I placed my hand on his arm in support. Heat radiated from Knox’s arm to mine, with this sort of static electricity, making me pull back sharply.
“Sorry. I think I shocked you.”
“Yeah,” I replied dumbly, feeling like I was looking at him with a dopey expression I didn’t understand. “I don’t know when your flight is, but we should maybe go…?” I added when neither of us spoke.
“Shit. Yeah, let’s do this. Well, you can wait here, and I’ll get it.”
I nodded. Knox left, and a couple of minutes later he came out with a flat cart holding wood and a few other supplies. Leave it to my mom to build something like this herself rather than buy it. She was pretty badass like that.
“I’ll take it out to your car for you,” Knox said, and we went out. We had to lay the back seat down and put the supplies through the trunk and into the car, so they would fit. When we finished, he closed the trunk, paused. “Thanks again for the pep talk.”
“Looks like I’m gonna be here for a while, so if you ever need another one, you let me know.”
I smiled, put my sunglasses on, and got back in my car. As I started driving, my eyes found their way to the rearview mirror, where I saw Knox with his arms crossed, watching my car pull away.
CHAPTER FOUR
Knox
“It’ll be a big adjustment, being at a new school this late in the year,” I told Logan as we drove from the airport in Richmond back to Havenwood. We’d spent a couple of days at home with Carol and Charlotte. We’d sat down and had a conversation with Logan to make sure this was what he really wanted and trying to figure out what was going on with him, but he didn’t want to talk to us about it. It was strange having my son keep something like that from me. Even with the divorce, I’d always been close with them, and I hated that Logan was going through something he didn’t want to share with me. It made me feel like a failure as a dad. But he does want to live with me. He has to trust me, right? I tried to remind myself of what Callum had said. Why his words were the ones I recalled rather than Carol’s or Law’s, I didn’t know.
“School’s always hard, Dad. This isn’t going to be any different,” Logan finally replied, making a sharp pain stab my chest. The last thing I ever wanted was for my kids to suffer, to hurt in any way.
“Do people pick on you?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I know it doesn’t seem like it, but sharing helps. We can’t help you fix something if we don’t know what’s broken.” The same thing had been said to me more than once.
“Don’t. Please. It’s fine. I just…want a fresh start.”
I reached over and patted his shoulder. “Well, you’ll have that in Havenwood, and I might not like the circumstances that brought you here, but I’m glad to have you with me, Logan. I think it’ll be good for both of us. I miss you, ya know?”
He dropped his head so his chin rested on his chest. “I missed you too.” Logan turned to look at me after that. “I was thinking maybe we can start doing some other kinds of stuff together…like maybe you could teach me how to carve like you do or fix stuff. Or like…work out or something? You have that room with all the exercise stuff in it.”
I frowned. Not that I didn’t want to do those kinds of things with my son, but he’d never shown any interest in it before. In fact, he did everything in his power to keep from woodcarving, working on cars with me, or working out. “Absolutely. I’d love that, but you know you don’t have to do those kinds of things with me if you don’t want to, right? I don’t want you to feel obligated or like those are things you should want to do.”
He looked out the window, giving me the back of his head. “I want to.”
His response wasn’t sitting right in my chest, but if I was wrong, I didn’t want it to look as if I wasn’t interested in doing those activities with him. “Then we’ll do it. And you can teach me to do some of the stuff you like that I don’t know about. I