This Will Hurt I by Cara Dee

Author:Cara Dee [Dee, Cara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-05-08T16:00:00+00:00

Epilogue

I wiped sweat off my forehead and tried to get my heart rate back to normal before I read the text Roe had sent.

Ten fingers, ten toes. Meet Cas. I named him Casper after you. Wish you were here. See you when you get home.

I swallowed hard and looked at the photo of Roe holding his little baby boy, then tossed my phone onto my hoodie on the ground and applied more tape to my knuckles. The punching bag in my parents’ garage had been the best feature of the house when I’d been a teenager too.

That was the case to this day.

Quick jabs, hooks, uppercuts, and crosses.

Two days, we’d been here, and I was already itching to fly home. Haley got it right. She’d stopped pretending. She never flew out to visit anymore. She’d had it with our folks. She’d broken free.

Why hadn’t I? Because I was a sucker.

When I’d left Norfolk, I’d still made excuses for our parents’ behavior. I’d found them to be fairly normal despite it all. The shit Ma spewed at times had been somewhat easy to filter out. I’d looked the other way, confident I’d separated myself from the more extreme views they had. Haley had shaken her head at me and said something like, “All right, if that’s how you feel…”

Being here now, however…fuck, it was glaringly obvious I’d just been blind and ignorant.

I heaved a breath and delivered three rapid jabs, switched hands, two uppercuts, and then I eased back and gave the bag a high kick.

My muscles burned. Sweat poured. Anger fueled me.

“You really ought to at least teach Colin how to say grace, dear.”

No, we weren’t gonna fucking do that. Nikki and I preferred to let our son choose. If he wanted to explore religion one day, he could do that when he was old enough to make the decision himself. There’d be no indoctrination in my son’s life. I didn’t hate religion, and neither did Nikki, but we’d both been hurt by some of its practitioners. That was enough for us. I had my folks, and Nikki had once had a grandfather who’d used religion to control his family.

One could say we were touchy on the subject.

“You know, you and Nikki really do make a lovely couple. Why don’t you give Colin a little brother or sister? Children are a blessing, son.”

I grunted and panted. Jab, jab, cross. Jab, jab, cross.

“We’re not together, Ma. I’ve told you a million times.”

Nikki, though—fuck, I’d never loved her more. She took things in stride, and we’d grown a lot closer these last few weeks. In Mexico, I’d received daily phone calls and texts, her just checking in on me, giving a fuck, being sweet, and I’d made an effort to be more involved in her life too.

She brought some humor to my misery. A bit smug she’d been the first to figure out my attachment to Roe, she teased me sometimes about “forever holding my peace” being a religious rule I could break one day, and “Go on, confess your sins to the shrink.

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