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“I guess I understand,” he said like he didn’t at all.
“We’re good,” I said softly, and watched my dad’s focus intensify on my face. “I like him a lot.”
“I can tell,” he replied in my tone.
“Did you like him?”
“He takes no shit, and he doesn’t sit back and let you take it either. And that was when you were fake.”
I shot him an apologetic smile.
“I’d worry about this fame and the attention that brings,” Dad continued. “But you’re catching up to him in that regard.”
At that, I grinned.
“I’m lucky. I’ve never had to tell my girl to be smart,” he said. “She always is. But please guard your heart,shayna punim, because I can’t always be there to do it for you.”
Oh my God.
I totally loved my dad.
I swallowed my emotion, but my voice still held it when I said, “I love you to pieces, Dad.”
“I’m glad, because that’s how I feel about you.” Then he winked mischievously, looking moreDadthan he had since I sat down. “And I won’t tell your mother, sister and brother about the fake date. I was at brunch with your sister when she scrolled through the pictures on your website of the gala and saw the one of you and Hale. And obviously I don’t play favorites…”
“Obviously,” I drawled.
“But I found her reaction amusing.”
For the first time since I got there, I laughed.
And my heart still hurt, my mind was still reeling, but I sure was glad when he laughed too.
CHAPTER14
ALL THE TIME. CONSTANT.
Hale
Then…
“Tell him to go fuck himself,”his mother said into the phone, and Hale knew she was talking to one of his dad’s attorneys. “That’s my time this year and I’m not allowing Hale to go to Thailand with him. Tell him, not a fucking chance.”
On that, she hung up.
Hale sat at the kitchen table, struggling with the variety of emotions he was feeling.
The first part was about the fact his dad had mentioned he was going to Thailand, and Hale had asked to go with him. For once, Corey hadn’t hesitated. He’d looked him in the eye and said, “I’d like that.”
Hale wasn’t close to his dad. He’d given up on that forever ago (and the official date on that was when Corey had barely made it to Hale’s championship baseball game, a hugely important game for Hale, and Corey showed up in the final innings—that day he was done with his dad, and he was done with baseball because it reminded him he was done with his dad).
But he was excited about the idea of going to Thailand.
So, it might be stupid, but it felt good when his dad had said, “I’d like that.”
The second part was, he wanted to go so he could surf. It’d be freaking amazing to surf in Thailand.
Third, he was sixteen years old, practically a man, and his mother didn’t ask him what he wanted. She just saw an opportunity to deny his father something he wanted, and she jumped at the chance, not giving that first shit what Hale would like to do.
