Page 14 of Severed Heart (The Ravenhood Legacy #2)

Gasps and shocked murmurs sound around me as I kneel to where Dad landed just as a set of worn boots approaches inside my periphery.

“If you know what’s good for you, you’ll mind your business,” I snap in warning to the interloper just as the bartender, Brian, speaks up on my behalf.

“Don’t step in, man, that’s Carter’s son.”

Within the next second, I’m dragging my laughing dad out of the glass door by his jacket and dropping his upper half on the frozen sidewalk.

Snow dots the air as Dad slowly rises to his feet, stumbling a little before gaining his footing.

His liquor-glazed eyes slowly lock and focus on me as he speaks through a smirk.

“So, tonight’s the night, huh? You want to fight your old man, Son?”

Rage overtakes reason, and I step up, throwing a right that connects with his jaw, putting everything I have behind it.

He absorbs the blow as I do. Feeling the gravity of what’s just transpired blooming in my chest, I’m completely aware of how wrong it is—of how different our relationship will be from this moment forward.

“Not bad for a punk seventeen-year-old,” he says with a sickening grin, smashing at the thin trail of blood lining his lips with his fingers. To our right, I see Dom’s already out of the van, leaning against it, arms crossed.

“You’re a disgrace—” I see the insult hit him, his armor somehow penetrable for the moment—“to your marriage, to the name you gave me, and to the uniform.”

It’s mom’s anguished face I see when I step forward, landing another punch on his jaw. A punch he purposely doesn’t react to, which surprises me.

“What, Dad?! No lessons to teach, no fucking tough love or lectures to bestow on being a man!?”

I pound my chest with a fist, hearing the crack in my voice, which echoes the fracture happening inside while willing the weakness out of me.

“You’re a good son, Tyler,” he says, seemingly sincere, his own voice shaking.

“Don’t. Don’t bother. You have no idea who the fuck I am. You haven’t fucking seen me in years. Fucking years!”

“I know exactly who you are,” he rasps, reticent and calm. “I’m staring at my reflection twenty years ago.”

“Carter? Is everything okay?” a voice calls from the door behind me, and I can’t bring myself to look back at the woman he’s been cheating on my mother with for God knows how long.

“Get rid of her,” I order as Dad holds up a palm.

“Go inside,” Dad tells her, “I’ll be in in a minute.”

“But— ”

“Grace, go!” She retreats inside as his guilty eyes flick back to me.

“Oh, the irony of a fucking name,” I mock.

“You’re going to need all the Grace you can get because we’re fucking done, Dad.

Do you hear me? We’re done with you as of this moment.

You’ve destroyed our family, and you may be able to live with this, with what you’re doing to her, but I can’t. Tell Mom, or I will.”

“She knows, Son,” he says, his tone nothing but defeat.

“Bullshit.” I shake my head vehemently. “Why couldn’t you leave her? She knows everyone in this town. You’re humiliating her. You’re humiliating me . Our family. You’re fucking disgusting.”

“You’re a good son,” he repeats softly. “Truly, Tyler, you are, but what’s happening between your mother and me is beyond your scope right now.”

“You’re going to pull this shit, really? Claim it’s grown folks’ business? You brought her into our fucking house!”

Dad has the sense to lower his eyes.

“I idolized you,” I tell him. “I ... and now, I’m ashamed. I’m ashamed to call you my father.” I step forward, chin lifted, doing everything in my power not to shed the tears shimmering in my eyes. “All you have left is the woman you destroyed your family with. Hope she’s worth it.”

“Your mother won’t leave me, Son.” His voice is now just above a whisper.

“I’ll make sure she does,” I hiss. “I’ll make goddamn sure she does. Tell her tonight.”

“You’re not hearing me, Regina knows.”

“She knows, huh? She knows that you fuck Grace in her bed? I’m willing to bet she doesn’t. You or me. Figure it out, fast,” I snap, stepping off the curb and nodding towards Dom, who opens his passenger door as I pull my keys.

“She won’t leave me because she won’t fucking touch me anymore!” Dad shouts at my retreating back.

“Now that’s adult business,” I spout without a shred of sympathy.

Crowding me, he slams my driver’s door shut. “But you’ve made it your business now, so you get to hear it.”

When I reel on him, he steps back and glances toward the bar before scanning the parking lot.

My confusion lasts only seconds as he shifts further into the light and lifts his shirt.

My reaction is an audible release of air when I see the scar, or rather, the ocean of slick, burnt skin that runs the entire length of his right side.

“Your mother hasn’t touched me in nearly two years... so yeah, Son, I went out and did what no married man should ever do because my wife finds me as disgusting as you do.”

“Mom would never—”

“You sure about that?” he counters, chest heaving.

I shake my head, full-on denying she would be so cruel. “Couldn’t be the fact that you’re a full-blown alcoholic and temperamental bastard now, could it?”

“I’m not saying my behavior didn’t have anything—”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

“So fucking smug,” he scoffs, “so arrogant and sure of yourself. Well, hold on tight to that confidence, Son, or just wait. They’ll be happy to pump you full of it. But on the other side of that, you have no idea what coming home means. No fucking clue!”

“Well, you never took the time to tell me, did you? No, you drank that time away.”

“You don’t know what happens over there!

You can’t ever know because it’s not fucking explainable!

” He rips his shirt over his head, forcing me to look at the burns, to acknowledge they exist. I was just recovering from the fact that they did and probably have for years. How in the hell did I miss it?

“When?”

“Does it matter? It happened, and I deal with it.”

I scoff. “Yeah, I’ve seen the way you deal.”

“Son, when you grab your uniform, make sure you stand firm in your stance to be nothing like me .”

“I won’t,” I declare confidently.

“No, because you’ll do it better, right?

” He shakes his head ironically. “You won’t hurt your son, or fuck with his head, or belittle him like I swore I wouldn’t.

You won’t disappear from your wife day by day like I swore I wouldn’t.

Go to war one man and come back another.

You’ll be the exception, the better soldier, husband, and father.

You won’t ever bring the war you carry on your back through your front door. ”

I weigh his words about staring at his reflection and shake my head, disbelieving what he’s relaying. “You’re telling me that Granddad—”

“Like I said, I’m staring at my reflection twenty years ago. It took me nearly ten of those to forgive him to the point of speaking to him and let him within a fucking mile of you. The man you know and the man that raised me are two entirely different men.”

I stand there, shocked at his revelations and more stunned that my grandfather exhibited the same behavior.

“I’m a sunny Sunday in the park compared to what he was during the worst of it.

So, yeah, your grandfather cracked, and your old man isn’t weathering his own storm well, but you’ll be the soldier to do it, right?

Fuck”—he scrapes a hand down his jaw—“I hope for your sake that you are. But I’m telling you right now .

. .” His eyes grip mine in warning. “Don’t do it. ”

“What?”

“They’ll break you down only to build you up, making you believe you’re a god.

They’ll make you feel invincible, but you won’t be.

No man is. At the end of it, if you make it out alive, you’ll come home with scars you can’t hide, physical or otherwise, and the fact you can’t hide them will eat you fucking alive.

Then you’ll remember what they told you versus what you actually fucking survived and see they don’t quite match up.

But the most damning lie is that you will have the capability to leave it over there when you get home.

That you’ll be able to find the fucking door.

All this time, I’m still looking for the door to you and your mother, Son, because I’ve looked everywhere, and I can’t get back to you.

” His voice breaks as I feel my resolve start to dismantle. “I can’t get back to you and Regina.”

I gape at him, nausea threatening. “You’re seriously telling me not to enlist?”

“I’m telling you that things have changed.

The military isn’t the same as the one your granddad and I signed up for, and I don’t want you to find that out by gambling with your life.

I’m telling you that I’m sorry I failed you.

That I know I lost my way ... lost myself.

That I know you and your mother deserve better .

.. and I’ll tell her. I’ll leave if she wants me to. ”

The truth of what’s happening starts to settle in on us both, and remorse threatens, but I bat it away due to the constant sight of my mother’s tears.

“I love you and your mother, Son, with every fiber of my being. I know I was better off coming home in a box to both of you ... or not at all, but I didn’t want to let you go.” He crumbles where he stands, as does my entire belief system. “But you both let me go a long time ago, didn’t you?”

He piles his hands on his head, his voice cracking so wide that I don’t recognize it.

“I chose the uniform too many times, and now I can’t find the fucking door.” He cries openly now. It’s messy and horrific, and I recognize the man speaking to me as the dad I grew up with. And that he’s not apologizing because he got caught but because he means it, but it’s too late.

“You could have talked to her,” I sling at him, hurt seeping through my anger. “Mom’s a goddamned psychologist, Dad. She could have tried to help you find the fucking door.”