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“He wouldn’t have killed me. It would be nice if you had some faith in your fiancé, Phee,” Ethan says as he drives too fast into town. We’re late to meet his parents, and he’s got a bruise forming along his jaw he’ll have to explain.
“His mother just died, Ethan. Give him a break.”
“She died half a fucking year ago.”
“Are you serious?”
He glances at me, deep green eyes intent. His blond hair flops over his forehead, making him look younger than he is. Kinder than he is. “He just drives me fucking insane.”
I reach over to brush the hair away and touch a tissue to the cut to wipe away dried blood. “You do the same to him.”
“Whose side are you on, anyway,O?”
Ethan hates that Silas had a pet name for megrowing up. I sigh and sit back against my seat. “It’s been a really long, really hard week, okay? Can we just take a break?”
He glances over, then reaches his hand out to squeeze my shoulder. “Yeah, sorry. How are you doing?”
I shift my gaze out the side window. “They gave him the maximum sentence. He’ll be 66 when he gets out of prison.”
“What he did to my dad, Phee, to all those people who trusted him, it’s inexcusable.”
I look down at my lap, ashamed by my father’s choices. His actions.
“Ah shit,” Ethan says, putting one arm around my shoulders and pulling me close as he parks the car. He kills the engine and turns to face me. “You know I don’t want to hurt you, and I know that’s hard to hear, but you have to face the truth. Your father stole from his investors. From my father, his supposed best friend. And then he tried to drag my father down with him when he got caught. My father, who by the way treats you like a daughter. Didn’t he pay for your schooling?”
“The way it all happened, the about-face, the plea?—”
“He took the plea deal because they had him cornered. He’d be spending twenty years in prison if he hadn’t. The truth always wins. You need to accept that.”
I have nothing to say to that.
“Dad’s never once looked at you differently and in exchange, he’s only ever asked you—asked, not insisted, I might add, but asked one thing for your own protection. Cut off ties with that man. Forget him. We are your family now, Phee. Us.”
“He’s my father, Ethan. And he’s all alone.”
“God damn it, Phee! Enough!” He punches the steering wheel, and I jump. “Shit.” He shakes his head, scrubs his face. “I’m sorry,” he mutters into his hands. “I know this is hard. I know, baby.”
Baby. I remember the first time he called me that, and I remember what came next.
I touch his shoulder. Ethan means well, I know that. He, too, is in a tough place between me and his parents. “I know what I have to do,” I say, looking at Ethan, his handsome face tired beneath the street lamp. “I know what your dad’s done for me. What your whole family has done. I do.”
He nods. “I know you’ll do the right thing.” He winces when he smiles. I’m sure the hit Silas got in hurts. His smile makes his cheeks dimple and softens his eyes. That softness is so different to Silas’s stone exterior. After all he’s done for me, there’s a part of me that wishes it was when I looked into Ethan’s eyes that I felt butterflies take wing in my belly. But wishing doesn’t change reality.
“Looks good on you,” he says, touching the engagement ring he gave me a year ago, the ring I only slip on just before seeing him or his family.
“Thanks,” I say, my stomach tight. Dad doesn’t know about the engagement. I’ve kept it a secret, but it will have to come out soon enough, although the wedding won’t be for a while.
We haven’t even set a date. I’ve been dragging my feet, and with all that’s going on, Ethan’s been patient. But now that the trial is over, and I’ll be finished with school in June, I’m running out of time. I do see how my thought process is troubling, to want to buy time before being committed to the man I will spend the rest of my life with. The man I will eventually have kids with.
I shake my head, and Ethan opens his door to climb out. He comes to my side to take my hand as I’m getting out.
“What did Silas mean?” I ask, stopping before going inside. “When he said your father gets the whole company?” Mr. Fox bought into the company Dad had started from nothing back when Mom was alive. Dad had been a construction worker who became a developer of real estate for both low-income families and, eventually, luxury second properties for the wealthy. He used the money from the high-end sales to keep costs to a bare minimum for the lower income families. It was his way of giving back.
Dad didn’t come from money. In fact, he and his mother had been homeless for a few months. I think that’s what kept him so down to earth, so kind. When he made his millions, he made sure to share it.
Sullivan Fox’s investment took the company to another level and allowed them to build even more houses for the poor as well as properties for the wealthy. The paperwork was signed, and the joint venture official a year after the Foxes moved in next door. Knowing this makes it that much harder to swallow Dad’s plea, his admission of guilt. He was never a greedy man. Never. It makes no sense that he’d have stolen that money.
But maybe it’s like Mr. Fox says. People change.
