The silence is immediate.
He turns to face her, anger coiled beneath restraint.“You don’t get to rewrite his life because you’re angry.”
Isla laughs, short and incredulous.“Rewrite?I barely wrote a footnote.”
“You stood up in front of hundreds of people and reduced him to his worst failure.”
“And you’ve been doing the opposite,” she fires back.“Turning him into a saint.”
“That’s not fair.”
“No?”Isla steps closer, exhaustion stripping away her caution.“Then tell me, where was he on my tenth birthday?Or my fifteenth?Or the day I won my first international competition?”
He doesn’t answer.
She presses on, voice sharpening.“Where was he when I was practicing six hours a day?When I was throwing up from nerves before performances?When I was crying alone in hotel rooms because my mother was too busy managing my career to notice I wanted my father?”
“He sent money,” he says quietly.
The words are cold and mocking.
Isla stiffens.“Money.Oh yeah, that’s right, money eases a child’s pain when other kids have fathers and know that she doesn’t.Money gives them a hug and tells them to sleep well tonight.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“That’s exactly what you meant,” she says.“Because that’s the version of him you’re defending.The one who thought wiring money absolved him of everything else.”
His jaw tightens.“You don’t know him.”
The words cut deeper than she expected.
“You’re right,” Isla says sharply.“I don’t.And that’s my point.”
She takes a breath.“So who are you, exactly?You keep acting like you own him.”
He hesitates.
Then he straightens, like he’s made a decision.
“My name is Callum Fraser,” he says.“And he raised me.”
The wordraised me, lands like a gut punch.Did her father have an illegitimate son that she knew nothing about?He could raise Callum Fraser, but refused to see her?
Something twisted painfully in her chest.
“He rescued me,” Callum continues, voice rough.“He and my father were bandmates.Keir gave me a home when no one else would.”
Her anger flares, hot and immediate.“So he had room in his life for you, just not his daughter.”
Callum flinches.“It wasn’t like that.”
“Wasn’t it?”she demands.“Because it sounds exactly like that.”
She hates the jealousy burning through her.Hates that she wants to scream at him for existing in a space she was never allowed into.
“You got the version of him I never did,” she says.“The one who showed up.”
Callum’s voice drops.“You think it was perfect?”
