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I took her hand and squeezed it. “I promise we’ll talk about all of it. When you’re more able to do it. In the meantime, your only job is to focus on getting healthy and strong. Okay? Can you do that for me?”
She nodded slightly, her eyes still closed. “I can do that. For you.” She drifted off to sleep.
I squeezed her hand and then went back outside to the waiting area where my father was. “She’s sleeping now,” I said.
“That’s the best thing for her.”
“She said you told her that you forgave her.”
“I did. Truth is, I forgave her a long time ago.”
“I know you did, Dad. Why didn’t you tell me that you wanted to give her another chance when she came back ten years ago?”
He shook his head. “I couldn’t. You were so full of anger and resentment. You were only fifteen, and my first duty was to you, my daughter.”
“If you’d told me…”
“No. I hold no grudge against you, Jade. I made a vow to you when your mother left that I would care for you, that I would be both parents to you, and that you would come first. Your needs would come first.”
“Maybe it would’ve helped me to have a mother when I was fifteen.”
“As much as I loved Brooke, she wasn’t ready to be mother to a fifteen-year-old girl. It would have made things worse. And there were no guarantees that she would stick around, no matter what she said. I couldn’t take the chance she would do that to you again.”
“Yeah, she might’ve left again,” I
said.
“Exactly. And that would’ve hurt you even more. No, I couldn’t do it. As much as I wanted to be with Brooke, I couldn’t.”
I gave my dad a hug. “I’m so sorry, Dad. I’m so sorry you couldn’t have the woman you loved because of me.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for. You were my focus, Jade. You were and still are everything to me. Sometimes I miss you so much I can’t see straight.”
“I miss you too. But I’m not that far away. You can always call or text more or come and visit.”
“You know I hate phone calls. But I think maybe I will visit more often.”
I pulled back from a hug and smiled. “I’d like that.”
Chapter Sixteen
Talon
“The human instinct to survive is strong.”
My mind kept flowing back to Dr. Carmichael’s words.
“You may have thought you wanted to die during that horrific month you were in captivity, but inside, in the very essence of you, your id—the uncontrolled part of your personality that contains your basic and instinctual drives—you wanted to survive. You wanted to live. And that’s why you said those words. To survive.”
“But I hated myself every time I said them,” I countered.
“Humans often do things they hate to survive. You’re hardly the first to do that.”
Deep down, even hating my circumstances, had I truly wanted to survive?
“But what about the news article? I went back in to rescue those people, knowing full well I could get my ass shot off.”
“Maybe your instinct kicked in again, your id. You thought you were going into it to die, but instinctively you dodged fire and pulled others out. Your soldier training kicked in. It was instinctive.”
