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All talk. Big talk. Confident talk. Talk that I had believed, to the very core of me, was the truth.
My father was a monster.
But he was also my father.
He was the man who’d cheered me on from the sidelines at soccer games. Who had pulled me into his arms every night when he came home from work, smelling of expensive cologne. He had read me bedtime stories. Put Band-Aids on scraped knees.
That couldn’t be erased. No matter how much I wanted it to be.
Especially seeing the man he was now.
He didn’tlooklike my father.
My entire life, my dad was always put together. In expensive suits, ties, loafers. And when he wasn’t in those, it was pressed polos, shorts, immaculate sneakers. Not a hair out of place. Not a wrinkle or stain to be seen.
But he was in a tee shirt. A wrinkled tee shirt. There was a red splotch below the collar that looked like ketchup. His chin was covered in stubble. His eyes were bloodshot, hair mussed and much too long.
His sneakers were scuffed and dirty. And he’d lost at least twenty pounds. His arms were scrawny and pale.
The effect of seeing my father like that hit me square in the chest. Seeing him at all would’ve rocked my world, but seeing him like this filled me with concern. Pity. He looked so small and weak. Except he wasn’t weak. Not when he’d used his power, influence and strength against my mother. Hate bubbled up in my throat, battling with love, regret, horror, disgust, pity, heartbreak.
“Vi,” he greeted, his voice raspier than normal. Something about it was lacking. Cold.
I stepped backward when he moved as if he was going to embrace me. Even from the distance I’d created, I could discern that he didn’t smell like expensive cologne. He smelled of sweat and cigarettes.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded.
He winced at my tone and the way I recoiled from him.
It hit me somewhere deep. Someplace inside me that hadn’t been hardened by the truth of who my father was. Something inside of me that was soft, innocent … a little girl who missed her Daddy.
He rubbed the back of his neck, looking downward in shame. “I-uh, I just wanted to see my precious Violet.” His voice was uncertain as he looked up at me.
Rage burned hot and low in my belly. I folded my arms. “Oh, how sweet of you,” I replied with a bite. “What would you like to do? See my house? Meet my roommates? Go out for dinner? Catch up on old times?” Sarcasm dripped from my tone. “And by ‘old times’ I mean my entire childhood that my mother spent hiding bruises and injuries from the piece of shit husband whobeat her!” I shouted.
People walking past stared. I was making a scene in the middle of the quad, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. Suddenly, that little girl inside of me didn’t want her daddy. She wanted to scream, stomp her foot, throw a tantrum in a way that only a toddler can … having not been conditioned to deftly hide their feelings beneath a veneer of lies.
My father opened his mouth.
“Don’t,” I stepped forward. “Don’t utter one single excuse or self-pitying explanation.” My eyes trailed up and down his body. “Not that you can sink lower in my estimation.” I blew out an angry breath. “You tried to kill my mother.You spent years torturing her, controlling her, beating her.” I found that I had been waving my hands and had begun jabbing my finger into his chest. I felt the real and sudden urge to attempt to rip him apart with my bare hands and a smaller, mortifying urge to fall into his arms.
Instead of doing either, I intended to push past him, find the nearest bar that didn’t card and drink myself silly.
But my father grabbed onto my wrist. His hand was both cold and clammy, and his grip was too hard.
The scent of his body odor had me scrunching up my nose.
“Violet,” he pled, squeezing my wrist enough to hurt. “You need to listen to me.”
My heart stopped pumping so quickly, and my fury was deflating fast, running out of me and giving way to those more complicated feelings of loss and longing.
“You need to let her go before I kill you with my bare hands and traumatize all of these privileged, young coeds,” a voice boomed from right beside me.
I jumped, my hand still held captive by my father. Obviously, I was not expecting my father to show up to my college campus, but I most definitely was not expecting Elden, complete in a Sons of Templar cut—it later occurred to me I’d never seen him out of it—standing in the quad, staring daggers at my father while literally threatening to kill him.
My father’s eyes flared at the sight of Elden, his hand squeezing tighter so I let out a little whimper of pain.
Elden’s fury turned palpable, and he stepped forward, looming over my father, making him look impossibly small and pathetic.
