She took a step back. “Don’t talk to me like that. I mean it. You’re no better than my father if you think I’m going to stand here and let another man tell me what I can or can’t handle. I’m done with that. I’ve had enough.”
“It’s not nearly the same thing,” he said, pushing his hands through his hair. “Don’t get it twisted in your head. I’m not standing around letting anyone talk to the woman I love that way. End of story.”
“No, the end of story is this conversation. Out. I need to talk to my father.”
“No, you’re not going alone to do it.”
She growled at him. A noise that was unfamiliar to her ears, but she wasn’t backing down either. She couldn’t.
She didn’t need anyone to protect her.
Maybe she would have welcomed it years ago, but now, she was strong enough on her own and everyone was going to damn well see it.
“Try and stop me,” she said, brushing past him. He grabbed her arm, not hard, not enough to keep her there, just enough to get her attention. “What? Are you going to threaten to fire me too? I’m willing to bet your mother would side withme.”
She shook her arm loose and marched down the hall to her father’s office. Liz wasn’t in and she didn’t care if her father’s assistant was.
She closed his door with a loud click. “I’m not ready to talk to you.”
“Too damn bad. You’re going to do it,” she said. “Right now. Right here.”
“Nora, don’t push me,” her father growled. “This is what you caused and my job could be on the line now.”
Again, what he was worried about. All about him.
“You’ve pushed me my whole life. Every button I had, you popped it and didn’t even know. Didn’t see what I wanted from you and never could. That’s on you. But this, what I’ve got with Ethan. You don’t get to touch it. You don’t get to judge it or even comment on it. It’s nothing like what you think. Nothing like what you said. You know why?”
Her father leaned back and crossed his arms. “Looks like you’re going to tell me.”
“That’s right, I am. Because you don’tknowme. Not at all. You’ve never tried. Not once. But months ago when you called and said you wanted to reconnect, I thought, maybe now it was time. And I wanted to give it a chance. Not just for me or you, but for us. But here I am, wanting and waiting for you to care just a little. To give me something.”
“You don’t understand,” her father said, his words slower, as if he had to force them out. Or think of them more carefully.
“No, you don’t. You never will. I don’t know why I even tried. The only good thing that came out of me moving here was meeting Ethan. And if you want to look at it as something dirty, scandalous, or what was your word—a circus? Then that is on you. But it’s none of those things.”
The more she went on the louder her voice was getting.
She expected her father to snap at her to cut it out and not embarrass him again, but his face got flush, his lips tight, and his fist clenched at his chest where his arms were crossed.
“Nora,” he breathed out.
“Dad?” She rushed closer to him, but his eyes shut and his head went on the desk. She opened the door and shouted, “Call nine-one-one.” She’d left her phone on her desk when she stormed out. “Call nine-one-one!”
People came running. Ethan being one of them, rushed into her father’s office and tossed his phone to her to take care of it while he put Norris on the floor, on his back, and started CPR, and didn’t stop until the ambulance came.
37
KNOW THE DIFFERENCE
“I’m sorry,” Ethan said.
They were at Tuft’s in the waiting room. Norris had been brought in thirty minutes ago. Him without his car, as it was faster for them to walk the less than a mile than call an Uber or even grab his father’s car.
Nora was staring at the wall in front of them, not talking, not even moving.
He nudged her arm and she glanced at him. “What?”
“I said I’m sorry.”
