**Completed** Cole Galloway has always had just enough of an ego to believe that the women falling at his feet were deserved. With an abundance of charm and looks to die for, who wouldn't want him?
Wynona Caldwell. That's who.
When Cole sets his s...
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Above, Cole, Taylor, Harris and Holly Galloway— the whole, unhappy family.
Cole
I had to get out of there.
Because if I'd stayed, I wouldn't be able to do what I need to do now. Though everything inside of me wanted to return to Wynn— to tell her that we're gonna be okay, that we can make a life, I know she would've insisted upon joining me as I take on a situation that's too complicated and dangerous for her and our baby.
I won't have it. This is something I have to handle on my own. I need to talk to my father before Wynn and I can move forward.
I arrive home with adrenaline pouring into my bloodstream, knowing what comes next. It's always the same damn thing with my dad. He approaches everything with a maddening calm, leaving a false impression that I'm actually making headway when in reality he's just biding his time. His manner, his demeanor demand answers, even the ones I'm unwilling to give, until he's managed to collect every valuable fragment from my confessions.
And then, he explodes.
I'm never ready.
When I was younger, I used to believe that I deserved his abuse. It was a natural expression of his disappointment in me, and one that I accepted readily. The outward pain of my injuries healed far more quickly than the internal heartache that resulted from his verbal assaults, anyway.
Besides all that, he usually tried to make up for my physical thumpings by some means— he'd take me to a game, buy me a gift, something. It was through this give and take arrangement that he earned my silence and complicity. He insisted it was for my own good, and I believed him. 'Take it like a Galloway,' he'd always say. It was how he was raised and so would I be.
It was only when I realized that abuse wasn't normal that I began to fight back. That didn't make things any easier, of course. He stopped trying to make up after that and started coming at me more fiercely. Only as I got bigger and tougher did my beat downs become fewer and further between. Guess my old man finally figured out that I was becoming a force to be reckoned with in my own right. Still, it's never ceased entirely.
I have no doubt that my admissions tonight will leave me black and blue, and that unfortunate youthful mentality persists: part of me believes I deserve what's coming. I know I'll have genuinely earned his ire this time.
Despite all that, though, I'm about to become a father myself. I know this isn't the way, the abuse, the shaming. It's wrong. I won't take his shit lying down. Not anymore.
There's no sense in sugar coating anything. It won't be long before he hears the truth from someone else. Hell, Taylor was there and saw it all. I'm sure she'd love to give him a play-by-play of all my extra-curricular activities.
Nope.
I close the garage door behind me, following the sounds of a football game playing on the TV in the den. I hate myself for shaking, but I can't seem to calm the nerves coursing through me as I move toward my parents. There's so much at stake in what I'm about to reveal. Three lives, to be exact, of far greater consequence than any bad grade or blown pass play— the usual reasons for these fun conversations.
