AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Shivering, I get to my feet and step inside. I don’t see Dad in the living room, but he materializes at my door a moment later. “All set?” he asks.
“Not really,” I admit. “But I don’t have much of a choice.”
He walks over and sits down on my bed. He’s developed a limp over the last year. Neither one of us knows where it’s coming from. I’ve suggested some physical therapy, but money has been tight and my father is as stubborn as they come.
“It’ll be strange, going back.”
I’m not sure if he’s come to comfort me or if he’s come to me for comfort. A little bit like the blind leading the blind here. “I know,” I say. “It’s going to be weirder seeing Cee again.”
“You’re going to have to see them together.”
I throw him a sharp look. “I’m aware.”
“I’m just saying—”
“Dad!” I say firmly, cutting him off.
“I can’t just pretend I don’t know.”
“That conversation happened a long time ago,” I remind him. “And I don’t… How I felt back then is not how I feel now.”
“Oh, honey.”
The way he says it, the sympathy in his tone, the pity in his eyes—it all makes me want to cry. It makes me want to turn back the clock and not say all those things I’d told him back when I was still pregnant with Adam and I was terrified of doing it on my own.
* * *
Dad found me sobbing on the floor of our new kitchen. My tears fell into the cracks between the tiles and disappeared into the grout like they’d never fallen at all.
“Taylor! What’s wrong? Is it the baby?” He sank to his knees in front of me and took my hands. “Do I need to take you to the hospital?”
“No, it’s not the baby…”
“Then what is it?”
Things had been hard for us since we left. The first year of our self-imposed exile was filled with passive-aggressive tension. He was angry with my choices and I was angry with his.
“I…I just miss him.”
I hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but after the words slipped out, I felt relieved. It felt nice not to have to hold that in anymore.
“Taylor…”
I pulled my hands out from under his. “I don’t expect you to care. You hate him.”
“I just know the kind of man he is.”
“No, you don’t,” I argued. “He was your boss; you don’t actually know anything about him. But he was different with me. He opened up. He could be sweet…kind…”
Dad grimaced. “How could you, Taylor?”
“How could I what?”
“Fall in love with a man like him?” he explained. “Didn’t I teach you anything?”
“The only thing you taught me was to be afraid of everyone and everything!” I pulled myself up to my feet. “If you could have locked Cee and I away in a tower, you would have.”
“Maybe Ishouldhave.”
