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“Oh, yes. Such a pleasant surprise.” My father continued to stare at me with his dead eyes. “Your mother tells me that you’re taking a break from your tour and spending some time in Orchid City.” He paused for a moment as he took a sip of his liquor. “It wouldn’t have anything to do with the Reign girl being back, would it?”
Of course it had everything to do with her.
I gave him a blank stare and shook my head. “Mom mentioned her parents left their estate to her while they were traveling.”
“Hmm,” my father hummed with indifference as he began to pick at his salad. My father was never fond of the Reign family. To keep up with appearances, he tolerated them and put on a show of being friendly. Deep down, he always viewed them as beneath us because Winter’s father didn’t agree with some of my father’s avenues of income. Because of that, he never liked Winter.
Awkward silence encapsulated us momentarily. I watched my robotic mother follow his lead as she began to eat her food. The ever proper, picture-perfect wife. God forbid she eat any of her food before he touched his.
Doris brought out the next course as we all continued to sit in silence. I hated it. I hated it all. This wasn’t where I belonged. I would have rather been eating a meal alone from a bullshit rest stop in the middle of nowhere on the side of the highway than sitting here with them.
“I just find it peculiar,” my father began again as he pierced his chicken breast with his fork. His eyes were back on my face as he slid his knife through the meat. “Are you sure that it’s purely coincidence that you are both back in your hometown at the same time?”
“Yes.” My voice sounded bored and monotone. Robotic, even—just like my mother. I cocked an eyebrow at him. “What are you implying?”
“Nothing at all,” he said with dismissal. “I can’t imagine this little break being good for your career.”
My jaw tightened and I fought the urge to roll my neck. My hands clenched around the silverware I was holding. I wanted to drive my fork directly through his crystal blue eyes. “It’s actually quite common amongst golfers,” I retorted as I politely kept my fork and knife to myself and cut through the chicken on my plate. “Research has proven that a mental health break can be beneficial to your overall game.”
I couldn’t tell him the truth. If I told him the truth about why my mental health was in the trash can, he’d find a way to ruin my career without any of my help. If he knew I was struggling to perform on the golf course because of Winter, he’d find a way to make sure I never thought of her again.
My father may have hated me and he may have wanted me to fail, but he didn’t want that strike against the Barclay name. There was a standard I was held to, regardless of his disdain for me.
My father’s lip curled upward and his nostrils flared. “I’m assuming that Edgar was the one who suggested that.”
Edgar Hastings was my mentor. He was the one who truly took me under his wing and taught me the game. He had taught me everything I knew, including how to not be like my father. He wasn’t put off by my ugly attitude or the baggage I came with. Instead, he embraced my flaws and taught me how to hone in my skills.
My father always hated him. He was highly respected in their circles and was still an extremely successful golfer himself. He was everything my father was not.
He disregarded me as he turned his attention back to his meal. His statement didn’t warrant a response from me. He knew damn well it was Edgar who suggested it and that I didn’t take his advice with a simple grain of salt. It held more weight than any other advice I had ever received in life because it was all in the sake of helping me to succeed, not fail.
I couldn’t help but feel like my father was always rooting against me. He was praying for my downfall. He wanted to see me fail.
“How was your day today, Charlotte?” My father turned his attention to her, although his tone was bored and he didn’t give two shits about how her day actually was.
“It was good,” she smiled at him. She didn’t elaborate on what she filled her time with, but everyone knew she was as much of a fraud as the rest of us. She sought her solitude in a bottle, although it was something she would never openly admit.
My father grunted, my mother was oblivious to the growing tension, and they both continued on with their food. I stared down at the chicken on my plate, half wishing it would jump off the table and run away. At least then I would know none of this was real. It was just a hallucination. A bad dream.
“Malakai,” my mother half scolded me as she watched me push my food around. I looked up at her, meeting her disapproving gaze. “Is there something wrong with it? I can have Doris make you something else.”
My nostrils flared as I shook my head. “That’s not necessary. It’s fine, there’s nothing wrong with it.”There was just something wrong with the company.
My father’s cold stare was now back on mine. “Don’t be a fucking prick, Malakai. Eat your goddamn food.”
Something took hold of me. The anger that had been welling up inside. He used to push me around and was an asshole while I was growing up. As I got older and met him in height, it turned into more of a fight because I wasn’t afraid to hit him back. It never made the situation any better—if anything, it made it worse. He was a more skilled fighter than I was, so usually it was still him that did the damage.
He may have chipped away at me and had broken me down over the years, but I wasn’t physically afraid of him anymore.
“I’m not hungry.”
His eyes were ice. “I don’t give a fuck if you’re hungry or not. Stop acting like an entitled brat.”
I looked over at my mother. Her eyes were off in the distance and she was dissociating from it all. A volcano of rage was building inside me, the molten lava spilling over the edges as the eruption began.
“Fuck this.” I let out a harsh breath as I abruptly pushed my chair back and it clattered onto the floor. The table shifted from my movement, splashing my mother’s red wine onto the table. She let out a gasp and my father was already on his feet. “This is exactly why I don’t come back here.”
“We never asked you to come back, Malakai.” My father’s tone was low, his voice harsh and frigid. “What a disappointment you’ve always been.”
