Page 15 of She Was Mine First

He snapped, “That’s enough.”

I reluctantly gave in, biting my tongue.

“Sweetheart, I love you very much.”

Ugh! Great, now he’s guilt-tripping me.

“All I want is what’s best for you, and right now, attending one of the top schools in the world will set you up for life. Isn’t that what you want? To have a nice life? Like the one I’ve given you.”

“Being wealthy doesn’t matter to me like it does to you.”

“Oh, I see. You think that’s it? That I just want to be rich?”

I shrugged. “If the shoe fits.”

“You couldn’t be more wrong. Do you have any idea how hard I work to give you and your mother the lives you deserve?”

“I never asked for this life. I’d be happy to have you around more than to have you be a slave to your career.”

He jerked back.

“I’m not trying to hurt your feelings, Daddy. I’m just…” I lingered, trying to gather my words so that he could try to understand where I was coming from. “I don’t want to pick up my entire life and start in a brand-new state and town where I don’t know anybody. I’ll be completely alone, and I can’t believe you’d prefer that for me, just to keep me away from Ethan.”

“Elizabeth—”

“You know it’s true. Why can’t you just admit that to yourself?”

With a stern voice, he bit, “I don’t have to explain myself to you. I know what’s best, and that’s for you to attend Stanford.”

“Whatever.”

“We’ll just have to agree to disagree, understood?”

“I guess.”

He opened his mouth to respond, but the doorbell rang, cutting him off.

“Saved by the bell,” I muttered under my breath on my way to answer it.

When I did, I never expected who’d be standing there wearing a black tuxedo with a corsage in his hand.

Ethan

Livvy was oblivious to any attention thrown her way. The magnetic pull she had toward guys was unbelievable, and I spent most of her eighteenth birthday fighting them off at the club. Her natural beauty was a lure. They could smell that shit from a mile away.

Livvy knew I’d be out of town, and when she told me she wasn’t going to prom because she wasn’t feeling it, I knew it was a bunch of bullshit. Since we were kids, she talked about stupid high school stuff like the prom. She called them milestones and memories to last a lifetime.

I called her mom and asked her to buy her the gown I’d seen her save on her cell phone one night, and I took care of the rest. This year had been hard on her. She’d be moving to California at the end of the summer, and we’d start two completely different lives from one another for the first time since we met on the school bus all those years ago.

It was hard for me too.

I hated that she would be alone.

I hated that she would be so far away.

I hated that I wouldn’t see her every day.

The list of all the things I hated about her attending Stanford was endless.

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