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Perhaps Mum hadn't known how I'd react at all, because she hugged me like she'd never expected to see me again. The whole family looked relieved I was there, and pleased to see Colton again as well.

Except Felix. He got up and moved to a chair right at the other end of the hall, sniffing and wiping his eyes and refusing to look up in case it meant looking at me.

'Don't worry,' Mum said. 'When things are back to normal I've got a little talk already planned for him.'

When things were back to normal. I could tell it wasn't true, but right then I fancied I was the only one secretly thinking 'What if they never are?'

'Hi Colton,' Mum said. 'Thanks for coming. You two can hold hands if you want to. When Oran wakes up, he's going to have to get used to it. That's just rule number one. Before he left, I...' she trailed off, realising the rest of the family were listening as well, most of them gathered round. 'Never mind,' she said. 'Let's just wait.'

What had she done? More importantly, what was she doing now? Thinking that whatever she'd said to him had somehow caused him to crash?

He didn't cause the crash, I thought. He was the one who was probably keeping his braking distance. Like he'd always warned Rocco about, and Alfie before him. Two second rule. That's what saved you life when shit hit the fan.

A doctor came out from the room I suspected contained my father. 'Mrs Aldrington? I'm Dr Wiseman. Could we talk in private for a minute?'

She nodded. 'You two,' she looked between me and Rocco. 'I want these two boys with me. Colton, can you keep an eye on the rest?' She looked down the corridor. 'Don't worry about that one. He wants to be on his own, let him.'

Colton nodded.

'I don't want to see him,' I said. 'Can we pick a different room?' I wished I hadn't said it, but I knew I couldn't go in there. I couldn't have told anyone why, or probably come to any kind of rationality about anything right then, and I was glad when Mum kept her brave face on.

'Family issues,' she told Wiseman. 'My husband's fault. Yes, pick a different room.'

Once we'd shut the door, we got what I hadn't expected: my father was unconscious and not in a coma. He'd come round. His heart had stopped during the emergency surgery to relieve the pressure in his skull and remove the blood on his brain, but they resuscitated him quickly enough for their to be no brain damage risk. The chances were reasonably good once his body had chance to repair the damage, but for the next two days they were going to medically induce a coma to keep his chances of a full recovery higher. One of legs was also broken.

'He managed to help two people out of a car with that?' Rocco said. 'Go Dad.'

'Adrenaline can deaden that kind of pain,' Wiseman said. 'But because of the pressure he put on the break when he didn't know about it, it's made the damage worse so re-aligning the bones was more difficult for the surgical team. The chances are he's going to walk with a limp, perhaps for the rest of his life. And there's a fracture across his hip that's going to take a good couple of months to heal.'

'Small price to pay,' Mum said. 'Come on then, let's tell the others.'

Alfie was there when we went back out.

'Well it's about time, young man,' my mother said.

Alfie didn't look like he had the last time I met him. For the first time I'd ever seen, he looked a little sad, subdued. 'I found out who the other two were,' he said. 'It was Glen and Forest.'

I didn't understand for a moment, until I remembered those names from one of Dad's poker nights. They were both bears. Brothers, in the trucking business just like Dad, and they'd always joked about who'd risk what to get a shipment there on time. They were a good ten years younger than Dad was, and had younger families just like we did.

For a moment even Mum couldn't say anything. 'He's going to be okay,' she said. 'Two days and he'll be awake.' She started crying. She probably couldn't see it was Alfie she was hugging, because Alfie never hugged anyone, even her. He did his best this time, and his best turned out to be pretty good. When she straightened herself up and forced herself to stop, as only Mum could force herself to do anything, she didn't even realise how unusual what had just happened was. 'Enough of this,' she said. 'Let's all go home.'

'Well hey, the fox is here,' Alfie said, noticing Colton. 'Can't we wait until the first thing Dad sees when he comes round is those two holding hands?'

'Oh really, Alfie. Didn't you just hear me? Two days, you stupid boy. I'm not sitting here that long and neither's anyone else.'

Alfie shrugged. 'Just as well he's coming back. Bet the fucker never remembered to renew his life insurance again last month.'

Colton clasped his hands to his mouth trying not to snigger and failing, his eyes wide. Rocco couldn't help himself either.

Mum didn't lose it though. She just stared him down like she always did. 'Unless it's a work rota, he's useless at remembering dates even with a calendar. I'm the calendar. So, you want to know what the one thing he never has to ask me to remind him about is, jackass? Or can you just guess if you're so smart? Because when you were living in our house, I often wondered why he provided one little goddamn thing.'

'Yeah, Mum. Sorry I wasn't just a cumstain on the window of a truckstop restroom somewhere.' He looked at the door. 'Can I go in there and see him yet? Coz I'll take any excuse to stay here tonight. I wonder why I provide a goddamn thing either.' Alfie went into Dad's room without waiting for the doctor, or anyone else.

Mum still wasn't fazed. 'Go on then everyone, laugh if you need to.'

'What's a cumstain?' Zelda said.

Colton gave my elder two sisters an awkward look and then shrugged. 'It's what you get when-'

'Colton,' I cut him off. 'Can you just help take these guys home now?'

'There's no need,' Mum said. 'Rocco and I will do that. You two can go home.'

'Maybe I should...' Come home and stay? Where was home supposed to be now?

Then I remembered what I'd told Colton about Mum knowing everything. It really wasn't possible, but it was like she knew all about our falling out, the near break up, all of it. Maybe her trick all along had been knowing how to say things in a way that made me think she knew it all. I didn't care. She was right. It probably wasn't my family who needed me that evening, or me who needed them.

'Todd,' she said, as I was just about to go. 'One thing. Come over here for a second.' She was going to whisper, but then decided to take us back into the empty hospital room. 'If he asks to see you when he wakes up, please come. However difficult it is. Because I think he'll be different this time. Or at least he'll try.'

'What did you say to him?'

She put her hands on my shoulders. 'I know Rocco told you your dad said he didn't want to find you here when he got back. Here's what Rocco didn't hear, because I cleared the house before I did it. I said "I'd have any of those boys in this house over you. If that's the way it is, don't come back yourself." He just laughed and told me I'd never manage. I know you were always afraid of him deserting the family, making us manage without his salary or him being there. So was I. Until right then, when he actually threatened to do it. Know what my final word was?'

I shook my head.

'I said "Oran, just fucking try me." He's in that bed over there because he didn't have the balls. When he wakes up lucky to have his life, we'll see what else he knows he's lucky to have.'

Woah, Mum. I couldn't say it, but I didn't need to. I'd heard her say fuck a handful of times in her life, mostly to do with cut fingers or burnt dinners, but never aim it at anyone. Even Alfie on his worst of days.

'Okay, I think you can handle a little something else.' She took her hands off me now. 'Alfie was right. He never remembered his life insurance. If he'd gone...well, we don't have to imagine it now do we? But _he_will be. You can count on it. And if he doesn't, I'll make sure he does.'

She'd been right too though: every year, Dad never needed her reminding him about that. He'd always said that if you had a job where there was danger, then you owed it to your family to provide and being dead wasn't an excuse. It was one of the first things he'd said when Alfie told us all he was going to be a father. He'd skipped congratulations, and the usual family stuff you get on news like that and gone straight for the practical stuff you didn't neglect. So why had forgotten this ti...

'Oh boy,' I said. 'He was meant to do it the day he threw me out. Right?'

'It was not your fault,' my mother said. 'Don't you dare go thinking that. I'm telling you because if it comes to it, I want you to use it. Hard. When you have that talk with him, use anything you've got and take no nonsense. I know some of the things you said to him that morning. You know why he kicked you out? Because you were winning. So do it again. Because what can he do to you this time?'

It would have been a good note to go out on. But being me, trying to process how she'd gone from the mother who'd told me always to obey my father to this conversation, I couldn't help one last question. 'Mum...do you still want to be married to him? Or have you been waiting for this kind of thing to happen for years and hoped it might be a reason for everything to change?'

For a moment, she looked like she might go back to Old Mum, then she nodded and straightened up. 'Yes, I still want him. Because I love him. Even though sometimes I want to beat him over his dumb great Alabama southpaw-raccoon head with anything I can grab.' She looked at the door as though it weren't there and she was looking right at Colton. 'I daresay one day you'll remember this and you'll understand.'

'Yeah,' I said with a smile. 'One day.'

* * *

Things seemed unusually calm in Colton's household that evening, as if they were being kept that way for me. We tried another swimming lesson together, and this time Colton managed to stay in despite his nerves. He watched me do laps from inside the pool this time.

I remembered my father once asking me what went through my head as I swam up and down. I think I told him stuff I'd learned at school that day, because it was true, but I'd always known it wasn't just that. After a session was over, I never remembered what I thought about, and that was a sign of how well I'd trained. The thoughts were just a distraction from the pain. Except that for the last couple of years I'd thought a lot about Colton, and other guys I liked, and even other girls I liked, not sure which was supposed to win out, except somehow I'd always known. My laps up and down hadn't been about what I was supposed to do about it, but what I _could_do. Or mostly couldn't. And all the couldn't had come down to what my family were supposed to think about it.

Tonight, all that was gone, replaced by how I felt like I'd chosen everything I wanted over them, when really it was just one of them. Had he really come back because he couldn't leave, or wanted to change, or was there just something he needed to say or do before he cleared off for good? It didn't matter, because the way I was feeling right now, he was going to stay and things were going to be different and it wasn't Mum who was going to make it happen, or Alfie or anyone. It was me.

Leash. Keep it tight. It wasn't Colton I wanted on it at all. It was like Chantelle had known the really, Colton was just my little rehearsal.

Drew Tarbuck was wrong: I didn't walk away crying and do nothing. When my father found that out, he'd remember that was exactly how he'd always tried to raise me himself. Maybe the worst thing I'd done all along was run when he threw me out instead of stay and face him down.

Second coming, motherfucker.

'What are you so stoked about?' Colton said, when I got out of the pool with him.

'You cooked my family waffles,' I said, ignoring him. 'Now can you cook me dinner.'

He actually did it, with no protest. Chilli, because it was all he could find the right stuff for, but damn he could cook. I imagined plenty of fights with his parents had been resolved by him cooking apology dinners, or talking things out with his mum while she showed him a recipe and how it all came together. Only when dinner was over and it felt like an early bedtime was in order did Colton catch me out, and drop my bravado without meaning to.

'You want the guest room tonight or are you keeping me company?'

Keeping him company? When I had ever thought of it like that? We either wanted to have fun or have sex or both, or eat good food or drink booze, or play video games, or jerk off to channel seven. Or talk about something serious in life, like our relationship needed a serious side. When had it ever been good old simple company?

'Earth to Todd-coon, anyone home?'

'I don't know, Colton. I just...okay, you. I'll sleep with you.'

I tried. I couldn't sleep. I tried not to wake him up with my squirming around, and when I failed I said sorry, and I'd move to the guest room.

'You've got the whole house,' Colton said. 'If you can't sleep, do whatever you want.' He was asleep himself seconds after saying it, making me insanely jealous that even he could switch his brain off.

I wanted a drink, I decided. Not just any drink either.

I pulled the duvet down from the spare room and set myself up on the couch, then got to work in the kitchen. How did Colton always make that Long Island iced tea again? I lined up all the gin, vodka, white rum, triple sec, can of coke, half a lemon and the crushed ice, and decided it was probably close enough, and destined to make me comatose if I mixed it in the biggest tumbler I could find and put three shots of everything in. There wasn't a tumbler big enough. So I gave up looking and used a jug, with a long straw. I even dressed it with an umbrella and stuck two macchiato cherries on it, even though they weren't supposed to go with it.

Under the covers, I turned on the TV and went for Chan Seven. Where Trick and Dolphin were scritching each other.

Oh man. For fuck's sake. Tonight of all nights, when I wasn't in the mood but just needed something to fall asleep to, and _this_was the night they finally did it? Trick was rolling Dolphin onto his back, with Dolphin's feet pressed against his chest, one of them right over his heart, both of them laughing. 'Okay,' Trick said with a naughty grin and a shrug. He took hold of Dolphin's ankles. 'Paw inspection.'

I shook my head, the boner I knew I'd do nothing with at all poking at the duvet. 'Damn,' I whispered, not sure whether to laugh or feel so, so sorry when I told Colton about this tomorrow. Trick was sucking Dolphin's toes already, my head still shaking at it. Too late to wake the fox up. Perhaps he should just never know about this. He'd have stared at this and come and not even known he'd done it, such was the power I imagined this would have had over him.

He'd never have to know that I'd wasted it, because I was too tired and mixed up in my head to want to even touch myself, let alone come. I should never have turned the idiot box on at all. Now all I could do was watch, until one of the other three, Sandy, came up and said 'Uh-uh, you two, this is way naughty, like the FCC are gonna tan our little butts naughty if you turn that paw play into raw play.' He looked at Trick's bulge. 'Those wet pants are not for him, Trickster. Have you forgotten that you're, y'know, like, br-'

'Yeah yeah Sanford, got it. And remember, we don't say it. Coz they all just a-guessin', right? Hi FCC!' Trick waved, a hand already rubbing his bugle. 'I got Dolphin's feet. Am I still good? Gonna help me here, Sandy-paws? Maybe talking with that mouth just aint what I need.'

Phew. Tonight wasn't the night. Nor did watching Trick get sucked off while his brother rubbed his back and spurred him on with dirty talk do anything to make me feel hot myself. I switched the channel, and hopped until I reached the news channel.

I soon wished I hadn't.

Pictures of the Highway 51 wreckage were all over the news. How the fuck my father had survived it no crash scene investigator was ever likely to know. I counted three trucks, all smashed up so hard a scrap yard couldn't have done a better job. The fire crews were still on the scene with the police, the highway still shut both ways, tailbacks for what now had to be at least twenty miles. Nobody had any answers, only speculation. Apart from one woman, when the went live to the hospital. She was bandaged up with crutches, but her daughter who looked about six or seven was there too, barely a scratch on her. Only a brave look on her face said she'd been in an accident.

'We were rescued by this raccoon with a southern accent who was real brave...' I barely heard the rest. They cut back to the wreckage and said the two dead truckers' names had been released. Glen and Forest Galveston, just like Alfie had said. Then some of Dad's workmates had their moment on the news, for their reaction. Because one of their own had survived, and been a hero.

Orson Kofax, a snow leopard from Alaska who Dad had known since his early days on the road was up. 'Oran Aldrington's the best driver I ever knew in forty years doing this job,' he said. 'We can all get a shipment in on time but there's nobody else who could've got out of that and saved a young mom and her daughter without thinking twice about himself. God bless Oran, we're really prayin' he wakes up, and for his wife and fa-'

I muted the TV, unable to turn off but looking down instead. When I got the volume back on, there were five others confirmed dead from the cars. The one that had veered across into the path of the trucks had barely had anything left of him to identify and they weren't releasing a name yet.

That's when I turned off. Because I couldn't see anyway. Not wanting to wake anyone up with my sobbing, I buried my head in the duvet, and then finding I soon couldn't breathe, I gave up and just sat there letting it go, barely finding breathing any easier.

My father was a hero? Fuck him. Nobody who knew what he'd done to his own son would call him that. Except they would. Because suddenly nothing he'd done to me mattered. He was still a hero. So why could he not be a hero to me anymore?

Why was I feeling like this when none of it should matter after a near miracle like this? If he'd died it wouldn't have mattered, because I'd be too busy saying I'd do anything to get him back, maybe even including accepting that he was right to shout at me for everything, if I could just have had one more day, and Drew Tarbuck never opened his dumb fucking mouth and had his own father make that phonecall, and maybe I told Dad myself and we somehow worked it out.

And then maybe one more day after that. And another, and another, until he passed at some old age when he was supposed to and he'd made peace with who his son grew up to be long ago.

I don't know how I didn't jump when I noticed Colton was in the room with me, sitting on the couch and getting under the duvet, but then I realised how slow time had become, because I'd lost at least an hour just by sitting there, thinking my way to more tears until I probably looked like I'd cried the Niagra falls down my stupid face.

Colton put his arm around me and with his free hand gave me a handkerchief. I wiped my eyes and blew my nose into it and then still didn't want to say anything. But that was okay, because Colton didn't either. He didn't even turn the TV back on.

I didn't try to sleep. There was no point. Because all I wanted to do was be with Colton and just sit here, waiting these feelings out. Just as I was almost drifting off anyway, I heard him lift my Long Island jug off the table. I opened my eyes and watched him try it. For a moment, he looked like I'd done it right, then looked puzzled, then smiled.

'You forgot the tequila, dummy.' He stroked me between the ears. 'That's the best part.' He eyed the kitchen door. 'Is it safe to leave your for a minute?'

'Go get my medicine,' I said.

He came back, my jug in his hand and the tequila in the other. He took a swig from it and set it down. 'You were going to drink this whole fuckin' jug yourself? Thank God I got here before you ended up choking on your own vomit.'

'You told me to do what I wanted.'

'Looks like I've gotta be as careful with that phrase as you have now.' He snuggled up and stuck a second straw in the jug. 'Shall we enjoy it or neck it like a pair of idiots?'

'Enjoy. Nice and slow.'

Colton looked at the clock. 'Shit. We've missed them.'

'I didn't,' I said.

'And you didn't even get wet? Damn, now I _know_you've got issues.'

'Trick gave Dolphin a paw inspection. Sandy had to break it up and give him a diversion-blowjob before he could go all the way.'

Colton looked pie-eyed, then laughed. 'Nice try, buttstuffer. Maybe you almost are a good liar now. You had the news on, didn't you? Your Dad was on it.'

'Yeah. But Dad's still gonna get some real news tomorrow.' I mimed the same thing Chantelle had. 'Sure, he's a hero. But there's a leash. And it's gonna be tight before he ever gets to be my hero again.'