He reeled back a bit, appalled that I’d said such a thing. “What the hell are you talking about? Of course they’reyours. You’re their papa. You’ve been raising those kids for years now, and don’t say they’re not yours just because—"
“You know what I mean!” I hissed, turning to drop onto the couch.
He sat on a bin in front of me and let his hands dangle between his knees. “Are you saying that just ‘cause they’re—"
“Biologically, they’re not mine,” I clarified. “My DNA isn’t swimming around in them. They’re fine because they don’t have any part of me.”
Sid nodded, poking the inside of his cheek with his tongue. “So, you think that, if a kid has your DNA—"
“My father fucked me up, Sid,” I told him, as if he didn’t already know. “And I’m worried … I’m fuckingterrifiedthat … what if it’s genetic? What if this kid is born and I just …”
“What? You think you’re gonna snap the second your wife pops your kid out?”
It sounded ridiculous when he put it that way, and I rolled my eyes. “I’m not … I’m not saying that. I’m—"
“Max, dude …”
He ran his hand through his floppy hair. I liked mine shorter—it was easier that way—but Sid had let his grow out a bit over the years since the Army. He said Grace preferred it that way, and so he preferred it that way too.
He exhaled and leveled me with a glare. “I’m gonna say something, and I want you to listen to me, okay?”
“Yeah, okay. Sure.”
He reached out with both hands, pressing them to my cheeks. “Your father is the biggest fuckin’ asshole I’ve ever had the displeasure of knowing. I tolerate him because, for some fucking reason, my wife wants a relationship with him. But I don’t like him, I’veneverliked him, and I’m nevergoing tolike him.”
“Okay,” I said, wondering where exactly he was going with this.
He removed one hand from my face and held up a finger. “But you wanna know who I do like?”
I sighed and grumbled, “Who?”
His finger poked at my chest. “I likeMax,” he said, enunciating every word with a tap, tap, tap over my heart.
I groaned, wishing I’d known better than to think he’d take this situation seriously. I brushed his finger off my chest and moved to stand up, but he moved his hands to my shoulders and held me on the spot. I’d continued to work out since the military, but Sid was still stronger.
“I love you, man. Do you think I’d love you if you were an asshole? Do you think I’d love you if you were like him?”
I couldn’t bring my eyes to meet his gaze. “I dunno …”
“The answer is no. I wouldn’t. I’d fuckin’ hate you too. But I don’t.”
I rolled my lips between my teeth and fought the knee-jerk reaction to protest.
“And it wasn’t you who turned your old man into an asshole. I’m willing to bet he was an asshole long before you came around.” He dipped his head to find my diverted gaze. “You hearing me, Serg? You are not your dad.”
I felt his sincerity and found myself nodding, a ragged sigh ripping through me. “Something made him hate me, Sid.”
“Well, he’s a hateful kinda guy,” he said with a helpless shrug, like that explained everything. Like that made itokay.
“He doesn’t hate Grace or Lucy,” I pointed out, furrowing my brow.
“They’re the little princesses,” he countered, as if it was all so obvious. “That’s how it is with some families.Some kids get the love the others aren’t worthy of or some shit. Maybe it’s because you’re the boy. Maybe it’s a sexist thing. Or … I don’t know. Maybe he hates that you’re not more like him. Maybe he hates that he couldn’t break you the way his dad broke him.”
There could’ve been truth to that. I had never met any of my grandparents. They’d all been dead by the time I came around—or at least as far as I knew. It was certainly a possibility that Dad’s father had beaten the shit out of him and broken his spirit, and so that was the only way Dad had known to raise me. Maybe it went back to my great-great-great-grandfather, a multigenerational cycle that couldn’t be broken.
Until me.
I made up my mind then that Sid was right. I had a choice. I wasn’t like my father now, and I wouldn’t be like him after my son or daughter was born. I would begood. I would beforgiving. I would be every bit of the man I was now but better.
