Page 97 of Tight Spot

Hmm. Right.

“I haven’t heard from Crystal since the winter when I told her if she showed up here again, I was having her arrested for trespassing. She seemed to have gotten the message this time.”

I wouldn’t hold my breath, but she was done coming to me for money and attention. I’d made it clear if she ever wanted a relationship with me that was healthy, I’d be here for that. It’d only been five months, so I wasn’t surprised I hadn’t heard from her at all. Six to nine months was the average time she went before upending my life with her drama.

“So, what is then? Because it sounded important.”

“Why’d you bail on us?”

“What? I didn’t—”

“You did.” Enough of this. I was a thirty-year-old man who hadn’t been able to trust women since I was fourteen because as soon as my mom had an affair, I lost my entire family. Maybe that was fucked up to hold on to it for so long, but there we were. Me finally confronting the man I’d idolized, who’d, at minimum, manipulated that but then when I needed him, left. “Soon as you could, you went back to work, just let Mom have us, and she bounced us around house after house for fucking years. The the only time we saw you was on birthdays or graduations and then…nothing. Not since college.”

“I’ve always been there.” He looked shocked. Actually fucking shocked.

“The fuck you were.” My blood was boiling, and I shook out my arms to relieve some of the tension before I punched him in the face.

“I was there, Dawson.” He stepped toward me, and I braced. “I was at every game. Every ceremony. I’ve always been there, even when you didn’t know it.”

He was lying. He had to be lying. “Why? Why would you do that?”

“Shit.” He stopped, swiped a hand over his forehead, and squeezed his eyes closed. “Fucking Cecilia.”

“Mom?”

“When’s the last time you talked to her?”

“Day I was drafted. She called and asked for her cut of my first signing bonus because she said she’d paid for my football all those years.”

“She never fucking paid a dime. I did that.”

“What? With child support or some shit? Or alimony?” My head was spinning. Of all the things he’d said.

“In addition to the sixty grand a year I gave your mom for all of that, yeah. I paid for every goddamn penny of anything you needed.”

“So that excuses you not being there? Blaming me for Mom’s affair in the first place? Taking off?”

“Blaming you—what the hell are you talking about?”

His face paled. Actually paled to the color of his gray shirt. “Dawson…”

“You did,” I seethed. “You fucking did. Day you caught Mom, you said, ‘I thought I always told you to keep our girls out of trouble.’ And then you left.”

His eyes closed, chest heaved. “Dawson. I am so sorry.” He opened them again, and the pain in his eyes was damn deep. I felt it like a punch to the gut. “I don’t remember that, son, but I swear, I didn’t blame you for it. I was pissed, not thinking straight. Your mom’s shit was her own.”

Bullshit. So much fucking bullshit.

“Still doesn’t explain why you stopped calling. Didn’t even fight for custody.”

“I fought. I fought as hard as I fucking could. Your mom hired lawyers, tons of them, paid for by the new guy she was already living with. I fought for custody for three years until you were seventeen, and I was prevented from seeing you every step of the way. And I called. You ever wonder why your mom kept changing the home telephone number? Making it private?”

“I don’t understand.”

And I didn’t. For the first time, I understood absolutely nothing about what was going on, what had happened. But there was no denying how absolutely wrecked my dad looked like, facing me, telling me this shit.

“She painted me as an absentee father, said I’d never been home. Told the judges you kids didn’t want to spend time with me at all, and since you were old enough, you got to say where you lived. She had signed documents with your and Crystal’s signatures, stating the same thing.”

No. No way. “She wouldn’t have done that.”

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