.”

“Then what’s got you stuck in here?” He tapped the side of his head, and I had to jerk back in surprise at how well he read me. I was trapped inside my own head like I had been a million times in the past. I was heading down an all-too-familiar road. One I’d been on a million times. My thoughts were spiraling out of control.

“Estelle showed up on my doorstep this morning.”

His eyes flared. “Oh. Wow.”

I heaved out a breath, sitting back against the chair. “Yeah, that’s about the same reaction I had.”

He cleared his throat, lifting the cup of water to his mouth and sipping through the straw. “I’m surprised she set foot in this town again after all her talk of how much she hated this place.” I hummed knowingly. “What brought her to Pembrooke this time?”

“Same thing that did when I was thirteen years old. She doesn’t think I’m living my life the way she approves and wanted to make her displeasure known in person.” I shook my head in disgust. “It’s like she has a sixth sense whenever I’m happy and has to pop in to ruin it.”

“Your mother . . .” Hershel paused, pulling in a pensive breath. “She’s . . . complicated.”

I let out a scoff. “That’s putting it mildly.”

“She’s always been a certain way, and she can’t understand how anyone might think or feel differently. But, son, you have to live your life for yourself. You can’t waste your time worrying about what other people expect of you. That’ll only lead to misery.”

I scrubbed at my face, my chest feeling heavy. “I don’t know. Maybe that’s what I deserve. I mean. Maybe I don’t deserve to be happy?”

My father jerked back in his seat, flabbergasted. “Why on God’s green earth would you think that? Of course you deserve happiness. Hell, it could be argued you deserve it more than most.”

I shook my head. “How can you say that? I was the world’s worst son. I cut you off?—”

“Vaughn, no. Son.” Sadness washed over his expression as he hung his head, like the pain washing through him was way too heavy to hold. “You’ve been carrying that on your shoulders all these years, and I blame myself for that. That’s my fault.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It wasn’t on you to keep the relationship between us strong, Vaughn. That was on me.” I opened my mouth to disagree, but he held up a hand to silence me. “You were a kid. I was the adult. I was the parent. I shouldn’t have let you go in the first goddamn place, then I turned around and made everything worse by not trying harder to stay in your life.”

“I understood why you had to let me go with her,” I assured him, wanting to take that burden off his shoulders. “She would have fought you, and she fights dirty. I knew that even back then. I never blamed you for letting me go.”

He cleared the emotion from his throat, his words coming out raspier than before when he said, “You might not have, but I blamed myself. Millie and I wanted you to stay with us so badly, and you’re right, I didn’t have the means to fight for custody back then. But I let my sadness over losing you eat away at me. I was in a really dark place for months after you left. By the time I finally pulled myself out, I’d convinced myself too much time had passed, that you wouldn’t want to talk to me. I tried telling myself you were better off with your mother, that she could provide you with the kind of life I couldn’t. I had no idea I was so wrong, and I’ll have to live with that regret for the rest of my life. Truth was, I was only trying to make myself feel better for being a shitty dad.”

My throat felt tight, my lungs and eyes burned. “I never thought you were a shitty dad.”

His smile wobbled, but he managed to keep it together. “Then you’re a better son than I deserve. I know I’m not a perfect father. I let you down; I tried to do better with Leighton and went too far in the opposite direction. I overcompensated for my failures with you, and look how that turned out.”

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