Bullies Choke New Girl — Unaware She's A Deadly MMA Fighter
Chapter 36
Theme:
Font Size:
24px
"I don't know how to fix what I've broken in that boy," Voss admitted quietly. "Thirteen years of teaching him the wrong lesson. That's not something an apology undoes overnight.""No," Silas agreed. "It isn't. But it's a start. Most men never even manage that much.""Thank you," Voss said quietly. "For the fire. For this. For not letting either of us bury it any longer.""Don't thank me," Silas said. "Thank your son. He's the one who finally said it out loud."Voss looked over at Grady, standing a short distance away, still absorbing the weight of what he'd just done in front of the entire county. "I don't know how to fix what I've broken in that boy," Voss repeated quietly, mostly to himself now. "I keep thinking about all the times he came to me scared about something, and I told him to toughen up instead of asking him what actually scared him. I thought that was strength—teaching him not to feel it.""Strength isn't the absence of feeling something," Silas said. "It's what you do with it once you've let yourself feel it. Honestly, that's a harder lesson to teach a child than toughen up—takes more of you to teach it.""I don't know if I have more of me left to give him," Voss admitted. "Not after today.""You'd be surprised," Silas said. "Most men find more in themselves than they think once they stop spending all their energy hiding from what scares them."Voss nodded slowly, turning the ring over once more in his palm before slipping it into his own pocket—a small, deliberate gesture of carrying his son's mistake alongside him for a while, the way a father should have been doing all along."I'm going to withdraw from the council race," Voss said suddenly, like the decision had only just finished forming as he said it out loud. "Not because the story will end my chances. Because I don't think I should hold a seat built on the reputation I built by burying this."Silas studied him a long moment. "That's your decision to make. Not mine to weigh in on.""I know," Voss said. "I just wanted somebody to hear me say it before I lost my nerve."He walked back toward his son a moment later—the first real conversation between them in longer than either could probably remember waiting somewhere just ahead of this moment.That evening, as the fairgrounds began emptying and the last of the vendor tents came down, a smaller gathering formed near the Boone family truck. Grady approached slowly, hands in his pockets, uncertain of his welcome."I know I don't deserve to just be forgiven," he said to Ren. "I'm not asking for that. I just wanted to say it again without a crowd watching this time: I'm sorry for everything."