Going Down Easy (Boys of the Big Easy #1)(67)

Addison’s expression hardened. Okay, so he was criticizing her daughter. Not a great move. No way was Addison going to let that go.

“Well, as you pointed out, she’s five,” Addison said coolly. “She did what she could to help her friend.”

“That wasn’t all she could do,” Gabe said, feeling the frustration and guilt rising up again. “She could have told us what was going on.”

Addison sucked in a quick breath. Neither of them said anything for a long moment. Then she swallowed. And nodded. “You’re right.”

The look on Addison’s face dragged the air out of Gabe’s lungs. She looked devastated suddenly.

“Ad—”

But she shook her head quickly. “No, you’re right. Stella . . . she’s so independent. She tries to solve her own problems. I encourage that. I mean, sometimes. Little things. Like what to do if she runs out of gold glitter. And we talk about what to do if she gets lost in a store. But . . .” She stopped and swallowed again. “Maybe it’s too much. Maybe I’ve taught her that she has to depend on herself and not on me.”

“Addison—”

“What if she tried to help Cooper instead of telling us because she thought that’s what I want?”

“Addison,” Gabe said firmly. “Stop.” He knew that some of this mini meltdown was actually her emotions about Cooper and what had happened. But he also knew that Addison had some insecurities about her own parenting style. He almost laughed at that. Who the hell didn’t?

“I’m so sorry, Gabe,” Addison said softly.

“It’s not your fault. It’s not . . . it’s not Stella’s fault or Cooper’s fault,” he said, his throat tight. “It’s mine.”

“Gabe, you didn’t know,” she protested.

“Yeah, and now that I do, I still have no fucking clue how to handle this. And that makes me feel like shit.”

“So let me help you.”

“That’s not the point!” Gabe worked to lower his voice. “I have to figure this out. Of course you could do it, and do it perfectly. But Cooper needs to know that I can and will handle things for him. It’s great for him to know you care about him, too, but I’m his father. I need him to know that I’m capable of more than donating the sperm, making pancakes, and taking him to do things he doesn’t want to do because I think he should be doing them!”

Gabe stood, breathing hard, feeling his heart racing. Addison looked sad, and a little pissed, actually.

“Is it Cooper who needs to know all of that, or you?” she asked.

“Fuck,” he muttered. He shoved a hand through his hair again. “Yeah, okay, it’s me, too.”

“And you’re feeling like all of this is because you made him go on the swamp-boat tour?” Addison asked.

“It’s not like that’s the first time,” Gabe told her. “I’m always trying to get him to do stuff he doesn’t want to do. Hell, he probably thought if he told me about the day care thing, that I’d tell him what Stella did—take a flashlight and don’t be such a baby.”

Addison actually gasped softly. “Stella did not tell him that. And you would never.”

“But isn’t that essentially what we’re saying when we’re constantly telling him that he should do things like touch alligators and sit in fire trucks and try karate and any one of the other things I’ve encouraged him to do in spite of knowing he doesn’t want to?” Gabe asked. He hadn’t realized all those things were nagging at him until they came spilling out, but now he couldn’t stop. “Why can’t I just be okay with him reading and looking things up on the Internet and being interested from afar? Why is that somehow wrong and my way is right? And how can I not think that if he thought I understood him and got him and wanted him to be just exactly how he is, that he would have told me about this bullshit at day care so that I could fix it?”

Addison expression went from irritated to worried. “Gabe—”

“I didn’t even know something was wrong,” he said, his voice suddenly rough as he tried to speak around the lump in his throat.

“He’s a quiet kid,” Addison said. “He’s . . . reserved and thoughtful. It’s hard to tell if he’s worried about something or scared of something or just contemplating things.”

But Gabe was shaking his head by the time she got to the end of that. “That’s an easy excuse. Believe me, I’ve used it over and over.”

“Excuse for what?”

“For thinking things are fine.”

“Gabe, things are fine. He’s five. He’s an introvert. That doesn’t mean you’ve done something wrong.”

“Things are not fine, Addison!” Gabe felt the frustration climbing up his back and tightening his neck. He didn’t want to fight with her, but he couldn’t let this go. He couldn’t just accept that Cooper was fine and that he was a great dad and that everything would be okay. Because that was definitely what he wanted. That would definitely be the easy way to go. But fuck, parenting wasn’t supposed to be easy.

“Cooper is the one person in this world who needs me,” Gabe said. “And that freaks me out, I’ll be honest. It’s always freaked me out. I feel all the protective things toward him that a dad should, but that’s why I moved in here with my mom. That was me protecting him—from me fucking up.”