Page 43 of Playing With Love

He was right, I had lied—repeatedly. To him. To myself. To good men who didn’t deserve it. I didn’t think it’d win me any points reminding him I’d tried to tell him the truth last night and he wanted no part of it.

He’d shut me down and shut me out.

Something I’d been on the receiving end of my whole life, something I never thought I’d get from Tucker. Knowing I’d done it to myself didn’t make it sting any less.

I was exactly who my father accused me of being—a coward.

“I tried⁠—”

“You tried,” he spat.

“Yes, Tucker. I called you last night to talk. You made it painfully clear you had no interest.”

“Right. You called me last night drunk off your ass to tell me you lied. This after I tried repeatedly to get you to talk. And your response to that, to me being a dick to you one time is to cut and run. You don’t even have the guts to confront me, to ask a fucking question, to call me out. You just bail. Again. The first time you did this shit to me, you got away with it. This time, I’m not letting you off that easy. This time, you’re gonna tell me what the fuck your problem is.”

My problem?

I didn’t have a problem—I had numerous problems. I’d done exactly what my father had predicted and made a mess of my life. I wasn’t even strong enough to stop reaching for his approval, hoping one day I’d finally earn the great Craig Monroe’s love and respect. Deep down I knew that day would never come, yet I still tried, only to get smacked back and told to leave him to his work, or his dinners with clients, or his vacations, or whatever else it was that my father did with his time that was more important than me.

“You want me gone. I’m giving you what you want.”

“Christ!” he roared. “What I want is for you to stop playing this fucking game and talk to me.”

At this point I would tell him anything to get him to leave. Absolutely anything to stop the pain. To stop my heart from hurting. If I thought my father telling me I was a waste of time hurt—knowing I’d pushed Tucker to the breaking point was excruciating. The only way to stop the agony was for him to walk away from me so I could run away.

Again.

Always running from my problems. I’d had years to build mental stop signs, then more years learning how to abide by the rules, to never roll through one.

But right then, with the need to escape Tucker, I sped through those posted warnings.

“I couldn’t handle it, you turning me down, the way you did it. So I ran. Didn’t even wait until morning. As soon as the door closed behind me, I packed. Checked into a different hotel across town, waited until my team was ready to roll out, and met up with them. At first I read your texts and listened to your voice mails because if that was all I was going to have of you I’d take it. Then I read and listened to them to punish myself for being such a coward. For not saying goodbye, for not accepting all we’d ever be was friends. I told myself I was doing the right thing. I told myself I needed to let you go so I could find a way to get over you and move on with my life. I told myself I had to do that because one day you’d find a woman who would be yours, and since you were my one, the man I knew no one could or would ever come close to being, I knew when you found her it would kill me. So I ran.”

In the face of his fury I went on.

“I didn’t think I’d ever see you again. So obviously I didn’t handle things all that great.” Understatement. “I panicked. I didn’t know what to do. You pushed and I lashed out.”

Tucker’s eyes narrowed.

“It was wrong… I was wrong. Then in my panic I lied and that was wrong, too. The more I lied, the farther I got pushed into a corner, and things snowballed. And now I’ve ruined everything. You hate me and I have to live with that, but what makes this worse is, you have to live with it, too. Everything we had, the memory of that is tarnished. So, yes, I’m running. Again. Because I don’t know how to deal with the mess I’ve made. I don’t know what to do with what I’m feeling. I just know it feels bad and I want it to stop.”

He had something to say to that.

“Did you stop to think that the way to make it stop would be to…” He leaned forward, lifted his hand, and jabbed a finger at his chest. “Talk to me.”

“No.”

“No?”

“No, I tried that two years ago. I put myself out there and it backfired in a big way. When rejection hits, I hide or run or both. That’s me. That’s who I learned to be.”

That’s just the way he is, Liza.

My mother’s words, words she’d said many, many times. A statement of fact that all these years later I still didn’t understand. A statement that was nothing more than an excuse to blow off my father’s behavior filled my head. The justification never helped, never made me feel any better, never made his rejection hurt any less until I learned to hide from it.

“Rejection?” he asked with less rage but no less irritation.

Oh no.