Page 60 of The Breaking Point

“Not him. The man who raised you.”

“He... uh—” I laugh, but it catches in my throat. “He was my hero. Still should be. The man tried to see me even after he found out I wasn’t his. But my mom blocked him.”

Doc leans forward a little. “So why isn’t he your hero anymore?”

I twist my mouth, eyes on the floor. Damn, the man doesn’t miss a thing. “I invited him,” I say, voice low. “After I heard his side, after all the years of thinking he just bailed... I thought maybe, maybe he was still the man who raised me. So I invited him to my wedding.”

Doc stays quiet, just waiting.

“He didn’t answer,” I continue. “And the closer it got to the wedding, the angrier I got. Like, what the hell was I even trying for? Then the morning of the bachelor party, he finally texted, some bullshit excuse about hisrealkid being sick.”

I rub my jaw, the shame settling like dust on my skin. “So I got drunk. And then...” I shake my head. “I don’t have to say it. You know.”

Doc watches me for a beat, then says, “Can I ask you a question? And I want you to really think before you answer.”

I look at him.

“Who do you blame for your cheating?”

I look at the wall beside his desk. Certificates in clean frames. Photos, smiles, handshakes, some old black-and-white one that looks like family. My throat feels thick.

Finally, I say, “Me. It was my fault.”

Doc doesn’t blink. “I’m asking who you blame.”

I look away, jaw tight. “The situation,” I mutter. “If my friends hadn’t gotten me drunk... if my mom hadn’t lied for years... if my father had just…” I stop, sigh through my teeth. “If he had justtried.”

There’s a pause. The kind that isn’t silent, not really. I can feel him looking at me. Then Doc leans forward slightly, elbows on his knees.

“That’s the problem with blame,” he says quietly. “You can spread it out like peanut butter, thin across everyone who hurt you. And it might even be true. But healing?” He taps his chest once. “That only starts when you stop handing out pieces of responsibility and take the whole damn thing for yourself.”

I blink at him.

He doesn’t soften. “You cheated, Aiden. Not your friends. Not your mom. Not your father. You made a choice when you were hurt. That’s not unfair, it’s justhonest. So the real question isn’t who you blame. It’s who you want to be now.”

I nod slowly. My throat’s tight. The answer should be easy, but it isn’t. Who do I want to be? “I don’t want to be the guy who ruins things,” I say. “I want to be the man she believed I was. I want to be someone who owns his shit.”

Doc watches me for a moment, like he’s measuring whether I mean that or I’m just saying the right thing.

Then he says, “Let’s go back to that night.”

My stomach knots. He sees it, but doesn’t flinch.

“Not the excuses,” he adds quietly. “Not what anyone else did. I want to hear about you. What you felt. What you did. Start from the morning of your bachelor party.”

Flashback ~~ 10 years ago ~~ Day before the wedding

I wake with a skull-splitting headache and the taste of regret thick in my mouth. Last night, me and a bottle of whisky after the rehearsal dinner. That much is clear. The rest? A blur. My college guys got rowdy, Kate got... prissy, and then nothing. Just blackout fog.

Dragging myself downstairs, every step pounds like a drumbeat in my head. Jack and Alex are already at it, shouting, arguing over a cereal box or maybe a toy. Kate’s voice floats above them, calm but useless. They aren’t listening. Neither is she.

"Quiet!" I snap, louder than I mean to.

Silence slams into the room like a wall. The boys freeze mid-swing, eyes wide. Kate, halfway to the sink, stops moving. I’ve never yelled at them before. Not once.

I soften. “We don’t yell, okay?”

Both boys nod quickly. I move past them, past Kate, whose stunned expression says everything and nothing. She won’t call me out. She never does. That’s part of the problem.

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