Page 12 of Love Unwritten
I grab the book on his nightstand. “What do you say?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t want to practice with you.”
His whispered statement might as well have been shouted in my face.
“Nicolas…” I muster up some courage with a deep breath that makes my lungs ache. “Did I do something wrong?”
He stares at the book in my hands with a forlorn expression. “No.”
“Then why do you never want to read stories together anymore?”
Vine a decirte buenas noches: I came to tell you goodnight.
Buenas noches: Goodnight.
His lips press together.
“You don’t mind reading them with Ellie.”
His trembling chin makes my chest ache.
You’re just making everything worse.
With stiff muscles, I place the book back on the nightstand and kiss the top of his head. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll practice on my own and impress you with all my skills.”
He sinks deeper into the mattress. “I love you.”
The dull throb ebbs a bit. “Te quiero, mijo. Con todo mi corazón.”
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs as I near the door.
“You have nothing to be sorry for. Just know that I’m always here if you want to try reading together.” Rejection of any kind hurts, but there isn’t anything more painful than being on the receiving end of it from my son.
Your own kid doesn’t want you around, the sick voice of self-sabotage returns at full force.
Son. Husband. Father. My list of failures is growing, and I have no one to blame but myself. I’m the one who was too busy growing my company to pay attention to my wife, so she found someone who was willing to take my place. I hadn’t expected that filing for divorce would give my ex the green light to run off to Oregon with her new boyfriend and leave her responsibilities behind.
Her superhero-loving, music-aficionado, eight-year-old responsibility.
Te quiero, mijo. Con todo mi corazón: I love you, son. With all my heart.
Nico interrupts me in the middle of my downward spiral by asking, “Can you get Ellie before you leave?”
I pull on the doorknob with a death grip. “Of course.”
“I was surprised when you texted me yesterday about meeting up tonight.” My cousin, Julian, drops into the leather booth across from me, looking a bit haggard from a long day’s work at one of his construction sites. His black shirt is covered in sawdust flakes, and his cheeks remain permanently flushed after working under the early June sun.
We may not be brothers, but we could fool anyone into thinking we are with our similar brown eyes, dark hair, and strong jawlines inherited from our fathers.
While Julian tames his wavy strands by keeping them short, mine are longer and in desperate need of a cut—something he tells me every single time I see him.
“Do you own a brush?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“Need help learning how to use it?”
I run my hands through my thick hair. “Your mom is cutting it tomorrow.”