Chapter 471
Colton stood over the bed, looking down at Kristine’s unconscious face, his chest tight with a worry he couldn’t contain.
“Mr. Yates,” Faye said softly as she came back in with the dry clothes.
Colton handed her a towel without turning. “Look after her. If anything happens to her, you will answer to me directly.”
“Yes, sir. Understood.”
Out in the hallway, Victoria studied her son’s pallor, the hollows beneath his eyes. She felt both frightened of him and, despite everything, heartsick for him.
“Colton, you’re still unwell yourself. You need to—”
He kept his back to her. “Do you have any idea why Patsy and I were always so close?”
Victoria went absolutely still.
Patsy. Seven years had passed since anyone had spoken that name in her presence.
Colton turned to face her. Something in his eyes — cold, almost contemptuous — made her want to look away. “I suppose it makes sense that you wouldn’t know. To you, I was never a son. I was a tool you used to hold your husband’s attention.”
“Colton, that isn’t true—” She tried to hold his gaze, but her voice died the moment she saw what was in his eyes.
“When I was small,” he said, “you made me sit in freezing water to lure that man back home. I ran a fever. He didn’t come. You decided I wasn’t sick enough, so you kept me in the cold water for an entire day and night. I nearly died.” He paused. “You haven’t forgotten that. Have you?”
Victoria’s lips trembled uncontrollably.
No. She had never forgotten it.
It had happened in the fifth year of her marriage to Goodwin — the year she discovered that he had been unfaithful to her, repeatedly, with different women. Too proud to examine her own role in it, she had redirected all of that rage inward toward herself, and then outward onto Colton.
Back then, Victoria had convinced herself that the only reason her husband didn’t love her was because Colton wasn’t a good enough son.
So she had driven him relentlessly, filling every hour with lessons and disciplines covering every skill she could think of. He was only four years old, yet he stayed up studying until midnight each night and was back at his books by four in the morning.
In time, the effort produced results. Trophies and awards accumulated without end, and for a while Goodwin began coming home to them every day. Victoria took it as proof that her strategy was working and pushed Colton harder still.
Then Goodwin grew bored again and stopped coming home altogether.
She told herself it was because Colton still wasn’t impressive enough.
No matter how many trophies he brought home, Goodwin stayed away. Then one afternoon Colton fainted at his desk from sheer exhaustion, and Goodwin rushed home the moment he heard his son was ill.
That single visit planted a small, terrible seed of hope in Victoria.