missed some of the lower tones, he heard the tremble in his dad’s voice. “I did this. By staying with her for so damn long…” His voice rose at the end, and Julian reached over, gripping his arm.
“This is not your fault.”
“How is that?” Fredric turned to face Julian and dislodged his hand when he reached for his son’s shoulder. “It was my job to set an example, and I knew how badly I’d fucked up when you married Bryce. He was your mother, and it killed me to watch you go through it.”
Julian swallowed against a tight throat. “It wasn’t the same.”
At that, Fredric grinned and squeezed his son’s shoulder a bit tighter. “No, it wasn’t the same. You were stronger than me—braver.”
Julian let out a bitter laugh. “He left me. He cheated on me, and then he left me.”
Fredric took a breath, turning his face up toward the roof of the car. “I know. But you let him go, and I couldn’t…”
“Did Mom,” he started, but Fredric lifted up his hand.
“It was a long time ago, and I was terrified to be on my own. She knew it. She knew I wasn’t ready to face the world like this without her, so I let her do what she wanted.”
Julian had never really liked his mother, but it wasn’t until this moment he truly felt something like hatred. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?” he asked in a soft whisper.
“Because I was embarrassed.” Fredric rubbed at his eyes, then laid his head back on the seat rest and closed them. “It was humiliating to know that I had to stay with her—endure her distaste for what I had become in her eyes—because she would have taken you and your sister from me and you two were the only things in my life then that kept me going. And it was too much pressure to put on a child, Julian. I couldn’t do that to you.”
“So, you suffered,” Julian asked, his voice high and tight. “You let her…all these years, you let her…why didn’t you leave her after? You got your job back, and I would have come with you. There wasn’t even a question!”
Fredric licked his lips, then sat up and reached for the door. “Will you help me pick out a decent pair of shoes to match a navy suit?”
Julian stuttered through a few syllables as his father climbed out of the car, and he went after him, catching him by the elbow before he could walk away. “Why are you doing this?”
“Because I don’t have the answers you want,” Fredric admitted. “I want to talk about this, but not here. I’m not comfortable here.”
Julian knew he wasn’t talking about the parking lot, or the car, or the damn shopping center. It was one of his mother’s more subtle manipulations—to put her husband in situations he needed someone else, to take away his small comforts. The rage simmered around his heart, sending it crashing against the inside of his ribs.
He only calmed when Fredric looped the dog’s leash around his wrist, let the harness go, and took his hand. “I just want you to promise me that if you have a chance to be happy—not just content, not just a compromise, but actually happy—you won’t let it go. I hope it’s with Will because he’s a good man and I can hear it in his voice, son, and I know he must look at you like you hung the moon.”
Julian closed his eyes. “We’re not…”
“Not yet,” Fredric said. “But give it time.”
Julian would have given a limb to make it real—not just for his father, but because his father was speaking of the one thing Julian had desperately wanted, but had never let himself reach for, because he still didn’t believe it existed. His father was a good man, and he was beaten down by a wife who had never really loved him. His best friend was damn near saintly, but he could never keep a relationship longer than a few weeks. And maybe Will had a partner who was okay with his job, but he didn’t think so. He was fairly sure Will was as lonely and tired as he was—and so much younger, already so defeated. And he was also a good man.
So why believe it, when the only evidence that existed was to prove that theory wrong?
Love was a joke, and everything would turn to ash eventually.