AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Well...no,” Erick said. “She didn’t do that. I get that you and your husband are both academics. Clover told me. I get that you worked your ass off for your education. I get that you think that’s the most important thing ever. But the money you gave your daughter for college was a gift. Gifts aren’t supposed to come with strings attached. It wasn’t a loan, it was a gift. She used that gift for a few years, decided she didn’t need the gift anymore and then she got a job in a field she loves. If you gave her a car instead of a college education and she drove that car three years, decided she didn’t want or need the car anymore and sold the car, would you be this bitter and angry? Would you?”
Val and David didn’t answer. They looked at each other, both of them seemingly daring each other to say something, but they had nothing.
“Thought so,” Erick said. “A gift is a gift. You all seem to think you gave her a fifty-thousand-dollar car and she got drunk and crashed it into your house, flipped you both off and ran away laughing into the night. She didn’t waste the education you gave her. She just found a different way to use it.”
“You don’t understand anything,” Val said. “Nothing at all about our daughter.”
“I understand that when she told me about the buyout offer on her business and I said, ‘I’m proud of you,’ she burst into tears because that’s all she ever wanted to hear from her family. You busted your ass to get a PhD. She busted her ass to build a business from the ground up. Clover makes good money, she’s a good person, she’s a smart businesswoman, and instead of saying, ‘Proud of you, Clo,’ I hear you all mocking her for not being married, not having kids and not having a college degree. Are you all so insecure about your lives that you’re threatened that Clover’s happy without doing what you all did? Is that it? Kind of sounds like it. Could you maybe look at what Clover has instead of what she doesn’t have? I don’t have a college degree, either. I framed houses after high school, then got my girlfriend pregnant when I was twenty. I started my own company so my family could have a roof over their heads. Not a promising start, either, but now I have a job I like and a kid I adore and a girlfriend I’m madly in love with. You don’t hear my parents telling me to get married and have more kids. They’re just happy I’m happy. And with Clover, I’m happy.”
“Erick?”
Erick turned around and saw Clover standing on the staircase.
“Oh, hey,” he said. “Sorry. I’m trying to get everyone to leave, I swear.”
“You’re madly in love with me?” she asked in a small voice.
“Yes, ma’am.” Erick grinned. God, it was good to see her.
She walked down the steps and he met her at the bottom. She threw her arms around him and he held her close and tight.
“I heard everything you said,” she whispered in his ear. “All of it.”
“Good.”
“I heard everything they said, too.”
“Don’t apologize. Not yet,” he said. “You can later if you need to but not yet. Let them stew.”
“Excuse me,” Hunter said. “We’re still here.”
Erick looked over his shoulder at Hunter.
“I see that. Why are you all still here?” Erick asked.
“I know how to get rid of them,” Clover said.
“Brew coffee?”
“Not coffee.”
Clover kissed him hard on the mouth. So hard and it felt so good. He kissed her back just as hard. They made a show of kissing passionately, almost cartoonishly.
“Clover Elizabeth Greene!” Val said in a horrified huff.
Erick sighed and let Clover go.
“Ladies and gentlemen of Clover’s family,” Erick said, “we’re about to have makeup sex. Probably on that couch. Maybe on the floor. I’d leave if I were you, but even if you don’t, it’s not going to stop us. Bye-bye.”
He gave a little wave, then grabbed Clover around the waist and pulled her against him dramatically as any hero in any old Hollywood movie. He kissed her and kissed her and kissed her, not dramatically this time, not putting on a show to send her family scurrying. He kissed her as hard as he loved her and he loved her as hard as he kissed her, so it was no surprise they were both breathless by the time they looked up and saw Clover’s family was long gone.
“Finally,” he said. “Thought they’d never leave.”
“Was I too hard on them?” she asked.
“You were incredible. Give them a few days to lick their wounds, then you all can talk it out calmly. But damn, you weren’t kidding. They are awful.”
“I wish I was kidding. I guess it didn’t bother me that much when it was me, you know. But hearing them go after you, and after Ruthie especially... I couldn’t stay quiet anymore. I erupted.”
