Page 77 of Playing With Love

I didn’t know how to answer his question.

That was my father.

“Twice you apologized when you had nothing to apologize for,” he fumed.

“It’s easier to apologize,” I told him, hating how weak that sounded. “He can be…”

“A dick?” Tucker supplied.

My mother’s voice popped into my head.

He’s a busy man, Liza. He provides us a nice home and fills it with nice things. You need to be mindful of that when you bother him with silly stories.

Those silly stories were me telling him about school or sports, or later about basic then my first deployment. One of those silly stories included my convoy being ambushed. That time, me wasting his time included a lengthy lecture about how stupid women were for ‘playing war’ with men.

My phone stopped ringing, the music came back on, Tucker turned down the volume, and prompted, “Lizzy, baby, please talk to me.”

Your father means well, Liza. He only wants what’s best for you.

I was done pretending I wasn’t in love with you.

He loves you in his own way.

Mine.

Tucker and my mother battled for supremacy in my head.

Mine.

Tucker wasn’t mad at me, he was angry for me.

Mine.

He’d heard.

“Now do you get it?” I asked softly.

“Get what?”

“Why I’m exhausted.”

Tucker glanced over at me. His eyes did a quick scan before they went back to the road. Then his hand lifted, palm up, and he softly demanded, “Hand.”

I looked down at my lap to my clasped hands. I didn’t know when exactly I’d removed my hand from his thigh or how I ended up clutching my hands together so tightly my knuckles were white, and now that my attention was on them, the webbing between my fingers hurt. And not just a little. My father had set me off to the point of actual pain.

I wondered over the course of my life how many times that had happened and gone unnoticed. I was so conditioned to take his apathy, which was nothing more than hostility in disguise, I no longer noticed how badly it hurt.

“Baby, hand.”

I pried my fingers apart and set my palm in his.

I ignored the flutter in my chest when Tucker brushed my knuckles over his lips and concentrated on keeping my emotions in check. If I let go even a smidgen, the floodgates would open.

“I got it last night,” he told me after he placed our linked hands back on his thigh. “I watched you deal with Frank’s incompetence, then I watched you take it from Greg. You explained it last night, but I still think how Greg treated you was bullshit. If nothing else, he should have enough respect for you to phrase his questions in a way that fosters collaboration, not put you in the hot seat. But, Lizzy, baby…” Tucker squeezed my hand. “What I don’t get is why in the fuck your father treated you to that bullshit and for some fucked-up reason it was you who was apologizing.”

That was the second time he’d pointed that out. It was also the second time he’d done so with fury tinging his question.

“I told you, it’s just easier to apologize.”