Page 65 of Revere: A Legacy Novel

“I’m not—”

“Not intentionally,” Catherine interjected fast. “I know that, but you will. You will want me to be okay, to talk and talk and talk, or to forgive you. I am not ready to. I need to take time and figure out how all this makes me feel. Or how it changes the things I thought I knew.”

“Changes what things, exactly?”

“Things like Cross.”

Dante’s gaze narrowed. “That man—”

“Is not your concern,” Catherine interjected firmly. “He’s my concern, and that’s it. It’s for me to deal with, and I want you to let me do that.”

“No, I think it would be far better for you—and the rest of us—if you don’t see Cross again. Not at all, Catherine. Mentally, he’s bad for you. We’ve all seen where it takes you. No one wants you to go to that place again, and certainly not me. In fact, I want you to stop seeing him. I’m not requesting it. I’m demanding it.”

Catherine’s anger over being told what she could or could not do spread through her body like a wildfire. Still, she managed to hold it back from spilling out. She would not let it consume her and devastate when it escaped from her mouth in the form of words. She loved her father too much to hurt him that way.

“You don’t get a say,” Catherine said simply, “not after this.”

“Excuse me?” Dante stood. “Catherine, I don’t make demands of your life. I never have. On this, though, I will not budge. You are not to see that man after today.”

“It’s not your choice.”

“Catty, it is for your best interests.”

“I’m a grown woman who can decide what is in my best interests.”

Dante stood firm.

Catherine didn’t move an inch, either.

Catrina cleared her throat behind them. “Dante, maybe we should go.”

“Not until I’m finished.”

Catherine shook her head, and spread her arms wide. “This is my home. My apartment, Daddy. Not yours. You don’t get to finish if I don’t want you to.”

“And you are my daughter!”

“What I said remains the same.”

“I told you what I told you,” Dante said, a warning ringing loudly in his words.

“Yet, it means nothing to me,” Catherine replied. She put her back to her father, ready to ask him to leave and be done with the whole conversation and day. “Had you not did what you did to him, I wouldn’t have thought he left me again. He didn’t have to be with me to love me; that’s something you can’t possibly understand. Except when I found him gone, I thought he didn’t love me at all anymore. That was your fault, not his.”

“Would he have ran if he really loved you?”

Her father’s words felt like a slap to bare skin. Still, she stood still and refused to move. She didn’t want to look at him, so she kept her back turned to him.

“Wouldn’t you have run, Daddy?”

“What?”

Catherine’s gaze met her mother’s. Catrina, always calm in the middle of a storm, kept her expression blank. She could see her own pain and sadness reflecting in her mother’s eyes, though. Still, Catrina’s silent strength was a pillar for Catherine. It was something she strived for. It was one of her mother’s greatest qualities.

“It’s okay,” her mother mouthed to her.

He can take it.

You can say it.