Axl felt that chest rise and fall, straining against her hands, as he stared at his father and tried to keep his shit.

“Honey,” she whispered.

“I’m good,” he bit out.

He was not.

But he wasn’t going to fuck up his father.

At least not now, after he had a moment to get a lock on his shit.

She didn’t move.

He darted a glance down to her. “I’m good, Hattie.”

She again didn’t move for several beats, but when she did, it was only to plaster herself to his side and wrap her arms around his middle.

He slid his arm around her shoulders, and for the first time, did not take a second to enjoy her curls brushing his skin.

“We’re done,” he announced to his dad.

“We—” Sylas began.

Axl cut him off.

“And I mean that in a very final way. We’re done. I don’t want to see you again. Not ever.”

Hattie’s arms got tight.

“You can’t be serious,” Sylas returned, disbelief in every syllable, not to mention written in the way he held his body.

“We’re done, and that’s the end,” Axl confirmed. “You’re out of my life. No going back. But if you fuck over Mom, if you don’t make this divorce easy for her, don’t give her everything she asks for, you don’t know exactly what I do for a living, but if you do that, you’ll find out.”

Sylas’s eyes narrowed. “Are you threatening me?”

“Yes.”

“I cannot believe what I’m hearing,” Sylas clipped.

“Believe it and I hope you’re listening closely. There’s no going back, Dad. For me, this isn’t any change. Like Mom is coping fine with her new circumstances, there’s no change for her either. We had nothing from you. So you not actually being in our lives doesn’t make them any different. Except neither of us has to put up with you anymore.”

His dad puffed out his chest.

What a fucking peacock.

“Axl Pantera, you’re speaking to your father.”

Yeah.

A fucking peacock.

“A father loves his son, and he shows it. He’s proud of him, and he shows that too.”

“I’m proud of you, look at you.” Sylas swept an arm up indicating Axl. “You’re a man any father would be proud of.”

“I’m thirty-four years old and that’s the first time in my life you’ve ever said that to me.”

“Nonsense,” Sylas bit.

“Trust me,” Axl said quietly. “I know. It is not nonsense. Now, just to be clear and very thorough, a father also does not make his son watch him dismantle piece by piece over the years the beautiful, vital woman who is his mother. A father does not make a family all about him. And a father does not come to his son’s home and call his woman a name when he knows not one fucking thing about her. Not one fucking thing, Dad. If you said that to me just you and me, I’d lose my goddamn mind. But you said it in front of Hattie, and that’s unforgivable.”

“You can’t be missing this is an emotional time for me,” Sylas retorted.

Axl shook his head.

“Your excuses have no meaning. You don’t get it. You’ve never formed the foundation for forgiveness. Shit happens. People fuck up. Situations and emotions get the better of them. That’s understandable, as long as you have the foundation of love and respect and trust you can call on to find forgiveness. You don’t have that. Not from me. Not from Mom. You were so busy building,” he shook his head again, “whatever it is that was so important for you to build, you didn’t bother building that.”

Sylas jerked his head to Hattie.

“You’ve been seeing this woman, what? Weeks? And she’s so important to you that you’re willing to annihilate your relationship with your father in favor of her?”

“This isn’t about Hattie, though that was the final straw. I’d already told Mom, you fucked her over, you’d lose me. But you precipitated that. So we’re done.”

“Axl—” Sylas started.

But there was no more to say.

Carefully, he set Hattie behind him and turned to the door he hadn’t closed.

He put a hand on it and used his other to indicate his invitation to his father to leave.

“You can’t possibly—” Sylas started.

“I can.”

“You aren’t—”

“I am.”

“Axl, you only have one father,” Sylas warned.

“Actually, you’re wrong about that. I’ve never had a father. So again, no change.”

Sylas looked like Axl sucker punched him.

It came as no surprise, seeing that, Axl felt nothing.

It took him awhile to recover, and when he did, Sylas moved to the door, but of course, he didn’t move through it.

He stopped and looked his son in the eye.

And when he spoke, his tone was conciliatory.

“I see now that this is emotional for all of us. We’ll give it some time. Time for both of us to cool down. And then we’ll talk it through.”

“No, we won’t.”

“Axl—”

“Good-bye, Dad.”

At that juncture, the man had the absolute fucking balls to look at Hattie and request quietly, “You’ll talk to him?”

“Get your eyes off her,” he growled.

Hattie came forward and stood between him and his dad.

“I’ll talk to him, Sylas. But I think you should leave now,” she said. “Okay? I’m sorry, but it’s for the best right now.”

Sylas studied her.

Nodded.

Looked to Axl.

Axl saw written stark in his father’s face that the man was wrecked.

He still felt nothing.

Because Sylas wasn’t wrecked that he lost his wife. He wasn’t wrecked at the things his son said to him, the way he fathered making his son feel those things. He wasn’t wrecked because their family was wrecked.

He was wrecked because he wasn’t getting what he wanted.

He was wrecked because he was walking away a loser.

Those were the only reasons he was wrecked.

Sylas left.

Axl set Hattie aside, closed and locked the door.

He turned to her and she was again plastered to him, this time front to front.