Dad recoils slightly, surprise flashing across his face like I’ve struck him. For half a heartbeat, I think I see guilt flicker there too, but it’s gone as fast as it came, replaced by that same rigid, paternal fire.
“Don’t beridiculous! For god’s sake, I’d be a bad father to encourage any of that. You’re my daughter, not some…flingfor them to chase around. You’re worth more than that, Noelle.”
“They’re not like that, Dad. You know that. They’re good men. So what does it matter? You wouldn’t keep deadbeats as friends. They’d treat me right. Better than Jared ever did, that’s for damn sure.”
His expression tightens at the mention of Jared.
A nerve hit finally, but I don’t stop there.
“So, what’s the real problem, Dad? The age gap? Because that’s not even the end of the world. Plenty of people date older or younger. Or is it just the idea of someone else seeing me as more than your little girl?”
“Are you even listening to yourself?” he barks, incredulous.
His voice rises, bouncing off the dining room walls, sharp enough to make my pulse jump. “You sound insane! You’retalking about men who’ve been in your life since you were a kid. You can’t just?—”
I cut him off. “No they haven’t. I didn’t even officially meet them until I was twenty-two. So what can’t I do? Grow up? Can’t make my own choices? Can’t want something for myself thatyoudidn’t choose?”
He stares at me, mouth parting like he’s about to argue, but no words come out. The silence that falls between us is overwhelming.
“Are you even listening to yourself?”
I nearly bark out a laugh.
Of course I’m listening to myself.
I’ve been listening for years to every version of this argument that could ever play out in my head late at night when I spiral into oblivion.
All the imaginary conversations where I finally tell him the truth, where I stop shrinking myself to fit the image he’s always wanted, and come clean with my past.
Every word I say now feels like something that’s been waiting to be said for a long, long time.
I straighten my shoulders, meeting his glare without flinching. “You keep acting like I’m some naive kid who doesn’t know better, but I do. Dean’s not a mistake, and neither are the other two. They’re not Jared. They’re the kind of people you’dwantme to end up with if you’d stop seeing them as just your friend and actually look at how they treat me.”
“Noelle…” He pauses, eyes narrowing slightly. “Did something happen between you two? Or with the others?”
I freeze.
I can feel my pulse pounding in my neck, loud and uneven, like my body’s trying to warn me.
Don’t say it.
My fingers twitch at my sides, nails digging into my palms even harder.
I open my mouth, but nothing comes out.
The word is there, sitting right on the tip of my tongue, begging to be freed.
Yes.
That’s the truth.
It’s the one thing I’ve been carrying for so long that it feels like part of me now.
The guilt, the longing, the what-ifs.
And yet when I look at my father standing there with that sharp, protective glint in his eyes, the same one that’s been both my shield and my prison since I was a teenager, I can’t say it.
For all my bravado, for all the words I’ve thrown back at him today, all the anger and fire I’ve let spill out, this is the one truth I can’t seem to make myself speak.
