I found myself watching out for Alex’s father’s name every morning when I went to work that week. Stupid, really. I knew how the appointments worked so I should have been aware that he wouldn’t be back so soon. Still, it didn’t stop the butterflies from rumbling in my stomach every time I saw the glass doors begin to open as a new arrival waltzed into the building. There’d been the temptation to ask Barbara to tell me every little thing about Alex, but I’d tried to squash it down as much as I could. I knew what letting him in would do to me. I’d been strong enough to let him go once before. Now I had to keep him there, locked away in the dusty recesses of my mind. It was either that or move thousands of miles away.

I'd heard Dubai was nice.

The very thought of being so far away from my parents had me shuddering every time those crazy ideas popped up in my mind. They’d already lost one daughter; I wasn’t about to take their last one away from them, no matter what I was going through.

I made it through the week, and the weekend brought with it the usual fun. Sundays were now dedicated to my mum and dad, and thankfully for me, I had a man in my life who seemed to love them almost as much as I did.

Mum had been thrilled the moment Marcus told them we were an official item. Dad… Well, Dad hadn’t shown much emotion about anything in a while, really. He found it difficult when I went to university, yet he tried his hardest to hide it from me. It didn’t work, but that was only because I had Mum telling me how much he was struggling every time she phoned me to touch base. She and I had become closer in recent years. I hoped that bond would always continue to grow.

As we sat around their dining room table, waiting for Mum's Sunday dinner to be served, I glanced at the two men in my life. Dad was to my right and Marcus to my left. This tradition of ours had been set over recent months, mainly because I always felt incredibly guilty about staying at Marcus’ place so much while I still lived at home, sponging off Mum's good food and Dad's good will. I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving them one day, so I enjoyed their company as much as I could, while I could, and Marcus joined me every step of the way.

“What are you going on about now?” I huffed, leaning farther over the table as I got stuck in the debate the two of them were having.

“This doesn’t concern you, Natalie,” Dad warned me in that rough, fatherly tone of his. It was his ‘I’m older and wiser’ voice. Marcus might as well have quit while he was sort of ahead.

“The subject of football versus rugby might not concern me, no, but the fact that you two are giving me a headache most definitely does.” I smiled sarcastically. “Do we have to go through this every single weekend?”

“Until your boyfriend sees sense, yes.”

I turned to look at Marcus, who was giving me his best ‘don’t worry, babe. I got this’ comforting face. He loved nothing more than to push my old man’s buttons, but only because he knew more than anyone just how much my dad loved a good debate every now and again. A kind man he most definitely was, but his views were his own and he’d defend them until the end, even if they were wrong to everyone else.

“They’re both good sports, Tom. You know I love rugby as much as the next guy.”

“No, lad,” Dad cut him off, copying my pose as he leaned even farther over the table to make his point. “Rugby isn’t just a good sport. It’s a fine, rough, animalistic form of sportsmanship. It isn’t like football. Those men aren’t out on the field with diamond earrings in their lugs one minute, then posing for Vogue magazine the next–”

“Vogue magazine? Dad, really?” I smirked, interrupting him, but he didn’t stop or pay me a blind bit of notice.

“Those men are out on the field because the sport is in their hearts. They don’t fake falling down. They barely even flinch when they get half their ears ripped off. They are there to win. Win! They don’t whine and moan in their opponents’ faces like crybabies. They take their legs out from beneath them and smash their enemies to the ground when there’s an issue, and they expect to see blood during almost every game.”

“Exactly. Would you want your grandkids taking part in that kind of play, Tom?” Marcus asked calmly, unable to hide the hint of amusement in his voice.

“Grandkids?” Both Dad and I cried in unison, our heads turning to Marcus in an instant as our eyes popped wide open.

“Yeah. If Natalie ever has a son–”

“Whooooooa,” I cut in, leaning back in my chair with my hands in the air.

“Something you need to tell me, Natalie?” Dad asked with an eerie sense of unnatural calm to his voice as he turned to stare at me. I hadn’t missed the way the colour had drained from his face, though.

“What? No!”

Marcus chuckled from where he was sitting, quickly covering his mouth with his hand and clearing his throat when my dad shot him a short, sharp glare.

“Are you sure? Because now is not the time. Not without your mother here.”

“Dad, no. Calm down. I am not… I mean…”

“Who isn’t what?” Mum asked casually as she strolled in from the kitchen, carrying a pot of potatoes in her oven-glove-clad hands. “What’s happening?”

“Nothing.” My voice was a bit too high pitched. I had no idea why.

“Natalie is freaking out,” Marcus told her smoothly as he took the old, overused bowl from my mum’s hands and positioned it on the table in front of us all. “Ouch. That’s still hot.”

“It has just come out of the oven, darling,” she told him before patting his head in feigned sympathy. He looked up at her through his dark lashes and flashed her his winning smile, and that was that. Mum was putty in his hands all over again. “And why is my daughter freaking out?”

“Because I mentioned grandchildren to Tom.”

“Oh.” Her eyes popped, too, and her mouth remained in an ‘O’ shape for quite some time until she turned to me and blinked.

Before I knew what was happening, I had three pairs of eyes staring directly at me. One pair filled with humour – the bastard. One pair filled with what looked like longing – bless my dear mother and her huge heart. The final pair, though – I couldn’t get a read on what those were saying to me, but it didn’t look good.

“Is it hot in here?” I asked, picking at my white shirt and fanning it quickly as the heat rose throughout my body.

No one spoke for a while, but when Marcus finally laughed and cut through the silence, I was grateful. He reached across to grab my hand, brushing his fingers over the knuckles of my hand that still had a death grip on the table. “Breathe, Natalie,” he murmured.

Breathe, Natalie.

The same words Alex used to say to me. It always came back to him. It seemed every word and every phrase had been sewn into my veins so that once he was gone, anything anyone ever said to me would always remind me of him.

I hated it.

I hated that the very thought of him could take me away from the people who sat in front of me, so I fought it and pushed him back into the cage in my mind. A dusty corner was no longer good enough. I was going to have to get something with a lid and a padlock on it, and then somehow lose the key.

“You look pale, dear.” Mum walked slowly around the table until she was standing beside me.

“Natalie?” Dad said quietly.

“I’m fine. Hot. I’m hot. It’s hot,” I pushed out in a raspy whisper. “Hot, hot, hot.”

“Babe…” Marcus’ voice cut through the hysteria and the mild, out of place meltdown I was having, forcing me to look up and focus on his beautiful face. Once our eyes connected, I felt calmer, and with each passing breath, I was sure my heart rate was coming down.

“I said I’m fine.”

“It was just a joke,” he eventually breathed out, squeezing my hand firmly at the same time.

“You’ll say anything to win an argument, won’t you?” I tried to joke back, but my voice sounded all croaky and disingenuous.

“You know me.” He grinned. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to make you panic.”

“I didn’t panic.”

“I bloody did,” Dad grumbled.

“Thomas!” Mum scolded.

“Oh, come on, Rosie. You don’t want Natalie knocked up so early in life, any more than I do.”

“Knocked up? What is wrong with you? Don’t be such a grump. What the bloody hell has gotten into you today? You’ve been like this since you came back from the shop this morning.”

Dad had the decency to at least look a tiny bit embarrassed by his outburst. It was unusual for him to be so rude. That wasn’t who he was, not even on his worst day. He was making me nervous as he chose me to be the person he made eye contact with again, and when he did, I saw the sadness and defeat staring back at me. It was the same look I’d seen all those years ago after Lizzy had gone, and there was nothing he could do to stop the hairs on the back of my neck standing to attention after that.

“Dad?” I said carefully. “You okay?”

He didn’t answer me right away, instead glancing over my shoulder at Mum before he eventually looked back at me. “I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not. What’s–”

“I said I’m fine, Natalie,” he snapped. Marcus must have caught my slight flinch because he squeezed my hand even tighter. Mum broke the silence at some point, and I was vaguely aware of us all eating our food as politely as we could. She and Marcus kept the conversation going back and forth, but my dad and I… we just kept glancing at one another before looking away awkwardly. There was something he was trying to tell me, or hide from me. I just had to figure out what it was.

After eating, I cleared the table and went to wash the pots. Where Dad would normally have helped me while Mum put her feet up, today he chose to go outside.

“Excuse me,” he muttered weakly as he walked right past me and slipped outside the back door. From where I was standing washing up, I could see him in the back garden. I watched as he bent down near the green and purple bush that had a small, stone fairy ornament hidden beneath it in honour of Lizzy. I watched as he stroked the back of it and dipped his head to his chest. I watched him when his hand eventually landed on top of his head and his body began to shake.

He was crying.

My father was crying.

Glancing back into the dining room, I saw that Marcus held my mum’s attention completely. She looked happy. She looked content. All the while, her husband was outside in pieces. I moved without thinking, choosing not to tell her what was happening as I, too, slipped out the back door to make an escape. My bare feet felt free as I walked across the freshly cut grass. In any other circumstances, the bounciness of my toes would have had me jumping up and down, wanting to sprint away just to feel my lungs open up and my body work hard. But not then.

Right then, all I needed to do was make sure my dad was okay.

I paused behind him, not wanting to make him jump, and as I looked down at the crouched, almost foetal position of my father, I felt the tears of loss and grief begin to well in my eyes.

Maybe he needed a moment alone to breathe.

Maybe I should have left him be.

Or maybe he needed a friend.

“Dad,” I whispered quietly.

He didn’t flinch or even react. The only movement he made was the bouncing of his shoulders as his tears took over.

It made my throat ache with a pain I couldn’t swallow.

I was used to Mum crying. I was used to hearing and seeing my own pain as it rained down my face, too. But nothing, not one little thing, no matter how many moments I saw that I wasn’t supposed to, could ever prepare me for how much it hurt to see my dad cry.

There’s a sound a man makes when he loses control. It’s a bit like when a baby screams at the top of their lungs and you know they’re in pain. Like when a dog yelps when he catches his tail, or when a cat screeches as another cat attacks. It’s a helpless sound. The shrieking defeat. The ‘oh God, it hurts’ intake of breath when they just can’t suppress it anymore. The ‘I’m not man enough to hold my family together. I'm a failure,' gasp. There’s nothing like that sound – nothing like it in the whole damn world. Most men – they don’t like to cry freely. They don’t like to let the pain pour out or let their loved ones witness their weakness. The sound a man makes when he finally loses control and gives in to grief is enough to make a grown woman fall to their knees and wrap them up in their arms.

So that’s exactly what I did.

Curling my arms around his neck, I gently laid my cheek on his back and held him for as long as he would allow me to.

To my surprise, it was longer than I thought it would be.

He never once tried to push me away and he never once choked on his shame. It seemed he was grateful for me being there, and I chose to believe that he was. I had no idea how long we stayed that way for, but while he shed an ocean, I held on to my tears. I held on to them because I needed to be strong for him.

Eventually, though, when his breaths had steadied, his hand reached up to cover mine.

“I miss that sister of yours.”

“I miss her, too.”

“Some days,” he started, “I can go a full hour without thinking about her or how much I miss her. A full hour. I shouldn’t look forward to those hours as much as I do.”

“I understand, Dad. I look forward to those times, too. I think we all do. No one likes to feel pain.”

“God, it hurts. It’s the worst kind of pain in the world.”

My mind drifted back to my conversation with Marcus about the stubbing of his toe, and I found myself smiling lazily against Dad’s shirt. “Marcus stubbed his toe a few days ago. He claims that’s the worst pain you can feel.”

“Marcus is a fool,” Dad blew out a little haughtily.

“You don’t mean that,” I sighed. “You two just like to wind each other up.”

Dad paused then, curling his fingers around mine even tighter before he bounced my hand against his chest.

“Are you happy with him, Natalie?”

“Very.”

“Very is a lazy word. If you were happy, you’d have said ecstatic, or… jubilant.”

“Dad, no one says jubilant anymore,” I said through a lazy smile. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d held my father this way, or if I ever had, but suddenly being so close to him felt like somewhere I’d needed to be for a lot of years.

“I say jubilant. I say it because that’s how your mother makes me feel. Every second of every minute of every hour.”

Feeling him tense in my grip, I slowly began to peel myself away. Dad spun on his feet until he was facing me, and my chest began to ache as soon as I saw the tear tracks on his cheeks and the redness of his eyes.

Pulling my hands together, he held me firmly in his grip and leaned closer.

“Promise me you’ll never settle?”

“Dad?” I pushed out, unable to stop my small frown of confusion. “What’s going on?”

“Just promise me.”

“I promise, but…”

“That’s all I want. I just want my daughter to have the best life possible.”

“I’m happy,” I reassured him softly. “I love Marcus. Nothing can or will change that.”

“Nothing?”

“No,” I whispered, pulling back slightly.

“I saw Alex this morning.”

Five words were all it took for me to feel winded again. My body must have shown it, too, because Dad tightened his grip on me. He held me as my knees turned to jelly again and I stared at him blankly. No matter how many times I blinked, though, it didn’t bring with it anything that made sense.

“Where?” I croaked.

“He was running.”

“Past our house?”

“Yes.”

Looking down at the ground, I searched every blade of grass I could find, trying desperately to ignore the way my frown was giving me the worst tension headache imaginable. At least, that’s what I told myself was causing it.

“I don’t understand. Why would he… He doesn’t even live… Why?” Snapping my head up, I scowled harder at my father and waited. While my face was gaining creases, his was smoothing itself out. “Did you talk to him?”

“Briefly.”

“And…?”

Moving his hands up to the tops of my arms, he squeezed them tightly before he brushed my hair away from both sides of my face and held my cheeks in his hands.

“Like I said, sweetheart… Please don’t settle. Be happy. Whatever the cost.”

With that, he rose to a stand, but not before he kissed the top of my head firmly. When he finally let me go, I watched him walk away as he wiped the tears from his face and let his old friend, embarrassment, take over. I stared at him like he had three heads until he disappeared inside.

I stared at the door then for some time, too.

I had no idea what was happening, but something told me that Dad knew for me.

Dad knew.

And he was scared for me.