The Love Story (The Things We Can't Change Book 4) (25 page)

Maybe it’s you that’s not worthy of me… Maybe I don’t need you after all.

I always knew Evie would realize she could do better than me. The echo of my dad’s words, fueling me on. She would realize she could do better than someone from the gutter, who would never be able to rise up to her level.

So it’s what I had expected. What I had wanted, no less. So then why do I feel like a piece of shit? Why do my eyes sting? Why do I feel numb and shaky all over, unsteady and as though a rug has been pulled out from underneath my feet?

Because, I suddenly realize as we’re finally excused, I hadn’t planned on
feeling
any of it. I had thought I could go back to my old, hard self that never felt. Never let anything affect him. I’d thought I would be impervious to losing Evie, completely undisturbed by the loss of her in my life.

But the problem is, I’ve
never
been unaffected where Evie is concerned. I’ve always felt for her, cared for her. It’s why I avoided her so hard last spring. Why I didn’t want to get involved in any of this.

Because Evie has more power over me than she will ever realize.

Because I love her.

My heart seems to explode at the words, white hot and beating far too fast at the realization I’ve been running from since our very first date. It doesn’t matter though. None of it matters. Even though I love her, it doesn’t change the fact that I would have lost her eventually if I’d let this go any further. Just as I’ve lost everyone else.

But
fuck
, it hurts. Seeing the look in her eyes, hearing the words in my mind over and over again. I walk home on autopilot, not realizing until I stumble through the kitchen door that I’ve come
home
home, not to Uncle Alex’s.

Right now, I don’t really care. I’m trembling all over like a freaking crack addict going through withdrawal. Maybe that
is
the problem. Maybe Evie is my drug and now I’ve realized I can’t even take little hits here and there, despite knowing that it’s bad for me. Bad for both of us.

I lean against the door and close my eyes, willing my erratic heart to slow down. I need to go draw. Holy hell, I need to get upstairs and get all of this roiling mess of emotions out of me and onto paper so I can finally think clearly. Or maybe not thinking would be preferable. I can’t even think clearly enough to decide.

“What the hell happened to you?”

I open my eyes and am presented with the sight of my dad standing in the doorway of the kitchen.
Damn.
I should have realized right away from the lights on in the kitchen that he was home. I want to punch something, kick at the door, but I use all my willpower to resist the urge. He’d flay me alive if he saw.

He’s wearing worn, paint-splattered work jeans and work boots with an equally faded black T-shirt. His hair is a little too long and there seems to be a lot more gray there than last time I remember seeing him. I feel a twinge of guilt and squash it ruthlessly. Mad at feeling any sympathy toward him, I go instantly on the defensive.

“Like you care,” I shoot back.

Just like Evie earlier tonight—I must be fine-tuning my ability to piss people off to their limits with just one phrase—my dad’s eyes narrow and sparkle with fury. His lips thin and his fists clench. We’ve never actually come to exchanging blows before but a few times we’ve almost hit the line. I’m feeling so filled with emotion that this could easily dissolve into one of those times.

“Don’t take that tone with me,” he grits out, and points at the kitchen table. “Sit down.”

The time honored phrase. It’s his usual introduction to our fights. I always have a tone, never mind the one he always takes with me.

I open my mouth to fight back, all emotions fueling me into total carelessness. Nobody wants me around, not Evie, not my dad, even my friends are fed up with me lately. Why not burn every last bridge in a single night?

Before I can think of an actual retort, my dad continues gruffly, “And I do care. I love you.”

I couldn’t have been more surprised if he’d actually taken a swing at me. He says it in the same angry, irritated voice he always uses with me, no gentle emotion whatsoever. But it’s still the first time he’s said it to me since… I can’t even remember when.

I’m so shocked all words fly out of my head and I’m struck speechless. We stare at each other for a full minute. I finally take a step to the left and sit down in a chair, hard. And then I continue to stare because I have absolutely no response for this.

Dad finally loosens his fists, his body sagging out of its stiff, angry stance. He runs a hand over his hair, which is starting to curl at the ends just as mine does when it gets too long, and then rubs at the scruff on his face. “Maybe I just… haven’t done a damn thing to show it lately.”

“Or ever,” I say, realizing that anger is still simmering just below the surface. Or maybe it’s bitterness. Bitterness that
now
, all of the sudden, my dad looks ready to have some kind of heart to heart. He should have done this long ago.

He’s staring at me and somehow I know he’s reading my mind, even before he says, “Go on and say it. I already have an idea of it. I think it’s long past time that you and I cleared the air.”

I don’t hold it back. With all the rage and emotion inside me, it feels good to get some out. “
Now
you want to get all mushy on me?
Now
you want to sit here and talk about our feelings and problems? Really, Dad? Maybe you should have thought of this when Mom left and Cindy and I didn’t understand and needed you. Or maybe when Cindy won all her dance awards and competitions. Or maybe the first time I was arrested. Or maybe we should have talked after Cindy died. But now, when my girlfriend breaks up with me—because you were right about her not wanting anyone from the gutter, by the way—
now
you want to talk? I’m sorry, but it’s a little too late in my book.”

I expect him to yell right back at me. Just like he always does. I’m stunned when he doesn’t. He just moves slowly forward and sinks into the chair opposite mine. He looks sad. Sad and deflated, somehow smaller and older than I’ve ever seen him.

This all feels wrong, too much emotion and I want to flee. I want to get the hell out of here. But I have a burning, raging curiosity to see what he has to say next.

“I didn’t handle your mother’s leaving well,” he says bluntly, tactless in his usual way. He’s fidgeting and won’t meet my eyes and I can tell he’s intensely uncomfortable with all of this.

I am too. My whole body is tensed up, ready and wanting to flee. But I’m curious and I also know he’s right. We’re long past due for this. I hate it, the emotions it involves, but I stay seated. I don’t have to accept it. I don’t have to agree. But I need to let him talk. Evie would skin me alive if she heard I didn’t let him talk and I didn’t listen, broken up or no. It’s that thought more than anything that keeps me in my seat.

“I don’t think any of us did,” he continues. “I don’t think there’s any way to handle something like that
well.
You just… keep going. You and Cindy needed me. Your mom was always the one who had that kind of relationship with you. I didn’t know what to say or do with the two of you. So I didn’t do anything and I let both of you deal with it in your own ways, which certainly weren’t the best. I always called you selfish and in that time, I think your thoughts were. You never seemed to realize that I’d lost her too.”

I open my mouth to protest because this seems like too much. I had been fourteen. I’d just inexplicably lost my mom. What the hell had he expected?

Dad holds up a hand, speaking before I can. “I’m not saying it as an excuse, only an explanation. It will never excuse what I did, or didn’t, do. You were young and hurting as well. As a parent, your kids come first. That’s the choice you make when you become a parent. You have to become selfless, put their needs completely above your own. I failed you.”

Your dad lost her too, did you ever think of that?

Evie’s words, forgotten practically right after she’d said them. Obliterated by sun and sand and her kiss outside the apartment. But she’s right. I never did think about my dad. About how he lost my mom too.

I think how I feel right now, torn down the middle by Evie’s words. How would it feel to go through that with no words? Just a note saying,
I can’t. I’m sorry.
I feel one big roiling mass of emotions, my skin stretched to its limits by holding it all inside too small a space. But I can’t run away. I can’t draw to make it go away. I have to sit here and feel it. And feel it I do. Every last damn thing.

Especially the guilt that has crept it.

“You’re right.” It falls from my lips without my meaning it to, loud in the quiet house.

Dad stares at me and we sit in silence again. I can’t say which of us is more surprised by the admission, which is more stunned that I actually said such a thing. I can’t recall ever telling my dad that, not ever before in my life.

I clench my fists, under the table so he won’t see and so I can hide the fact that they’re trembling. I hadn’t wanted to say anything. I want to just sit here and listen, nod my head and escape. I don’t want to share any part of myself, just let my dad say his piece if he felt he needed to and then run. It’s clear to me now, however, that he
is
right; this talk is long overdue, not just on his part. On mine as well. And thanks to Evie, I can handle the emotion enough—if not with complete control—to have this talk.

“You’re… right,” I say again, though this time on purpose and it gets stuck a little coming out. But I say it without mumbling. “I didn’t think of you. I was young but I wasn’t as young as Cindy. I should have thought about the bigger picture. About how we all lost her. But I was too hurt by it all to care about anyone else, until Cindy needed me. I didn’t see, or at least I didn’t care, that you needed me too. We all needed each other.”

He scrubs a hand over his face wearily, rubbing at tired red eyes. The tension and discomfort is coming off both of us in waves, both ill at ease with such honest, emotional talk. This is incredibly hard without one person being unafraid and pushing the other. We have to force it out all on our own.

I have the sudden, crazy thought that I wish Evie was here to mediate this. That she was here to smile gently at both of us and nudge my foot under the table whenever my words got stuck on the way out. But she isn’t. And just as she had to stand up for herself on her own, I suddenly realize that I have to get through these kinds of things on my own.

“I was rough before I met your mother,” Dad admits. “Alex and I… our own dad wasn’t around much. Alex worked through it, got a good start early on by finding a place at the club while he was still in high school. I got into trouble, just like you. It wasn’t until I met your mother that I took a turn for the better, settled down and got a job. Mostly to prove to her I was worth something. It’s part of why I don’t—didn’t—do well when you got into trouble yourself. All I could see was you following the same path I did. But your mother was always better at talking to you about… anything. I just panicked, every time.”

“I noticed,” I say dryly, and to my surprise, we both chuckle at the comment. It does worlds to lighten the heavy air of the kitchen. He doesn’t apologize and neither do I, but somehow, in that moment, something inexplicable is understood between us. To this day I can’t say what it was, but it seemed that we had finally taken measure of each other, seen the other for what they really were, and understood one another at last, just the smallest bit more.

“I shouldn’t have said what I did to you about the Parker—about Evie,” he says after a long moment. “I just didn’t want you to make the same mistakes that I did. More than you already had, of course.”

I lean forward despite myself, wanting an answer to this above all else. “Mom was someone like Evie, wasn’t she? Her family was rich or whatever? Something like that?”

Dad studies my face for a long, weighted moment and then releases a long breath before he nods.

I swallow past the lump in my throat. “So she left because she wanted that life back. She was tired of living like… like
this.
With us.” It’s an old wound, old pain I thought I’d become immune to but somehow it feels fresh all of the sudden.

“Your mother left because she was selfish,” my dad says sharply.

I look up at him, startled by the vehemence in his tone. His green eyes are bright with anger and this time he holds my gaze as he talks.

“She left because of her own shortcomings. Because she was selfish and thought of herself first. Because she was weak. Not because of anything you or Cindy did. Don’t you ever think that, do you understand me? It doesn’t matter what kind of life she came from or what kind of life she married into. She left because of herself, not you or me or Cindy. You’re old enough now I don’t expect that kind of bullshit from you.”

I’m surprised by how vehemently he says it, but even I can see the truth in his words. I may have been convinced of it when it first happened, that Mom left because Cindy and I were ‘bad,’ because we couldn’t please her enough. But eventually, as I got older, the truth settled somewhere deep in my subconscious. I just don’t like saying it aloud. A mother is supposed to be a kid’s champion, their rock. It’s hard to admit that she’s selfish, unlovable, mean.