Page 109 of Love By The Falls

“Hey! Hey! Don’t touch him,” Jason shouts.

“I’m just showing him how to—”

“I said get your hands off of him.”

Caleb puts his hands up. “Easy, man. I was trying to help.”

“I know what you’re doing, and I don’t like it.”

“Jason!” I shout, throwing the vegetable on the counter. “Stop.”

But Jason stalks over to Caleb and pushes him back with both hands on his chest. He’s at least three inches shorter than Caleb, but I’ve seen Jason in enough playground fights to know he doesn’t back down. He doubles down to prove himself.

“I said stop it, Jason.”

“If you think you can insert yourself into my family, you’ve got another thing coming.”

“Your family?”

I grab Jason’s arm and pull him away. “That’s enough.” But he ignores me and wretches his arm out of my grasp. “This is mine. You don’t have a say here.”

Caleb looks at me and reads the confusion on my face, or disgust, because I can’t make any sense of this.

“Look, man. I think you should take a step back.” He looks down at the short distance between them.

“That’s what you want, huh? For me to step back so you can step in? I don’t think so.” He points to Charlie, and I know the words he’s about to say before he says them. I don’t know if it’s because I can sense them or because that’s what Jason does when he backs himself into a corner. He fights back viciously.

I pull Jason’s arm back, but he says it anyway. “That’s my son, not yours. I’m his father.”

Damn you, Jason!

Charlie’s mouth hangs open, and he stares at Jason, then at me. His bottom lip quivers, then he drops the ball on the ground, races across the lawn to the back door.

I glare at Jason. “You bastard. You didn’t have to tell him this way, and you know it. We were supposed to tell him together.”

“Well, you’re here, aren’t you? He needs to know. You should have told him a long time ago.”

My voice cracks. “Not like this.”

I run back inside to Charlie, but Jason follows. I spin around and point at his car. “Get out.”

“We need to talk to him.”

“Ineed to talk to him. You’ve said enough. Get out.”

My voice is hard, and my hands tremble. If he takes one step closer to the door, then I’ll kick him in the shins.

He reads my face and shakes his head. “Fine. But this isn’t over.”

My heart breaks. “It never is with you, Jason.”

I wait until he’s gone before I call Charlie’s name. “Where are you?”

A loud crash from his room makes me jump in my skin, and I race toward the door, but it’s closed. “Charlie, open the door,” I shout while banging on it with my fist.

His voice is low, and a little scared. “I can’t.”

“What’s going on?”

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