My father is a dick.
“I’m not throwing—” I start, but Élise cuts me off.
“Why don’t we sit for this conversation?” she suggests calmly.
The table is already set with mugs, cream, sugar, and hot coffee, but nobody sits down or reaches for it.
“I’m not here to fight,” Dad sighs. “Let’s just round this up. Get your stuff. We’ll catch the jet.”
I blink. “What?”
“I’ll take you back with me,” he says, glancing at my cast like it offends him. “You need a hand specialist. Not a tiny hospital in the middle of nowhere run by mountain people. Even the cast looks wonky.”
I bite back a snarl. “Fuck you.”
Dane steps forward, hand on my forearm. “Alaina,” he warns.
“No.” I shake him off. “I don’t have to go anywhere. Last time I checked, I’m an adult. I don’t need your money, and I certainly don’t need your care. It’s not like I’ve ever had it anyway.”
Dad’s eyes narrow. “I guess that’s fair.”
Dane and I both freeze.Did he just?—
“I didn’t look after you, and look where it’s brought you. Back in the same situation as last time. Maybe all this recklessness, this need to hurt yourself, is my fault. I can acknowledge that. Maybe my absence caused all this.”
Dane scoffs in disbelief.
“But…” Dad continues, “… I can also be the reason this doesn’t happen a third time.”
I open my mouth, fury rising.
“Alaina,” he says, voice stern, but there’s something else too. “I can’t handle another call from a hospital on your behalf. Do you understand me?”
For a heartbeat, I do. I see it, something like fear behind his eyes. Something almost real, almost as though he gives a shit. And Ialmostbelieve it.
But then I remember every night I screamed into my pillow, pain lighting up every nerve, and that the only one who ever came running was Dane. Not him.Never him.
“I’m not coming with you, and if you try to drag me out of here, I will scream and report you for kidnapping.”
Luc tightens his hold around me as if to say that he won’t let that happen, no matter what.
I let myself lean into the certainty that I’m not alone in this fight. With Luc behind me, I feel safe. Maybe even loved.
“You’retwenty-four,” Dad snaps. “Don’t act like an ungrateful child.”
I raise my chin. “You can go back to your pretty little jet and fly back to DC. We’re not coming.”
I glance at Dane, and he nods. “She’s not going.”
Dad’s jaw works, his lips pressed thin. “This isn’t over, Alaina. We’re going to talk about this some more.” Then he turns to Dane. “Dane, a word.”
Dane huffs like it’s the last thing he wants but gestures toward the living room. They walk off, voices too low to catch as they murmur to each other, and I’m left standing there in the kitchen, Luc’s arms around me, my heart hammering, and my coffee untouched.
The silence hums in his wake, heavy with the years between us, the wreckage he left behind, and the pieces Dane and I stitched back together with blood.
I lean back even harder into Luc’s chest, and he doesn’t move or speak. He just holds me like he knows I’m bracing for the aftershocks.
But I don’t cry or scream. I just breathe.
