Page 147 of Already At Risk
cameron
“SO, YOUR MOM SAYS there’s a someone.”
I laughed at the way he said it. Everyone in my family was always so very cognizant of not assuming the gender of who I was dating, my eighty-year-old grandfather included. It was a little thing, really, but it went a long way in making me feel accepted by my family as a bisexual man. They’d onlyevermade me feel accepted, ever since I came out during my undergrad years in college, and I knew how lucky I was to know they’d welcome anyone I brought home to meet them. I also knew how much they would love Natalie, and I hoped to hell one day I could bring her here.
“There’s a woman, yes,” I said with a smile.
I didn’t know how not to smile when I talked about Natalie, especially when I thought about our conversation at the office on Friday and how I got to see her tomorrow.
It wasn’t entirely clear if it would be for a date or just dinner. Natalie was spending the weekend thinking about how she wanted to proceed with the trial, but I had a feeling in my bones that I wasn’t going to be her lawyer by the time I saw her tomorrow night. Which shouldn’t make me as happy as it did.
“Well…” Pops waved his hand, like he wanted me to get on with it. “Come on, then. Tell me about her.”
I laughed again, crossing one leg over the other. We sat on the porch of my mom’s house, which was a lot less rickety after I spent the morning fixing some of the floorboards. It overlooked her blooming flower gardens, and my eyes kept drifting to the sunflowers, rising higher than the rest of the plants. I’d already asked her for tips on growing them, thinking of the seeds Chloe and I had planted.
“She’s a mom,” I said because I knew it was one of Natalie’s favorite roles, closely followed by, “And a trauma surgeon.”
“Oh, ho,” Pops chuckled. “A woman as smart as that, and she still agreed to go out withyou?” He slapped his leg, like no one had ever made a funnier joke. The wrinkles around the corner of his eyes deepened as he looked at me, grinning.
“Look, it’s still new,” I acknowledged, putting my hands up in defense. “She might still come to her senses.”
“No, no.” He batted that idea away and then looked out at the quiet street, lined with older, maintained homes. My family lived in upstate New York, on the outskirts of the city. They’d found a little slice of peace here, and I always forgot justhowpeaceful it was until I came home and sank into it. “I was just joking, kid. She picked youbecauseshe’s so smart. That’s the real truth, eh?”
“She is very smart,” I agreed with a grin. “And she’s a great mom. I took her and her nine-year-old daughter, Chloe, to the game.”
Pops gave me a side-eye. Because despite his age and his bruised hip, absolutely nothing got past this man. “I thought Tony said you were gonna take a client.”
I side-eyed him back.
He cracked a smile, shaking his head.
“You never did let anything get in your way, did you?” A laugh wheezed out of him, and he tipped back in his cushioned rocker. “That was always something I admired about you. Something you and your dad had in common.”
“Well,” I sighed. “It does get a little tricky when the two things you want more than anything get in each other’s way, but…” I shrugged. “I’m hoping by tomorrow, she’ll be someone else’s client. And I don’t regret picking her.”
“And you shouldn’t!” Pops exclaimed, more explosive than I would have expected. He jabbed a finger at me. “Jobs come and go. But the people you love? Nothing replaces them. Nothing, Cam. So if that’s how you feel…”
His brown gaze misted over as he looked at me, and tears prickled the back of my own eyes.
Yeah, that was really how I felt—like nothing could replace Natalie or Chloe in my life. And it was the truth, what I’d said. I hadn’t regretted making the decision to prioritize themonce, but hearing my grandfather reinforce what I’d felt so prominently in my gut? And seeing the fierceness in his gaze as he did? Fuck, I’d needed that.
I’d looked up to him my entire life. All I ever wanted to do was make this man proud, and there’d still been a small part of me that worried I might be letting him down with the way I’d handled everything. But here he was, telling me that wasn’t true at all.
“What?” he prompted, when I cleared my throat but still hadn’t said anything.
I shook my head. “It just seems foolish now.”
He frowned. “What’s foolish?”
“That I really thought you’d want me to prioritize making partner so I could follow in Dad’s footsteps.”
“Oh, kid.” He pursed his lips, like he couldn’t believe he had to say this aloud. Disappointed in a different way than I’d expected. “Your dad, my son, he was more than a good lawyer.”
“I know that.”
I knew that all too well, but being a lawyer was the one thing I’d always felt like I could maybe do as well as him.Maybe.
“And so are you,” Pops added. “But you’re also more than justhis son. You shouldn’t stick to a path just because someone else left it unfinished. No one expects you to do that.”
