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My voice was small as I ignored his question and said, “I’m so, so sorry, Dad. I didn’t mean to hit you. I never wanted to hurt you. But you didn’t listen and Aslan...” I sat taller, swallowing down my choking regret. “Are you okay? Is your head still hurting? Perhaps, we should go to a doctor and—”
“My head is fine. I’m fine. You don’t need to apologise, and I don’t want to talk about me.” The wariness in his eyes morphed into self-hatred that he hadn’t been able to stop what’d happened. His face twisted and he suddenly exploded with everything he’d been suffocating on. “Neri, I-I’m the one who’s sorry. So unbelievably sorry. I’m so sorry I wasn’t there to protect you. So sorry you felt like you couldn’t tell me. So sorry I didn’t know in the first place. I feel like I should’ve known. How did I not know? How did I not see how much you’ve been hurting? I’m your goddamn father and my baby girl was fucking raped and I—” A sob cut him off. Twisting back around, he rested his hand on my mother’s thigh. “Anna. Stop the car. Now. Stop the fucking car.”
Mum threw him a look but seemed to understand. Flicking on the blinker, she pulled onto the small verge. Before she’d even stopped, Dad shoved open his door, leaped out, and threw himself into the backseat with me.
“Neri. Baby.” He grabbed me in the tightest, hardest embrace of my life.
The moment he touched me, I was his little girl again.
I buried my face into his chest and let my dad give me safe harbour...just for a moment. A single moment before I fought for Aslan.
His strong, comforting arms wrapped fiercely around me as Mum slowly veered back onto the empty streets, taking us home while everyone else was in a food coma, safe in their homes celebrating Christmas.
Dad pressed kisses all over the top of my head as he cradled me close, his voice breaking as tears wet his face. “I want to kill that bastard for what he did to you. I hate him and I’ve never even met him. All you’ve given me is a name. A name that’s on a loop inside my head. I can’t stop thinking about what you went through. Why didn’t you tell me, huh? I would’ve killed that motherfucker for you. I would literally do anything for you, Neri. Anything, do you hear me? I’d kill for you, little fish, and the fact that you kept it from me—”
“Jack...” Mum murmured from the front seat, her knuckles whitening around the steering wheel. “Give her some space to breathe, darling.”
“Crap, sorry.” Unwrapping his arms, Dad pulled away and cupped my cheeks. The way he watched me, with tears falling and grief glowing, I couldn’t do it.
I hated that I’d hurt him in so many more ways than just a bump on the head. That I was the reason he felt such remorse. Gripping his wrists and cursing the way his eyes went to the fresh bruises around mine, I whispered, “It’s okay, Dad.”
“None of this is okay,” he gasped around his sadness. “Nothing will be okay again. He hurt you. He hurt my baby and—”
“And Aslan kept me safe.”
“Aslan?” Dad stiffened and pulled away from me, his hands dropping into his suited lap. “That’s right. Him. The bastard I found on top of you. You say it wasn’t him who raped you, but he was hurting you just the same. I saw the state of your room. Saw him about to—”
“I’m in love with him. I have been since the day we found him.”
A black cloud darkened his face. “You mean to tell me he’s been touching you since you were twelve?”
“No. He didn’t lay a finger on me until I was seventeen. The night I broke up with Joel was the first night he kissed—”
“That was almost six months ago!” Dad raked both hands through his hair, pressing himself against the door. “Bloody hell, Nerida—”
“We were only fooling around. We didn’t sleep together until the night I was raped.”
Wow, you’re really laying it all out there.
“What?” Fury carved deep tracks through his forehead. “You mean to tell me he made you sleep with him the very same night some bastard raped—”
“It was me who asked him.”
Dad grunted as if I’d punched him in the gut.
I winced at how many private secrets I was telling my parents. I’d had no intention of sharing any of this, but...I would fight with whatever weapon I had to ensure Aslan still had a home with us. That Mum and Dad treated him no differently than they had before. They loved him just as much as I did. I needed them to remember that.
“He didn’t want to, Dad. He tried to refuse. But I begged him. And just like you would do anything for me, he would tear down the sky and gift it to me if I asked him.” Tears pricked my eyes. “He’s so respectful, Dad. So kind and good and pure. I-I needed him to make it all go away. And...he did.” I sighed and linked my fingers, willing the drive home to end so I could breathe air that wasn’t throbbing with tension.
“Wait a minute.” Dad held up a shaking hand. “I thought you said you slept alone on The Fluke that night. That Aslan didn’t join you until the next day. You guys returned home together—in my borrowed Wrangler no less—gushing with stories of Aslan going diving for the first time.” His brow furrowed. “I just assumed Aslan left to meet you that morning before we were out of bed, but now you’re saying—”
“She lied, Jack,” Mum murmured, seeing between the lines of what I wasn’t saying, just like any intuitive mum would. “He never came home that night. You called him from the party, didn’t you? Aslan went to get you. That’s why he asked to borrow the Jeep, darling. He didn’t go grocery shopping at freaking ten p.m. He went to get our daughter. And we went to bed not long after, so we didn’t hear if he came home or not.”
“Is that true?” Dad strangled. “Did you call Aslan instead of me?”
I shifted in my seat and faced him, preparing to hurt him all over again, and perhaps, offer a tiny shred of salvation. “I didn’t have to call him,” I whispered. “He knew. He knew I was hurt and came after me.” The tears that’d tickled the back of my throat slowly dripped down my cheeks. “He said he felt me, Dad. He felt that something was wrong. He found me as I stumbled from Zara’s. He thought I was drunk and told me off, but then...he went quiet as if he sensed something had happened. I told him I couldn’t go home; I wouldn’t have been able to hide what happened, and it wasn’t until we were on The Fluke together that he saw my bruises.”
A cry caught in my throat as I recalled how he’d looked. How his gorgeously handsome face had shattered. How his knees had buckled. How he’d fallen at my feet with crystal tears spilling over his dark lashes as he kissed my feet and wrists.
