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Waiting for my dad to come home.
Waiting for some kind of plan to magically appear.
I’d set out on a mission to find Dante and tell him. But instead, he was none the wiser and my dad knew everything. Well, not everything…but he knew enough.
Blowing out a breath, I stretched my legs out, trying to get comfortable on the sofa. I was restless, needing this to be over so I could finally relax. But that was the thing, I didn’t think I’d ever relax again. There were too many what-ifs and uncertainties. My life felt like it was on a roller coaster that had no brakes, going up and down, around and around, with no end in sight.
I just…I just wanted people to understand the connection that I already had with what was growing inside me. Surely my dad felt the same way when my mom was pregnant?
My chest heaved, my breath stuttering out of me as my gaze moved to above the mantlepiece where a photograph of my mom sat front and center. She’d know what to do. She’d know how to talk to Dad and make him understand. She’d have all the answers.
Stroking my stomach, I tore my attention away from the photo and to my growing bump. There was no way I was giving up my baby.
My baby.
It felt so weird to think that, yet it also felt natural. Like I was always meant to be here. Fate had spoken up, she’d chosen this for me, and there was no way I was going to turn my back on any of it.
Everything happened for a reason, right?
Huffing out a breath, I let my head fall back. I was fed up with thinking, fed up of going over every little thing to think of something that would make this different. But the reality was, nothing would change the way other people felt. The only thing I could do was control my reaction to them.
Picking up the clicker, I then pressed the buttons, shuffling through the channels on TV, trying to distract myself while waiting…waiting…waiting for something,anything.Then finally, I heard the rumble of his car engine on the driveway.
My thumb clicked the off button, then I placed the clicker gently on the arm of the sofa, sitting there frozen to the spot.
This wasn’t going to disappear, I knew that now—I’d always known it—I just hadn’t been able to face up to it. But now too much time had gone by, time that I couldn’t take back. Time that I didn’twantto take back.
The scrape of the key in the lock was like a bomb going off in a silent building
He was home.
I turned on the sofa, staring out toward the stairs and the front door opposite them. Seconds ticked by.One, two, three. The door swung open, revealing the man who’d raised me, the man who had been there for me every step of the way until my mom had passed. After that, he was a different version of the man I knew.
But as he looked at me, still standing in the doorway, I realized he didn’t see me as the daughter he’d raised. His stare was that of a stranger.
“Dad,” I greeted, my voice small. I didn’t move off the sofa, just stayed in the same spot, my stomach hidden behind the sofa cushions. But that didn’t stop his gaze veering right down to it.
“Navy,” he grunted back, slowly stepping inside and closing the door behind him. “I wasn’t sure whether you’d be out with Zara.”
“No.” I shook my head, but he couldn’t see it because he’d turned his back to hang his jacket—the blue one with yellow letters on the back that told people what agency he worked for without having to say a single word—next to the front door. “I’m too tired.”
His shoulders tensed at my words, his back still to me.
There was no point beating around the bush. We could make small talk all day long, but it still wouldn’t change what was happening, or what he’d said to me.
“You’re getting rid of it.”
I’d never allow that to happen, not as long as I had breath in my lungs and blood running through my veins. I’d fight him every step of the way.
“Right.” He slipped off his shoes, taking his time. He didn’t want to face me, and if I was honest, I understood it, but it didn’t mean it hurt any less. He was supposed to be by my side through everything that happened in my life, the one person who I could always turn to, but now…now I felt farther away from him than I ever had.
“Dad,” I whispered, waiting. I needed him to look at me. I needed him to understand that just because he said something, didn’t mean that was the final answer. He didn’t have control over what would happen here. He’d never have that control. “About the other day…”
“Not now,” he grunted, turning toward the stairs but then veering left to walk down the hallway. He was going to his usual spot: the refrigerator for a beer. He’d done that same thing for as long as I could remember.
I could let it go. I could sit here and not say anything or I could go to my room and wallow in self-pity as I tried to figure it all out on my own. But I wasn’t that kind of person. I wouldn’t let it go, and he knew that. He knew I couldn’t keep my mouth shut, not when it came to something I believed in. My opinions got me in trouble more times than I could count, but I wouldn’t stop. I believed what I believed, and there was nothing or no one that could change that.
So, I pushed up off the sofa, wincing at the ache low in my back as I maneuvered into the kitchen. “No,” I said, standing in the doorway. “I’m not letting this go, Dad.”
