“It was an accident,” I said again. My chest felt tight, and my head was hurting behind my eyes. I tried to shuffle back again, shoving some of the fallen books out of my way, but that fucking skeleton was right behind me.
“You took everything that meant anything to me that day,” he said. His hand steadied a little, and I cringed, flexing my shoulders. “I still raised you. I was still your father.”
I thought about Greg and how he talked to Nicole, how he cared for her and protected her—and the ludicrousness of his words struck me full force.
“You’ve never been a father! I took care of myself! You didn’t do anything a father is supposed to do! How could Mom even love you?”
“She did love me!” he screamed. He took a couple steps toward me, pointing the gun toward the floor where I was lying.
I pushed myself back, forgetting what was behind me, and the skeleton in its case toppled to the side, smashing the corner table full of Real Messini merchandise. The garden gnome shattered, and I jumped again.
“Don’t you dare say she didn’t!” Dad kept yelling. “She loved me! I know she did!”
“Then why are you doing this to me?” I cried. My mind was spinning completely out of control. I kept moving from one thought to the next—Lou Malone wasn’t my father; we were alone in the house; I needed to see Nicole just one more time, before anything else happened.
He’s going to kill me…
“She wanted you to be successful!” he yelled again. “She always said she wanted more for you…I could have given you that!”
“I can’t do it anymore!” I looked down at my legs as if he hadn’t noticed yet. He ignored my comment, turned to the side, and grabbed his hair with his fist as he growled incoherently.
“You just need more drive!” he said through clenched teeth. “I just need…need to push…”
His voice faltered, and his words trailed off into nothingness. I watched his shoulders slump as he faced me again. His eyes were heavy.
“Don’t you see, Thomas?” His voice cracked as he spoke, and he turned away from me to lean against the bookshelf, his arm across his forehead. “You’re all I have of her. I can’t lose you…I can’t.”
He turned to face me and then began to pace back and forth.
I knew I had to keep him talking. As long as he was talking, he wasn’t shooting. The longer I could keep him going, the better the chances were for me to come up with some way to get out of this. I ha
d to, because I had to see Nicole again. I just fucking had to see her one more time.
My mind raced. How could I get a message to someone? Anyone. I glanced at the small window in the room and knew I couldn’t just throw myself out of it—it was too high up. Even if I did, how would I get away? I did the only thing I could do and said the first thing that came to my mind.
“You named me after him?” I asked. “You gave me his name. Why?”
“She never told me!” he screamed, and his face contorted with rage again. “She never fucking told me his name! I didn’t find out until…until…she was gone…and he showed up. Motherfucker!”
Shit, maybe this wasn’t the right thing to do. Dad rubbed his face with his free hand, and I pushed myself a little farther from the chair, dislodging my ankle.
“He figured it out…but I told him it didn’t matter.” Dad went on. “You had been through enough, and I wasn’t going to let him disrupt your life any more than it already was. I was protecting you! You were mine…the only thing of hers I still had. No way in hell was he going to take that from me!”
He looked back to me again with his eyes blazing. He raised his hand and pointed the gun at my face.
“No one is taking you from me! You’ve lived as my son, and goddamn it, you’ll die as my son!”
My body was shaking, and I couldn’t stop hot tears from cascading from my eyes. I squeezed them shut because I didn’t want to watch and covered my head with my arms as if that was going to make any difference. I waited for the shot.
But no shot rang out.
I peeked through my arms and saw him still standing over me with his chest rising and falling quickly. His hands dropped back to his sides, and the gun pointed toward the floor. My eyes followed the weapon, waiting to see when it would rise again and end me.
“I just wanted you to be the best,” he said quietly, and when I looked back up at him, he was crying. “I didn’t know what to do. She was the one who took care of you. I just wanted her to be…to be…proud. Proud of me, because I…I took care of you…made you a star.”
“Dad…” I could barely hear my own voice. I coughed, cleared my throat, and tried again. “Dad…you didn’t have to…to do all that shit. I would have played anyway…”
“But I made sure you were the best,” he told me. His eyes suddenly went dark again, and his voice turned into a snarl. He raised the gun once again to my head. “Until you let pussy get in your way.”