I didn't need him.

I didn't. Not today. Not tomorrow. Never.

"Trip told me the shit he pulled on you and your ma," Dex spoke suddenly.

My muscles tensed up.

"I remember hearin' about him movin' away when I was a kid," he explained. "I didn't know he left y'all though."

The urge to blabber out that he'd left a year before I got sick was right on my tongue but I fought it back.

"He never came back after your ma died?" Dex asked in a low, gentle voice.

I had to swallow back the bitter sting in my throat. "Nope. I mean, he came right at the end. Right before she died. Then he left again the day afterward." My voice cracked just a little but it was enough to shame me for being so emotional about something that had happened forever ago.

And it was enough for Dex to notice.

He reached over and tapped the side of my leg with the back of his tattooed index finger. "That shit's not worth your tears, babe."

It wasn't exactly comfort in yia-yia's arms but his light nudge was enough to center me. To make me remember that man wasn't worth my tears or even my thoughts. My mind was all for it but my body felt otherwise.

I sniffed.

"I'm serious, don’t go cryin'," Dex added in that same even tone he'd used a moment before.

I nodded. Whether it was to his words or myself, I'm not sure, but I sucked in a deep breath and thought of my mom. My sweet mom who had loved a man, lost him, and never fully recovered. I never wanted to be like that. I never wanted to end up in the same shoes. I'd lost enough in my life to risk losing even more.

"I remember when your dad came back once a long time ago. He came by to see Sonny but Son didn't a give a shit by then, ya know. Told him to f**k off because Son was pissed at something."

Something.

The memory of Sonny's call a few weeks after my mom had passed away was an easy memory. One of us always called the other at least every month back then, my half-brother had always been super easygoing. But that call, when I'd told him that our dad had left again, Sonny had lost it.

Absolutely lost it.

It might have been because the older Taylor had only stuck around a few years in his life, and even when he was in Austin while Sonny was a kid, he was a distant figure. Our dad had never committed himself in any way to Sonny's mom, though I'd learn years later that the word commitment meant nothing when he broke three hearts in Florida.

Regardless, it didn't hit me until I was a teenager and Sonny had gone out of his way to have a relationship with Will and me. At least we'd gotten Curt Taylor longer than he had.

So when Sonny found out that our birth father had left—again—right after Mom died... he'd been furious.

And I think that Sonny swallowed up all the anger that Will and I had, for us.

"Your old man is a f**kin' prick."

That wasn't the first time I'd heard those words. I shrugged. "You should have heard the Greek names my grandma had for him. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had a voodoo doll in his image under her bed.”

He pursed his lips together. "She's gone?"

Almost immediately after I went into remission but I wasn't that specific with him. "She had a heart attack in her sleep a couple years ago." What I also didn't explain to him was that she'd sold her house a few months before she passed away to pay my medical bills.

"Goddamn." Dex's long, masculine fingers tapped against the steering wheel. Lifting a hand, he pressed the back of it to his face. "That...that f**kin’ sucks, honey.”

I blew out a breath and laughed just a little, more nervous and resigned than anything. “It could have been worse. He could have been abusive, or...I’m not sure. I just know that it could have been a lot worse, I guess.”

Dex glanced at me out of the corner of his eye, jaw shifting in the brief silence that followed what I said before he spoke again. "My pa was a piece of shit, too. Always yellin' at my sisters, talkin' smack to my ma, tryin’ to beat my ass when he could. Constantly drunk, stealin' money from Ma or whoever was stupid enough to hang around him so he could hit up the bar and get so shit-faced he'd fall asleep on the floor most days. Worthless waste of life especially after they kicked him outta the Widows when they got tired of his shit.”

By about halfway through him speaking, I'd been so stunned that I'd shifted in my seat to look at him. Where the heck his honesty had come from, I had no clue but I was sucked in completely.

When there was an awkward break in the conversation, I blurted out a question. "What happened to him?"

He sighed so painfully, I wouldn't have imagined a man like Dex could harbor so much resentment in him. He'd never seemed like the type to be disappointed in others. He usually went from normal to straight up pissed off.

"He got arrested for distributin' when I was eighteen. Haven't seen his face or spoken to him since."

"Not once?" I asked him in a low voice.

Dex shook his head roughly. Anger and frustration seeped from his pores, stinging my chest with his unease over the past. "Not since he blamed me and Ma for his mess. Told us it was our fault for lettin' him get away with his shit for so long. Said we should’ve gotten him help. Can you believe that shit? I spent years tryin’ to get him to spend time with me and my sisters instead of with his vodka and he blames us for bein' a drunk motherfucker?

The last time I talked to him he said I should get used to bein’ a disappointment ‘cuz that’s all I’d ever be.” He snickered bitterly. “Just like him.”

Anger flooded my veins. “What a piece of shit.”

Holy crap. Did I really just say that?

I looked over at Dex to see him glancing over at me. Whether he was shocked or amused, I had no clue. All I got was a bob of his head. “You have no idea, babe.”

I didn’t know Dex well, but I felt confident with what I told him next. I wasn’t trying to suck-up to him—why would I?—or make him feel better, but I thought he should know I didn’t believe his dad’s prophecy. “You’re nothing like that—like him—you know that, right?”

“I hope to God I’m not.”

“You’re not,” I confirmed. “You’re a good man, Dex.”

He shrugged, but I could tell he was thinking, processing. “I don’t ever wanna be half like him. Back then, I was out on bail for some dumbass charges—," I wouldn't call assault a dumbass charge but I'd keep that thought to myself. "Hearin’ those words outta his voice. Doomin’ me to repeat his miserable, drunk life? I swore right then I was never gonna be like him. I have his temper. I say stupid shit I don’t mean sometimes but that’s it.”

I said the next few words without even thinking. “You’re not.” I looked at him. “At all.”

The silence after that was so crushing, it made me feel awkward. Heavy. Pressurized. I knew this chance was rare, so for some reason, I kept going. “What happened after that?”

“After I got out of county, I left Austin, went up to Dallas for a couple of years and sorted my shit out. When I was ready, I came back home.”

His version of the story was so short and perfectly cut out, I couldn't wrap my mind around it. He'd paid his penance, and then gotten out and tried to steer his life in a different direction. That was admirable.