CHAPTER 2
Rhiannon
When I burst through the doors and out of the wedding room, I’m not sure where to go or what to do. Do I look for Dad? Wait for my sisters? Stick around to stab George through the chest with the heel of my uncomfortable stilettos?
The decision is made for me when Dad, who I find standing at the window with a tumbler of golden liquid in his hand, gestures for me to follow him.
When we get inside a smaller conference room, the air thickens, growing heavier and more stifling with each passing second of silence that fills the room.
My chest is tight, my hands slimy, and if he doesn’t speak soon, the list of excuses and defense bubbling in the back of my throat might break free.
I silently pray he doesn’t make me defend my actions. I want him to understand, just this once. Hell, even go so far as be proud. Does Dad do proud? If he does, I can’t say I’ve seen it in almost three decades, but God knows that doesn’t stop me trying.
From the deep V between his eyebrows to the firm set ofhis lips, something tells me he’s not proud, not even close. There’s a vibration around him that suggests he’s fuming. My fingers find the delicate ink on my collarbone as I note my breathing. In for four, out for seven. In for four, out for seven.
The anticipation of what he’s going to say is unbearable, the tension so thick, the silence so excruciating, I struggle not to break it.
Should I speak?CanI speak?
The weight of years of eldest-daughter-responsibility ratchets up the anxiety in my veins and the tension in my muscles, as my brain scrambles to find an acceptable answer to the unasked questions that hang between us.
I suck in a breath, unsure of what’s going to tumble from my mouth when I open it, but this silent standoff between us is insufferable. I need to say something, anything, get the disapproval, the lecture, the yelling out of the way so we can move forward.
My knee trembles, making the cool fabric of my dress rustle against my skin.
Dad heaves out a painfully heavy sigh, his eyes steely hard as they hold my gaze. The more he stares, the more layers of shame envelop my body. My mind spins. My jaw drops. My head starts shaking from side to side as a million excuses battle for space at the back of my throat.
“What on earth were you thinking, Rhiannon?” He searches my face like he might find the answer written in the professionally applied makeup painting my features.
What was I thinking? I was thinking he was a cheating piece of shit who hurt me, and I wanted to hurt him back, hurt both of them.
Dad doesn’t let me finish, so I clamp my mouth shut, wedging my lips between my teeth in an act so practiced, so familiar, that it’s second nature.
“I can’t understand why you’d do that to your family, yoursisters. What possessed you? Did you think that was funny?” He waves a hand at the door behind me. “Was that funny to you?” His voice is harder, rising in volume as control of his temper wavers right in front of my eyes.
My shutters come down. He doesn’t care about my side of the story. He doesn’t want to hear about my pain, what I’ve been through. He just wants to lecture me about whathethinks I should have done aboutmyfuture with a man who treated me so poorly.
Tears burn behind my eyelids, and excess saliva pools in my mouth as I shake my head.
I wanted this time to be different. I wanted him to be on my side, to say he supports me, even if he didn’t agree with my choice to do what I did. Maybe I even wanted him to suggest or outrightly say that he understood it. But none of that is what’s unfolding in front of me.
His expression somehow turns even sterner. “Because I can’t fathom what reason you could come up with to justify doing what you just did.”
I open my mouth to push back, to argue I’m a grown woman who doesn’t need to justify her behavior to her father, but he shakes his head in time with mine, making the words I’ve never been brave enough to say to him die on my tongue.
“I don’t want to hear it. It’s done now; it’s time for damage control. We need to get ahead of this.”
Damage control?Damage control?
The weight of his disappointment presses on my shoulders, urging my knees to buckle.
“You embarrassed me, Rhiannon.”
He doesn’t ask how I am, how long I’ve known about George, and the idea he might have been proud of me for leaving a toxic relationship slips through my fingers like sand in the wind.
A vaguely hysterical laugh threatens to bubble up insidemy chest. How could I have thought he’d have been proud of me? Just because it’s a life-long decision doesn’t mean Dad would finally be in my corner.
In some moments I feel like I don’t know him at all.
