Page 93 of Keeping Score

“I guess,” I said. “Earlier in the day.”

“So, you had a bad day at work and then came home and he proposed?” Cassie asked. “That doesn’t sound like him, to do that when you were in a bad state of mind.”

“Well, I didn’t go home right after that,” I told her, looking away. “I couldn’t.”

“Where’d you go?”

“To my dad’s,” I said guiltily. “And, uh, it didn’t go well.”

Stupid, pathetic tears wet my eyes again, and I hated it. I was so sick of crying over a man who never cared about me. A man who I had tried over and over again to please, just to end up here, having pushed everyone away who actually cared.

“Oh, Maggie,” Cassie said, reading between the lines of everything I wasn’t saying. “What happened?”

“I basically came to the realization that everyone else beat me to a million years ago. He doesn’t care, and he never did.”

Cassie deflated, as if my pain hurt her too. I guess that’s how it worked having a best friend. You felt their heartbreaks with them. But you also felt their triumphs too. It seemed like a fair trade-off, in the end.

She dropped her head in her hands, shaking her head as she muttered, “No, no, no.”

I arched a brow at her.

“Why would Brody propose when you were in such a bad headspace?” She threw her arms up in exclamation. “I just don’t understand what that boy was thinking. I mean, of course you weren’t going to say yes when you felt like your entire world was crumbling around you!”

“Well, I didn’t exactly tell him.”

“About your dad? Or about work?”

“About any of it.”

“What?” she asked, bewildered. “Why?”

I knew it was hard for her to understand, considering she and Liam told each other everything. But I knew to be more guarded, especially when telling someone meant getting feedback I didn’t want to hear.

“Because it wouldn’t have made a difference! What would he have said? ‘I told you so?’ Because believe me, I know that everyone tried to warn me about my dad. I just…” I exhaled, “I thought I could make him care. I guess I’m as much of an idiot as everyone thought.”

“You’re not an idiot for wanting your parent to show you love,” she said, reaching out to grab my hand.

Cassie was the only friend who really knew me, and I guess that was my fault for never letting people all the way in, but I didn’t choose it with Cassie either.

No, that was all her. She came in with that wide-eyed innocence and sunshine-y smile and took her emotional pickaxe to my walls.

I was forever grateful to her for being the first to do it.

“Well, I guess I’m an idiot for thinking he was capable of it,” I huffed out a breath.

“Screw him,” she said, so uncharacteristically it made me giggle.

“What?”

“Yeah! Screw him. You’re brilliant and funny and the most amazing daughter he could ever hope to have and he doesn’t even see it. That’s his loss. Everyone else in the world sees you for who you are, Maggie. You don’t have to prove anything to him.”

Maybe not, but I had something to prove to myself because of him.

Because of how I felt when I was around him. Because of the little girl I’d been who had just needed her dad.

But I wasn’t the only one left burned by Timothy Brynn. And instead of being someone to lean on, I’d struck up the match and held it where it hurt to the one person who’d always been there for me.

I hurt Liam, and even though he acted tough and above it all, I knew him.