32. CODY

CODY

“ C ome in,” Dad called from his desk, his scruff-covered face dropping into annoyance as I wandered through from the front office. “I don’t have time for this today, Cael. King is a grown man, and I didn’t make the decision for him. If you wanna fight someone, fight him.”

The dirty black cap he always wore was flipped backward, and he was tucked down into a navy Hornet’s hoodie that looked like it had never been washed.

“Over it,” I sighed under my breath. I wasn’t really, but there wasn’t much else I could do about it. I wandered through the office and picked up one of the frames on the shelf, running my fingers over the old photo of him and Mama.

She looked so young, her long dark hair curled around her skinny little face. Big blue eyes so clear they might as well have been the sky.

“Sometimes I forget how pretty her smile was,” I said, setting the frame down.

“Don’t know how…” Dad grunted and flipped a paper over without looking up at me. “You carry it around with you.”

I looked over at him, hoping maybe he had taken his attention off his work, but his pen scribbled across the paper mindlessly. I licked my bottom lip, frustrated and feeling forgotten moments after he’d reminded me that I had Mama’s smile.

”Why do you do that?” I asked him, slumping down on the couch.

“What?”

“Pretend like you have any interest in me when in reality you can’t even look at me for more than two minutes.” I rolled my eyes and laid my head back against the couch. It smelled like two years of him sleeping on it, and it annoyed me .

“Cael,” he said, low and warning, as if I was the problem. “What do you want? If you came to talk me into letting you play…”

“Not everything is about baseball, Dad,” I hummed, trying to keep my cool as the sounds of his scratching pen echoed through his silence. I dug my fingers into the arm of the couch, trying to control the anxious frustrations that rolled through me like a tidal wave. Irritation grew tenfold every time the clock ticked forward a second.

“This was a mistake.” I pushed off the couch.

“If it's not Arlo, and it's not baseball…” he started, and I laughed so loudly that it drowned out his huff as I cut him off.

“It’s about Clem,” I said finally, her name bubbling from my throat like a rock that had been lodged there.

Dad finally looked up from his work.

“What did you do?” He set the pen down as his green eyes traced over my body, looking for signs of drug use or anything that might suggest I was acting erratically.

“I didn’t do anything.” I rolled my eyes. “I just need some advice about something I might do.”

“And what kind of advice do you think I can offer you?” Dad rubbed his hand over his face, never taking his eyes off me.

“I don’t know… You know her better than anyone, and you and Mama—”

I watched him flinch at the mention of her.

“—You guys were in love for so long,” I said.

I didn’t remember a time when they weren’t in love. They knew each other better than I’ve ever seen two people know. Sure, they fought, but they were never real fights. They were over which flowers to plant, or what movie to watch. I swear they fought for fun. Even when Dad was being an ass, Mama always had a way of making him smile.

“Whatever you think you have with Clementine,” he said, “it’s nothing close to that. When did you revert back to being that stupid kid chasing tail?”

“Chasing tail?” I huffed. “It’s Clem…”

“Exactly. You’ve got yourself in knots over the same girl that ignored you just like she did all those years ago. Doing everything you can to get her attention when she just doesn’t care, Son. You will always be her past and letting her define your future based on foolish childhood memories is going to leave you right back where you started.” Dad spoke slowly, with no malice in his voice, but it stung all the same.

He looked away for a moment, pressing his hands flat to his desk, before meeting my eyes again. “You have a career to think about, Cael.”

“You’re more worried about my career than I am.” I shook my head.

“I noticed.” His voice was tight when he spoke and, for a second, I thought he might be willing to help me figure this all out. “If not your career, focus on your recovery. What happens when she leaves and it…”

He was worried that I would sink back into that version of myself. Understandably so; that little monster inside me tore apart the Hornets from the inside out, and the lid on Pandora's box was taped closed at best, ready to explode at any second.

“All that work.” He shook his head at me, and his brows came together. “When she leaves…”

“Stop saying when.” I cut him off. “ If she leaves.”

“What’s stopping her?” Dad snapped finally, his big, scary, father voice coming out.

“ Love , I don’t know—me?” I shrugged.

“Love isn’t a superpower, Cael. It can’t solve problems, it doesn’t prevent bad things from happening.” Or people getting sick , his green eyes blazed with unsaid words. “And you’re just an out-of-control kid without any clue of what you want to do with your life. Get your head out of your ass.” He rose from his seat in a display of dominance.

I stared at him, trying to figure out his motives, but coming up with nothing as he rounded the desk into my space. Stepping back and swallowing tightly, I tried to hold on to my feelings, tried to rein them in so as not to give him what he wanted.

A Cael Cody blow-up.

It would only prove his point, no matter how badly I wanted to right now.

“For a man that only ever knew the brightest love, you sure are a skeptical fucking asshole.” I laughed, but it was hollow and angry. “I’m stronger than you want to give me credit for. I’m healing, I’m recovering. No thanks to you!”

“All it takes is one slip.” Dad raised his finger in the air. “One wrong path, one bad decision, and you’re right back where you started.”

“Right back where you left me.”

He closed his eyes and, for a moment, I was grateful to have a second without his dark green stare boring down on me. I could feel how angry he was, it radiated off him in waves, but I meant it, and there was no taking it back.

“You said once that you wished it was me. ” I watched as he looked up at me, readying himself for the blow. “I’ve tried to give you that more than once, maybe in a sick attempt just to get your attention, but it never worked. It only ever hurts the people that actually give a shit about me. I wish I believed that you cared about my recovery, but you only love me when I’m measuring up to your standards.”

“I’m not a bad dad, Cael.” He cut me off.

“No, you never hit me or ran me into the ground with abuse, but you were never a good dad. You gave all your love to Mama, and she did her best to pass it on to me, but she died, and she took every little piece you had left with her. And that’s fine. I understand your grief, Dad, but don’t act like I’m the only problem between us. What I did, who I was, and who I am now is because I feel everything. Who you are is because you just don’t give a shit anymore.”

“Cael…” He sighed.

“And maybe feeling too much all the time is a curse, but at least it’s better than building up my own personal purgatory and rotting away inside of it.” I opened my arms wide and pointed around at the chaotic office, piled boxes, old blankets, and duffle bags stuffed with clothes. “You may have shut it off, Dad, but it doesn’t mean I have. I’m sorry you don’t understand why I love Clementine. I’ll take solace in the idea that there was a time, a version of you, that would have. That version who sat in our living room on the weekends teaching Clementine every facet of baseball because I couldn’t stand being the reason you didn’t play anymore. That’s why she’s here. It’s not just for me. I wasn’t the only one who broke her heart that day. Even if it wasn’t my fault, you dragged us here to chase your dream. The guise was never there for me. I knew you didn’t love me, not like you loved baseball, but Clem, she believed you loved us, she believed you had the dream. Me, Mama, baseball on Sundays with her. You are just as much to blame.”

“I warned you I wasn’t going to fight you today,” he huffed, but I could see the crack there underneath the surface. It ran deep. Maybe something I said had finally gotten through to him.

God, Mama, if there was ever a time to visit him in his sleep…

“I meant it.” He nodded to the door, tempering his expression.

“That’s it?” I laughed and nodded, just fighting to keep the tears at bay. “I thought maybe now that I wasn’t an embarrassment to you, maybe you’d start treating me like a son again, but I was wrong. You never cared.”

“Get out, Cael,” Dad barked. “And I swear if you screw up this piece on the team…”

“You’ll what?” I looked back at him from the doorframe, “Make me run laps? Bench me for the season? Disown me? You made it clear a long time ago we weren’t family anymore. You’ll have to come up with a better punishment.”

I left the office, not bothering with the door, but heard it slam from the hallway as I sunk against the bricks and tried to compose myself. Everything he said made sense and pissed me off all the same. I shoved off the wall and stripped from my shirt before slamming into the empty workout room.

“Where are they…” I dug around in Silas’s spare desk. “Got you….” I tugged out a pair of headphones that had been there for years and shoved them into my ears, playing my music as loud as it would go. I needed to silence the world. Too many voices were screaming at me, and I couldn’t figure out exactly what I needed to do.

Maybe it was me that needed a visit from Mama.