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‘The guy’s in your employ and he’s … what?’ Luke continued, his own fury gathering pace. ‘Five years older than her?’
‘First of all, Lizzie is not a bloody virgin. She lost her virginity when she was sixteen to a toerag called Liam. And if ever anyone deserved a good kicking, he was the one. Not Trey.’
She tried to dismiss the sharp pang of guilt at the look of abject horror on Luke’s face. She’d known he was labouring under some delusions about his daughter’s true nature. Maybe she should have said something back in Tennessee. But really it had never even occurred to her to clue him in on Lizzie’s sex life. And she’d been right not to, she reasoned. What her daughter chose to confide in her father was her own affair.
‘But even if she was a virgin,’ she said, ‘she’s more than old enough to make her own choices. And if she chooses to kiss Trey in her own home, she’s entitled to do that.’
‘You call that a kiss?’ he sputtered, most of the wind sucked out of his sails. ‘It looked like a lot more than that to me. He had his tongue down her throat.’
‘And she had her hand down his pants,’ she shot back and saw Luke flinch.
‘Don’t remind me.’ He groaned, collapsing onto the sofa. ‘I’m never going to get that picture out of my head.’ He clutched his head in his hands as if he were trying to erase the image.
She spotted the abrasion across his knuckles, where they had connected with Trey’s jaw, and her temper ignited all over again.
‘And I’m never going to get the picture out of my head of you punching him in the face. And neither is our daughter. Or my son. The boy you told me not five minutes ago you would do everything in your power not to hurt. Well, guess what, Luke? You failed on that one at the first hurdle.’
She realised she was literally vibrating with anger now. But beneath the temper was the huge well of hurt. She’d trusted him. Just as she’d trusted him once before. And he’d failed her, again.
She should have seen this coming. She should never have been foolish enough to think for even a moment that Luke and she could have a future. This was her own fault, for allowing herself to be led astray again by feelings that were twenty years out of date.
‘I need you to leave, now,’ she said, a part of her heart ripping open when he stared at her through his fingers. All her foolish hopes of considering a future with him were exposed as the stupid pipe dreams they actually were.
His dark scowl had disappeared to be replaced by … what? Regret? Sorrow? She didn’t know, and she couldn’t let herself care. Luke had always been a lost cause. How many times was she going to be forced to face that fact before she finally believed it?
‘Don’t do this, Hal, not again.’ Luke stood, his legs shaky, the finality on her face tearing him to pieces.
‘Don’t do what?’ she said, the neutral tone scaring him even more. He could handle her temper, but nothing? He couldn’t handle nothing.
‘Don’t shut me out. We can fix this. We can fix this if we do it together.’
‘You must be bloody joking.’
‘I shouldn’t have hit him. I realise that. It was a stupid, irrational knee-jerk reaction, but it was a major shock to my system. I hadn’t expected to walk in here and find my daughter necking with some guy I don’t know on the couch.’
‘I know that. It was a shock for me, too. But you didn’t see me trying to hit anyone.’
‘Yeah, but it wasn’t as much of a shock for you because you’re a much bigger part of Lizzie’s life than you’ve ever let me be.’
He had tried not to say it, tried not to go there. But suddenly the unfairness of it all made him want to yell. So he’d overreacted. Gone off the deep end. He’d just had one hell of a rude awakening, discovering his little girl wasn’t his little girl any more.
But was that really all his fault?
‘That’s not true,’ she said. ‘I let you see her.’
‘For six measly weeks of the year.’ The fury grew to disguise the panic, the self-disgust. He flexed stinging knuckles and gave his resentment free rein. ‘Do you know what that’s like? To put her back on a train and know you’re not going to see her again for months? And when you do, she’ll have changed again and you’ll have lost another huge chunk of her childhood?’
‘But you never asked for more!’ Halle gaped at him.
‘Of course I asked for more. I asked your goddamn solicitor about reviewing the visitation rights a hundred times. And when he stonewalled me, I tried to contact you. But my emails bounced back. Your mobile always went to voicemail.’ He paced to the door. ‘The only thing I didn’t do was ask Lizzie, because the one thing I couldn’t bring myself to do was make her a go-between. So I had to pretend I was OK with the littl
e time you’d give me. Even though I could feel her drifting further and further out of reach as she got older.’
‘I didn’t know’ was all she said.
‘Why would you? You wouldn’t talk to me, remember.’
‘I told you I was sorry about that. What more can I do?’
