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“Doing what?”
“Putting me second!”
He blinked at her as if he still didn’t understand.
“Nick broke my heart, Dad! Heusedme, and you let him. All you saw was his future and how it played into your own. You’re too selfish to think about how your actions affectyour own familythat you don’t even see that you’ve chosen Nick over me at every step. Your own daughter!”
She could not describe the dam bursting inside her as a sudden event. More like an unstable wall riddled with holesshe had been plugging for years finally gave way from too much damage. The pressure behind it nearly knocked her down.
He took a breath in an effort to calm himself and regain control of the conversation, but Gemma was not going to let him have it. “Gemma, I didn’t know that he mistreated you—”
“Well, now you do, so what are you going to do about it?”
“I—” he started, and stopped.
In truth, Gemma wasn’t sure what punishment was fit for Nick’s transgressions, but she wanted her father to do something,anything, to stand up for her. Just once.
Roger Peters rarely got flustered. Decades of making and breaking careers in a cutthroat industry had hardened him like a stone. He knew his footing and was ruthlessly sure of himself. But he currently looked as if Gemma had punched him in the stomach.
He took a step back, his face pale and awash with what might very well have been guilt.
Gemma had never seen him wear the expression, so she wasn’t sure how to categorize it. She hardly had time to name it before it shifted into a soft, yielding look that made her think that she was going to get a long-overdue apology. Her mind flitted to the possibility that perhaps arriving on her father’s doorstephadbeen an opportunity after all. Aunt Clara—whose visit felt like eons before by then—had mentioned seeing reconciliation during her reading. Was it possible she had been right?
Her father cleared his throat with a shake of his head. He drained his glass with a large gulp and set it on the speaker still playing Gemma’s favorite Nigel Black song. He wipedhis hands together and folded his arms, looking resolute. “I’m sorry to hear your relationship with Nick is over. He is an incredibly talented artist, and it would have been a mistake for me to pass him up.”
Gemma’s heart shattered. The delicate hope she had held in her hands moments before died on a single breath. She thought she would have been used to it by then, the disappointment like acid in her chest, but it was no less painful at thirty-two than it had been as a child.
The bitter, dark laugh that popped from her lips surprised her. But maybe her emotional reservoir for her father had finally run dry and cynicism was all she had left. “Is it worth it? Is all this worth it? I mean, I can’t fault you for wanting to be successful, but at what cost? You’ve driven away the people who loved you and what do you have to show for it? A big, empty house and a few million records?” She undershot the number on purpose and didn’t miss his flinch.
His jaw clenched like he wanted to correct her, but he kept his mouth shut.
“You know,” Gemma went on, trusting her anger to keep her voice from breaking, “what hurts the most in all this is how I keep hoping you’ll change. Patrick told me he wanted to meet today so he could try and fix us, whatever that means, before he moves to Africa. But I don’t see how that’s ever going to happen if you can’t learn to think of anyone but yourself.”
She gave him a chance to say something, but he silently gave her a look that was more stubborn than sorry, so she turned to show herself out.
The cut on her finger smarted like a physical reminderof the damage to her heart. She felt each pulse ache all the way to the core of her as she walked to the front door.
She didn’t know where she was going, but she knew she needed to get out. The tears boiling behind her eyes threatened to fall. She had to leave before they could.
The day felt unfairly bright, the chipper hills showing off in shades of green with pops of fuchsia bougainvillea against the clear sky. Though she knew she hadn’t been inside long enough for the weather to change, she felt like she should have walked back out to storm clouds and rain, given her mood.
She opened the rideshare app to request a ride back to her car at the radio station and saw that she would have to wait fifteen minutes. She had time to kill and nowhere to do it. Jack probably had a movie star wrapped around some part of his body or another. She didn’t want to see him anyway, even if she had spent half the day falling for him and he was the nearest person who could possibly give her a hug in that moment. She both needed to be alone and could not bear the thought of it.
She decided to call the one person more learned in being disappointed in Roger Peters than she was. She exited her father’s gate and leaned against the stone wall. She pressed her phone to her ear and waited for an answer.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Mom.”
“Gemma, sweetheart. How are you?”
“I’m—” Her voice cut off in a tearful choke, as if the presence of her mother even from 350 miles away was enough to let her guard down.
“What’s wrong?” Lynn immediately picked up on it. Her tone slipped into one that was soft and concerned.
Gemma took a steadying breath and tried to funnel all the emotion from inside into an intelligible summary. “I just had a pointless and frustrating conversation with Dad.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Does that mean your brother made it home?” She heard her mother’s voice shrink away like she’d lowered her phone to check for a missed text announcing Patrick’s arrival.
