Series: Cobalt Empire Series by Krista Ritchie
Total pages in book: 234
Estimated words: 226965 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1135(@200wpm)___ 908(@250wpm)___ 757(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 226965 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1135(@200wpm)___ 908(@250wpm)___ 757(@300wpm)
And I shake my head a couple times. “I always wondered how I could be your son.”
“I know you did.” Skin pleats between his brows. “That’s also where I made a misstep. I was too focused on how you felt like you didn’t fit in. It made it more difficult for me to see that you were dealing with an obsessive-compulsive disorder.”
I nod as realizations sink in. “Because why would I obsess over trying to protect my family from myself? When I spent half my youth questioning whether I even belonged in the first place. But it never meant I didn’t love you all. I love everyone too much, probably.” My eyes flit up to his, knowing on the flipside that my dad loves very little and infrequently. Just like Charlie. “Maybe Charlie’s right—maybe I should have more armor. Feel less.” I pull my beanie off, then skate my hand through my wavy hair. “I’m irrational. Sensitive. Naïve. Overly emotional.”
“Passionate, vulnerable, generous, self-sacrificing. These aren’t flaws, Ben.”
“They’re traits that weaken, Dad. They’re ones you don’t possess. Which makes me the most fragile extension of you. Of this family.” I extend my arm toward his chest. “You can’t disagree with that. You know it’s true, and look, I’m not saying I’m upset at the idea. I know it’s who I am. I’ve always known. Just as I’ve always known who I am is no one you could ever relate to.”
“Is that what you think?” His frown deepens.
Now I’m frowning. Could I be wrong? “You relate to Charlie. I’m nothing like Charlie. These are facts.”
He steps closer, skimming the length of me. “I do relate to Charlie, but I’m not Charlie, and Charlie isn’t me. We have vastly different approaches to how we live inside this world.” He glimpses out at the snow-capped trees, gestures a couple fingers for me to follow him, and we end up near the glassless frame of the fire tower. Where gusts whip back at our bodies through the open window. “More than one thing can be true at once, Ben.”
I watch him gaze out. “Like what?”
He rests his self-assured eyes on mine. “You can be fragile, and you can also be the most important extension of me. Of our family.”
“That’s hard to believe,” I say, even as his certainty, his control, his composure washes over me.
“Why?” His brows furrow. “We protect tender hearts like yours because they are vital. Necessary. Not everyone should be made of steel. You challenge me. You make me see things I would never see otherwise. I admire your passion, your virtue, your fervor. You roar at injustice. You hurt for others. You give and expect nothing in return. My life—it would be dull and gray without you, mon fils courageux.” My brave son. “You paint my world with color, and I could not bear to lose you. Just as I couldn’t bear to change who you are.”
I intake a slower breath. I’m too choked to speak.
I’d thought that I was the runt they dragged along because they loved me, because they wouldn’t cut any of us loose, but I never thought my father valued me. Not for my beliefs, not for my vulnerabilities, not for my differences—I thought, if anything, I was a negative cost. A sort of liability of the Cobalt Empire.
Not once did I consider I was a boon. It’s made me wonder if he’s told me this before in a plainer way, and I just never took it in. I never believed I could be an asset or a gift. I simply made peace with the fact that I was the worst of us.
“Why am I like this?” I ask, still choked up. I blink away the burn in my eyes. “When you tell me I’m important, I question it. When people like Coach Haddock tell me I’m NHL potential, I find reasons to disbelieve them.”
“Humility is an interesting trait for one of my children, considering I have very little.”
A bright laugh rolls out of me.
He grins at the sound. “You have a decent amount, Ben, conceivably to your own benefit and to your own detriment. And OCD is called the ‘doubting disease’ for a reason. It will make you doubt your own reality, your own perceptions.” He turns toward the endless view. “But this doesn’t mean you lack an ego.”
I glance out at the vastness of the undulating hills, the misty morning blue sky, the uncorrupted land teeming with life.
“You aren’t responsible for the creation of everything,” he says.
Emotion stings my eyes.
“The same way that you won’t be responsible for its destruction.”
I feel him studying me, but it’s more difficult to not smile. “I really must be your son,” I say. “Believing I have the power to impact the whole world. I, alone, am the cause of bad things happening around me.” I nod strongly to myself and laugh lightly. “Then in the reverse, I can’t even accept my self-importance. I am a real conundrum.”