Chapter 64.

The Test.

October 6, 2020.

It had been over half an hour since the standoff began.

Owen was starting to lose hope that there could be a peaceful resolution. His enemy of clever and iron-willed, ruthless in his tactics. He had no mercy, no empathy. His reign of terror was playing on a loop, with no end in sight, wearing away at the stone walls Owen had built to keep him at bay. But the situation had come to a head, the last bricks tumbling in his wake.

It was the hard way, or surrender.

Collin was in his booster seat, refusing to even let himself be unbuckled, angry tears spilling over his pretty blue eyes. It had been half an hour since they had arrived.

"Still waiting?"

Derek came around the side of the van, putting a hand on Owen. He was trying to hide amusement behind a serious expression. "Just fight through it."

"If I wanted advice I would ask."

"Right." Derek smiled, giving his shoulder a squeeze. "I guess you guys can just camp in the van tonight. Might be a little dangerous with all these coyotes around."

"Coyotes," Owen snorted.

He crossed his arms, leaning against the side of the van with his chin tucked into his chest. Collin had a peculiar way of doing things and a general dislike for Owen, despite the progress he had made with Oliver Brightly. It seemed that progress was limited when it came to his own father. Owen had, admittedly, not put much effort into it either. He was so sick of rejection that he passively avoided the boy. It was not hard on the night shift. He was so busy and tired all the time that the two of them could grow apart in the same house.

He felt guilty for it, especially now, but his son was getting older. He craved a relationship with him. He wanted Collin to love him the way he loved Cristina – and he wanted to get away from the growing resentment he felt for the boy. He had never imagined that being a father could be so hard. It was supposed to be simple – you love them, they love you back.

"Come on, Col," he said. "You have to get out. Bailey is here. He wants to play with you."

He rarely spoke to Owen, usually only to ask him for a snack or to reach something on a high shelf, but if Collin had said something at that moment, it would have been a request to go back home to his mother. She was one of the only people he was really close to, apart from Bailey.

"Just yank him out," Derek suggested, ever the annoying voice of reason. "Carry him down the trail if you have to. We need daylight to get to the campsite."

"Would you relax? It's only three."

Derek braced his hand on the booster seat, "Do you want me to do it? I can do it."

"No, I don't want you to do it."

Bailey popped up between them, "I can do it!"

Owen looked down at the kid, blonde-haired and dark-eyed, a perfect blend of his parents, and thought that the boy looked more like Collin than even Owen did. He stepped back from the van. "Go for it, little man."

"I need you to step back," Bailey told the adults, making a 'shoo' gesture with his hands.

Derek shook his head, taking a big step back and folding his arms. "More and more like his mother every day."

Owen made a circle around the parking lot, rubbing the budding headache away with both hands. He should have known his expectations were too high – Cristina tried to warn him. She had been preparing Collin for this trip for days and it was still going to be a disaster.

When he made it back to the van, though, he was impressed to find Collin standing outside of it, holding Bailey by the hand and looking at the woods.

Derek was smiling at the two of them. "Shall we get started?"

It was an easy hike, but the two curious young children made it long and arduous. Bailey stopped to look at every bug and Collin was attached to him at the hand and showing no signs of letting go. Both boys were decked out with reflective rain coats and hats, squishing their equally blonde hair down, making them look like brothers. Other hikers smiled and stepped out of the way of their procession, giving the two adults strange looks.

"I think we just became the gay couple with two sons," Derek said.

It was nearly sundown, as Derek had predicted, when they made it to an acceptable camping site. Derek and Owen set the tents down and got to work while the boys ran around collecting firewood.

"You know, this is already going much better than our last camping trip."

Derek was crouched across from him, smiling, holding two pieces of a tent pole.

Owen was working on getting his ceiling up. "You mean the one where you almost got us killed by going off the path and falling into a ravine?"

"Yeah, that one."

"If you keep saying stuff like that, the bears will hear you."

Bailey appeared, a pile of sticks in his hands, but he dropped them at that statement. "Bears? Daddy, are there bears out here?" He was somewhere between horror and fascination.

"Black bears," Derek said. "But we also have bobcats, cougars, coyotes, and maybe even wolves."

Bailey did a little jump, scattering his sticks. "Awesome!"

"But if we're lucky, we won't see any of those things," Derek concluded, pulling Bailey into his chest and trapping him with the tent pieces. "Here, help me put this together."

Owen watched them laugh and play as they assembled their tent. It was supposed to be like that. Sure, the two of them butted heads sometimes, but at the end of the day, Bailey treasured his father. Owen had spent the years watching the boy grow up. He was envious of their relationship, and guilty that he felt that way.

He tried to beckon Collin over, "Hey, buddy, do you wanna help put our tent up?"

Collin shook his head, looking at the bundle of woods in his arms, sullen now that Bailey was otherwise occupied.

Owen tried again. "I can show you how to put those together, to make us a campfire."

He shook his head again.

Owen put his tools down and stepped closer, crouching in front of the boy. "Come on, Col, give me something. Give me anything."

He tried not to notice Derek watching him, tried not to feel the shame of being rejected by his own child, but some things could not be swallowed. He liked to think he was strong enough to handle it, to accept that he might never get to where Derek was with Bailey, but he was stubborn and proud. He kept telling himself that he could do this.

He tried again.

"Do you wanna see if we can find some deer or squirrels in the woods?"

Nothing.

"We could go find some bugs."

Nothing.

"We could look in the river for fish."

Nothing.

Owen took him by the shoulders, a little forcefully, because Collin had a tendency to pull away from being touched. "Use your words. What do you want to do?"

Finally, the boy moved his mouth, but said nothing.

"What?" Owen leaned closer. "What was that?"

His hope blossomed.

And quietly, almost too low to hear, Collin mumbled, "Mommy."

Owen was briefly overwhelmed by frustration. His hope died. He said, "Mommy isn't here. You have me. You have daddy. Daddy wants you play with you too, sometimes, okay?"

Collin pursed his little lips, murmuring again, "Mommy."

"Baby, Mommy isn't here. Mommy isn't here. It's you and me."

Now the boy shouted, "Mommy!"

"Col, can you just-?"

But his voice was all over the place now. Collin looked at him fiercely, blue eyes burning with tears, and shouted over and over, "Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!" until his voice rang through the forest.

Owen kept trying to break through, "Collin. Buddy. Col, come on. Collin."

It went on, until Collin was almost hoarse from the screaming. It was this behavior that scared Owen the most, the reason he wouldn't wrestle the boy from the van, the reason he no longer volunteered to be the one to bathe him or tuck him in or take him to the park.

He finally let his frustration out, shouting, "Stop!"

Collin stopped, staring at him wide-eyed, because it was the first time in a long time that Owen had yelled at him. He had gotten so many allowances from his mother, so much patience and understanding, that this completely shocked him. And then the tears came. They welled over, falling down his cheeks, and he started wailing like Owen had slapped him. He crumpled.

Owen put an iron wall up, letting the boy go and standing up. He threw up his hands, in frustration and as a sign of surrender, and looked at Derek. "I'm going for a walk. Watch him, please."

And he left. He left the kid crying and went on a walk down the river.

He was only gone for a little while, because his sense of responsibility for his son overpowered his anger. He found Derek and Bailey making the sticks into a vague campfire shape. Both tents were fully assembled.

"He's in your tent, sleeping. All that caterwauling pooped him out," Derek said.

Owen nodded, peeking in the tent at the sleeping five-year-old, and then taking a seat near the newly erected campfire. It was quiet for a while, like the three of them had an agreement that they shouldn't talk about what had happened, but eventually Derek spoke.

"Is it always like that?"

Owen responded dryly, "Usually Cristina deals with him."

"But you have to watch him sometimes, when she's working."

"It's different then. He's waiting for her to come back. This is new." Owen gestured around, trying to encompass all of 'this' in one motion. "He doesn't understand."

"We could cut the trip short, if you want. I mean, a week is a bit much for our first time, and all that walking might-"

"No, no. We're doing this. We're doing it. We just got off to a rocky start, is all."

Derek watched him for a long, long moment, that annoying sharpness in his eyes. When they first met, they had not agreed on much. Derek was stubborn and prideful, and Owen was all twisted up inside. But somehow they had become brothers. Derek had been there for him over the past year, helping him deal with losing Henry. It was months of backyard barbeques, of joint surgeries, of having someone to call at three in the morning when the pain threatened to overwhelm him.

But it was a double-edged sword. Derek was looking at him with pity, knowing too well what this was doing to Owen – he was going to try to help, even though Owen would rather not talk about it at all.

He was merciful for the moment, just saying, "If you're still in, then so am I."

Owen nodded gratefully. "Thanks for all of this."

"I've been begging you to go on this trip for years."

"Maybe if we live through it, we can take the girls next time."

Bailey wrinkled his nose, "No! Boys only!"

Derek put a hand over his mouth, "Shh. Mom will hear you and ground us both."

Owen smiled, glad he was here despite how poorly the first day had gone. He told himself that it would be better in the morning. Collin just needed to detox from his mother. He just needed to get away from home, away from the safety net that was always under him.

Maybe they both did.