His father’s jaw tensed. “You don’t need permission to see your parents.”
Maybe not Mom, but…
A realization hit Grant like a slap in the face. Even though his father had always made an effort to be there for him and his siblings, so much had changed when his father had moved out of their family home, he’d never realized that the open-door bond kids and parents usually shared had been severed. The fact that he’d always felt the need to knock on his father’s front door probably should have tipped him off years ago.
“Take off your jacket. Are you hungry? I can make you breakfast,” his mother offered.
“No, thanks, Mom. I ate already.” Grant shrugged off his jacket and held on to it because he needed something to keep his hands busy.
She took his arm, leading him toward the living room. “Why don’t we sit down. I understand you and Jules have become an item.”
“Yeah,” he said curtly, gritting his teeth with the urge to protect Jules from the ugliness that was sure to come.
“She’s a firecracker. A very bright businesswoman, too, from what I understand,” his father said.
“And cute as a button,” his mother added as they walked into the large, elegant living room filled with Victorian furniture, expensive area rugs over marble floors, and gorgeous paintings that Grant had always admired.
“She is,” Grant said. His father sat in the armchair, his mother, on the couch, but Grant was too anxious to sit still, and remained standing. “But I didn’t come here to talk about Jules. I came to apologize for how I acted and for what I said at Dad’s birthday lunch. I’m sorry for ruining that day and for taking so long to pull my shit—my head; sorry, Mom—together enough to come talk to you.”
His mother’s warm expression didn’t change, but his father’s turned from uncertain to a little more rigid as he said, “I think we were all at fault that afternoon.”
Grant debated letting it go at that, but that pixie on his shoulder whispered, Bad stuff never drowns. It just floats along right beneath the surface, dragging everyone through its muck.
He was living proof that she was right. He felt like he was suffocating despite the cool air coming in through the open window above the smaller of the two couches. But if he didn’t get this shit out now, he’d be trying to fake his way through the rest of his life every time he was near his father. What kind of life would that be for him and his family? For Jules? Even after such a short time, he knew he wanted a future with her, and he could only imagine the lengths she’d go to in an effort to try to fix this clusterfuck of a relationship.
He wasn’t about to let this mess affect her, or anyone else for that matter. Not when he’d finally broken out of the self-imposed hell in which he’d been living.
He held his father’s steady gaze, trying to ignore the pressure building in his chest, and said, “We’ve been at fault for years, Dad. I love you, but we can’t even be in the same room without being strangled by tension.”
“You’re right, and I’m sorry for my part in that,” his father said.
“Which part is that? The part where you make command decisions and expect everyone else to fall in line without a care about how it affects us? Or the part where you walked out on us, then forced us to act like a happy family when we were anything but, just to uphold the Silver name?”
His father pushed to his feet, serious eyes trained on Grant, one hand sliding far too casually into his slacks pocket. “That was a long time ago, son.”
“So, it doesn’t matter? We should bury it?” He fought the urge to raise his voice. “Well, guess what, Dad? That shit won’t sink. I’m in my thirties, and you’re still trying to tell me what to do.”
“What are you talking about?” His father glowered at him. “You’ve been gone since you were eighteen. How the hell could I tell you what to do?”
“You couldn’t. But that hasn’t stopped you from trying. You tried to forbid me from joining the military and from even wanting to go back to Darkbird. Do you even know why I left the island in the first place?” Grant seethed, unable to keep his anger from coming out. “Because being a Silver doesn’t mean to me what it means to you. I wanted to do something that I felt was meaningful, and I couldn’t do that here. I needed to get out from under your thumb in order to have control of my own life.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” his father said.
“Of course you don’t see it.”
“I can’t change the past,” his father insisted.
“No, you can’t. But I’m not a spoiled kid whining because I want Mommy and Daddy to fix my childhood. The past is the past. But you taught me to take responsibility for my actions, and I am taking full responsibility for being an angry prick in the hospital and for being closed off and frustrated since I’ve come home.” He paced, the words falling fast and furious. “I don’t want to be angry or resentful anymore, but I can’t move forward until this tension between us is fixed, and we can’t fix it until we deal with the past. Only then can we try to get our arms around the present. I need to understand why my father—no, why both of you—who taught us that family comes first and to think of our siblings before ourselves put us through hell and acted like it was no big deal.” Grant gritted his teeth as years of repressed anger rolled out. “And why, after months of coddling my crying sisters, trying to hold everyone’s shit together and figure out why my own father didn’t want us at his house, when we were finally finding our footing in the new normal that you two created for us, you started acting like giddy teenagers dating each other. I’m happy you two found a way to make it work, but did you ever stop to think about how continuing to live in separate homes affected us? As a kid, I never knew if I could trust your relationship. One minute I’d hope you’d stay together, and the next I’d be waiting for the other shoe to drop. And what the hell would that have looked like? You already lived separately. Would one of you have moved off the island? How could I put hope into something that even the two of you didn’t think was strong enough to survive living under the same roof?”
“I don’t understand,” his mother said anxiously. “You haven’t been this angry since before you joined the military. Why is all of this coming up now, after all this time?”
Grant swallowed hard. “Because when I came home on leave, it was for only a few days or a week or two, and if I learned one thing growing up in this family, it was how to fake that Silver charm in public. But I’m not here for a quick visit, and I’m a different guy than I was. I don’t want to fake anything anymore. Do you realize that I’ve been here for months, and not once have either of you asked me what it’s like to live with a fake leg or to have my future taken away from me? Instead of talking to me about how my life is different and why I wish I could go back to Darkbird, you expect me to shelve all the shit in my head and fall into line as you see fit. To be a Silver and work at the resort, pretending that’s all I want.” A painful realization hit him. “Maybe part of me is stuck as that angry kid because I want your support and your acceptance for who I am. I’ll never be someone who falls into line, which I know is strange because in the military you do as you’re told ninety percent of the time. But that was my choice. I wanted to do something meaningful, and I still do. And I finally see a future for myself here on the island, but it’s mired down by all this unresolved crap.”