Page 114 of Privilege

Lucia glanced at her mother, but quickly went back to her father. “You know, I’ve tried for the last week to get you to understand, Daddy. I’ve explained over and over again that this is my life, and not yours. That I can see whoever I want, whenever I want, and you don’t get a say about it. I have let you tell me whatever you want, take away my things, and for the most part, I didn’t really fight you on it. But I’m done.”

“Excuse me?”

Standing from the table, Lucia caught Renzo’s form in the corner of her eye again as she grabbed the light jacket off the back of her chair, and slipped it on. It’d only been a week since she had last been with him, and yet she still felt like she had to look him over for any sign of a change. A week was too long to be away from him. Her heart hurt. She didn’t know how to explain it any better than that, but every day that passed where she didn’t get to see or speak to Renzo only made it worse.

Fuck her father.

Screw what he wanted.

Lucia was not playing nice anymore.

“I’m eighteen,” Lucia said, shrugging on her jacket, picked up her purse from the floor, and meeting her father’s gaze at the same time. “I can go where I please, and do what I please. I can be with whoever I want to be with, too.”

She didn’t miss the tension tightening her father’s shoulders under his suit at those words. She’d said these things to him before, but not with much seriousness. More like she was repeating shit to him that he should have already known.

Lucia wasn’t stupid. She knew her father thought he was protecting her, but he didn’t need to. And he was entirely wrong about Renzo, but he just didn’t care to understand or learn about the man she loved. Lucian was stuck in his feelings because he was terrified that what happened to her older sister, Liliana, might happen to her.

Because Renzo was the unknown.

He was not their kind of people.

Renzo was him, and his life didn’t have to be like theirs for Lucia to love him, and want to be with him. He didn’t have to be like them for her to know he was as good as he was ever going to get, and she wanted him just the way he was.

“While you are under my roof,” her father said through gritted teeth, “you will follow my rules, Lucia.”

She nodded. “Okay, so then I will leave.”

In her chair, Jordyn sucked in a sharp breath, but for the most part, kept her gaze on the table. Lucia knew her mom was silently hoping her daughter and husband would work this out on their own. That soon, this nonsense would pass, and they could go back to the family they had been before Renzo rushed into Lucia’s life like a tidal wave coming in from the ocean.

His wave picked her up, dragged her out to sea, and hell, she might be drowning, but at least she was going to go with him. That’s all she wanted.

She didn’t need them to understand or like it.

It was still going to happen.

“You’re going to move out?” Lucian asked, smirking a bit. “Really?”

“I don’t see why not,” Lucia replied, shrugging as she pushed in her chair at the table. “Wasn’t I already leaving for California, anyway? Were you going to follow me there to keep an eye on me, too, or …?”

“Lucia, be kind,” her mother said softly. “He’s your father, and—”

“Then maybe he should act like it, Ma!”

God.

She hadn’t meant to yell, and certainly not at her mother. Of all the people Lucia was angry with lately, her mother was most certainly not one of them.

“Sorry,” she quickly whispered.

Jordyn glanced up, and offered her daughter a small smile. “It’s okay, I know you’re—”

“A spoiled girl acting like a spoiled girl,” her father interjected gruffly. “Sit down, Lucia. You’re not going anywhere, and you’re certainly not going out there. I don’t care if I have to have someone come in here to watch you, and make sure you don’t move an inch. You will not be going out there to see that young man.”

Really?

“Fuck you,” Lucia uttered, turning for the door.

She said it. She was eighteen.