“I don’t want your cash,” I say, even though I know that’s a stupid choice. Because, really, what am I going to do? I can’t keep living off Lily’s inheritance. Sooner or later, I’m going to have to figure what I’m good at and make a living without crawling back to my father for rent.
“This isn’t the time to start being humble,” he tells me. “You can’t try to be sober and work a job at the same time.”
“What do you think normal people do? Not everyone has rich parents to fall back on.”
“You do,” he says. “And why the hell do you think I work so fucking much?”
“You have nothing better to do.”
He glares. “I do it so that you won’t have to struggle like this. So stop being a fucking idiot and take the damn money.”
I believe him, even though Ryke would probably tell me that I shouldn’t—that Jonathan Hale spends hours at his office because he’s miserable and alone and likes all the riches that he can afford to buy.
There’s a stipulation attached to that check too. I’ll be indebted to him in some way. It’s why he took away my trust fund in the first place. It’s more than just him wanting me to enroll in college again. He wants that power over my life—to tell me what to do, to mold me as the son he always dreamed I would be. But I’m just a big fucking disappointment.
“That’s not what I’m here for,” I say, a weight bearing on my chest.
He sighs and shuts his checkbook. He pours another glass. “What is it then?” He’s more intrigued than he lets on. The curiosity glimmers in his dark eyes.
I take a breath, staring at the over-turned, empty glass in front of me. Booze would help, but I have to do this alone. “I want her name.”
“Who?” His voice has an edge, telling me that he knows exactlywhoI’m referring to.
“My real mother.” The woman he had an affair with. The reason why he split from Sara Hale, Ryke’s mom.
“She doesn’t want to see you,” he says coldly.
“And I don’t believe you.”
He lets out a low laugh and taps the table with his lighter, a cigar box not far away. “I knew you’d want answers. Where she lived, what she looked like, but they’ll only upset you. And I didn’t want to see your face twist.”
“What are you talking about?”
“She didn’t wantyou, Loren. I’m telling you not to waste your fucking time.”
How can I believe him after all these years lying to me? But a part of me digests this information as truth.
“There it is.” He brings the glass to his lips. I realize that my face has contorted in a multitude of emotions. Hurt, the strongest of them.
“You’re wrong,” I say under my breath, just so I can go back to being as hard and cold as him. “I want her name. After all these years that you told me Sara was my mother, I, least of all, deserve to have a semblance of the fucking truth.”
He rolls his eyes dramatically, and to my surprise, rips off a check and flips it over. I watch him scribble on the paper and then he slides it to me. “I’m not the bad guy here,” he says. “I’m just protecting you from feeling more pain. That’s it.”
I stare at the check.
Emily Moore.
“Did you love her?” Not,where is she?Or,why did she give me up?I have to ask the stupidest, meaningless question there is—because my father doesn’t believe in love.
“For all of fifteen minutes, sure,” he says dryly. “Now you have what you want, can we move on from all this bullshit?” He wants to go back to the way things were, but I’m not even sure that’s possible.
“I need something else,” I tell him as I pocket the check. “And it requires discretion.”
He laughs wryly and gets up to refill his glass. “Why am I not surprised? What the fuck did you do this time?”
I ignore the slight. “It’s not entirely about me. It involves Lily.”
He sits back down, hand cupping a full glass of scotch. I try not to focus on it too much. “I golf with Greg and have lunch with him every other day, so is this the type of discretion that requires me to lie to her father?”
