Page 100 of Burn Bright

“Then what?” Baseball cap in my hands, I curl the brim in a tightening fist.

“When you were three, Tom stepped on caterpillar and you cried,” he tells me. “The next week, you stepped on an ant, and you were inconsolable for days. Even when I explained that an average garden ant would live around a year, when I gave you the rundown of their life cycle, it didn’t change your despair. When you were seven, you made sure no one squashed the spider in Jane’s room. Instead, you captured it in a cup and released it outside?—”

I let out an annoyed breath, cutting him off. “Yeah, I don’t like needlessly killing things. It’s not a revelation. I shouldn’t be the only person who wants to protect the fucking—” I stop myself, trying not to drop a thousandfucksaround my parents—“the planet and the things inside of it.”

“It’s not a revelation, Ben,” he says. “It’s who you are. The depth of your compassion has never waned over the years.”

Compassion. It’s not something my dad actually values. It’s like a genius telling you you’re good at finger painting. So I’m notdeluding myself into thinking this is some grand gesture to tell me he’s proud of me. I don’t need that.

He has a son who’s his replica in mind.Charlie.

He has a son who’s his replica in body.Eliot.

He has a son who’s his replica in ambition.Tom.

He has a son who has surpassed him in raw talent.Beckett.

And then he has me.

I’m not a disappointment in his eyes. I know that. But I’m nothing special either.

I don’t have a reply for him, and I choose to let the silence eat the air.

He takes a moment before he speaks again. His fingers slide through his wavy brown hair, then fall to his knee. “We haven’t talked about that night, Ben,” he tells me, his concern slipping over me.

There it is.

It always comes back to me attacking Tate. He knows the full rundown about the drugs and Winona. I confessed about the Adderall last night to my dad since I let the cat out of the bag to my brothers, and he wasextremelyconcerned—specifically about how I obtained the Adderall in the first place. It’s now another reason he wants me to change therapists so badly.

“Yeah, we did talk,” I reply. “I told you why I did it.”

“And I’m supposed to believe you’ve become Niccolò Machiavelli overnight?” he asks me. “When have you ever believed the ends justify the means?”

“Beliefs change,” I tell him. “Shouldn’tyouout of everyone understand that? I’ve read about how you didn’t believe in the concept of love before Mom about a billion times in the press. And you’vetalkedabout it tous.” He’s been very open and honest, and when he tells us that he loves us—a man who loves few and sparingly—I believe him.

Because even among our differences, I’ve felt my dad’s love. We wouldn’t be having this conversation if he didn’t love me even a little bit.

“That didn’t happen overnight, Ben. I didn’t meet your mom and magically fall in love. I thought I wasincapableof certain emotions. Believing I could love—that waswork. That was therapy and investment in myself.”

I say nothing. I’m not sure what to say, to be honest. A current of panic and agitation move through my bloodstream, and I’m having trouble even sitting still.He can’t find out I’m broke.My knee tries to jostle.

I want to lean back, then forward.

It’s taking everything in me to remain rigid.

His expensive sole drops off his knee and lands on the stone. He cups his hands, and his soul-burrowing gaze never leaves mine.

He might be this godly Zeus-like figure, but right now, I’m not intimidated by him. At the end of the day, he’s my dad.

He continues, “You hurt someone, and the Ben that I know wouldn’t care if the other guy deserved it or not, it’d affect him. It’d crush him.”

It is crushing me, but not in the way he thinks. I’m not crying like Tate is that dead caterpillar. I’m not devastated. I don’t even regret it.

But I am terrified of retribution. Of the universe course-correcting pain that I caused. It feels inevitable that my family will get hurt. How can I even explain that tohim? He won’t understand.

“Do I look crushed?” I ask.

“No, and that’s what scares me,” he says. “You’re hiding your feelings, burying them, or avoiding them?—”