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I need to get drunk. Really fucking drunk. So everything else vanishes into the background, and I can forget for a while. She could have died. Dead. Gone forever. The thought alone is like someone wrenching my soul from my body.
Fucking Mackenzie.
I don’t know why I thought things would be any different between us after what happened. Somehow, I’d convinced myself she had changed, that her cool, aloof attitude was only an act. I’d thought she might have allowed herself to be vulnerable now we know her secret, but I’d clearly been wrong. I said I was sorry. What the fuck more did she want?
She has no idea how hard that was for me, to tell her I was sorry. I don’t think I’ve ever apologized to anyone in my whole life. And to tell her that I care about her, only for her to throw it back in my face? Well, fuck her. She deserved what she got. It isn’t my fault her mother is as fucked up as my dad.
My bedroom door bursts open, and my dad stands in the gap. “I see Mackenzie and her mother are back.”
I glance away. “Yeah, worst luck.”
He misses a beat. “What the fuck did you just say?”
“I tried to apologize to her, but she wasn’t interested.”
“Yeah, I wonder why. You fucked up everything, Dom. Do you know the kind of work I’ve had to do to make sure that little piece of information you decided to share with a whole church full of people doesn’t get out?”
I shrug, trying to pretend I don’t care. Ultimately, my plan failed. I’d thought Lucia would take her daughter and run, but instead, it had only made my dad more protective of her. Of them both.
“They’re staying,” he says. “After the shit you pulled, you should be the one to leave.”
I rise from my bed and get to my feet to face him. “Is that what you want? Are you finally admitting what I knew all along—that you’re replacing me and Mom with them?”
“They don’t act like fucking assholes,” he snaps. “What the hell were you thinking? You and those two idiot friends of yours.”
“I already told you. They had nothing to do with it. It was all me.”
“The three of you don’t do anything without the others knowing about it. I don’t believe you for a second.”
“Believe what you want. I don’t give a shit.”
He shakes his head in disgust. “Grow the fuck up, Dom. Whining and crying about being replaced. You’re going to be twenty-two next month. You’re a man, not a little boy anymore.”
I grit my teeth and manage to hold back from saying what I really want, which is that my mother was my mother, no matter what age I am. I could be forty, and it would still kill me that I don’t really know what happened when she got behind the wheel of the car and went over the bridge. Was she alone, or had someone been in the car with her, but had managed to make their escape from the water? What had she been doing, driving off in the middle of the night? These thoughts torment me, and I turn them over and over, searching for an answer that never comes.
Words escape my lips. “Maybe I’m only the kind of man I am because of who I have as a father.”
“What the fuck did you just say to me?”
I remain silent, fixing my gaze at a point on the floor just past his feet.
“Speak,” he demands.
The tension ramps up with every passing second. He’s furious, and I don’t even care.
He storms up to me, and shoves me in the chest. I stumble a couple of steps but don’t react.
“You’re pathetic,” he growls. “Picking on two women.”
I remember Mom, and finally my gaze snaps up to his. “You’d know all about that, wouldn’t you, Dad?”
His fist connects with my cheekbone, sending my head rocking on my neck. I stagger but manage to stay on my feet. I don’t fight back, though. I stand still, my feet grounded, fully aware a second punch is coming, but doing nothing to avoid it. I deserve everything I get.
I want my physical pain to match my internal one.
“Is that the best you can do?” I taunt.
“Little shitbag.”
