He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Not when I know he only wants to bitch about my dad.”
She raised an eyebrow at the shit-ton of bitterness behind that statement. “Oh. Do they... dothey not get along anymore?” Brendan and John had always struck her as a mismatched father-and-son duo, but she’d never seen them actively battling.
Nicholas’s laugh was short. “You could say that.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” she murmured. “Was there a falling-out?”
He didn’t answer for a beat. Curious, she prodded. “You said I could ask you anything.”
“I did, didn’t I?” He cast her an unreadable look. “Yes. Your family.”
Her hand jerked and the mermaid’s shoulder got messed up. She’d have to give her long hair to cover it. “What?”
“Your family caused the fallout.”
“How so?”
Nicholas sighed. “When my dad bought your mom’s share of the company—”
“When he stole it, you mean.”
He didn’t argue. “It left my father and grandfather in equal power. They haven’t been able to talk to each other without fighting since that day.”
Shocked, she stopped drawing and stared up at him. “What? Why?”
“Because my grandfather can’t forgive my dad for cutting your family out.”
“John wasn’t a part of that?” She hadn’t even seen John from the time of the accident to when she’d left. He’d been too sick, and Brendan hadn’t permitted any non-family visitors to the hospital.
“No. Of course not. He didn’t even know until he was discharged from the hospital. His healthwas so fragile. It didn’t take much for my dad to convince us telling him could kill him.”
“Wow.” She simply hadn’t considered John wasn’t in cahoots with his son back then.
“If he’d been there, he would have blocked my dad. I couldn’t, but he might have been able to.”
Another jerk of her hand. “You tried to stop Brendan?”
He went silent.
The day they’d broken up, she’d met him in the woods and tried to make sense of her upside-down world.What’s Paul talking about? He’s stomping around and yelling at Mom and saying your dad stole the company from us. That’s not true, right? You wouldn’t have let him do that. Nothing’s changed.
Nicholas had moved away.What’s done is done, Livvy.
“Why didn’t you tell me then?” She’d had another tiny piece of her heart shattered, thinking Nicholas had betrayed her whole family.
His chest rose and fell, the unfinished mermaid looking utterly silly. “I assumed it wouldn’t matter. Would it have made a difference to you?”
It’s impossible for us to be together now. They won’t let us.
“Are you asking if we would have stayed together?”
“Yeah. Could we have survived my father taking your family’s company? Even if you knew I’d opposed it?”
Livvy had seen the finality in Nicholas’s eyes when they’d ended things, had felt the creepingforeboding when she’d met him that day in the woods.
She’d never met her grandpa Sam, but she’d heard stories about the man and the odds he’d overcome to become a wealthy businessman. One of Sam’s favorite sayings had beenNothing’s over ’til you quit.
Nicholas had quit. It was over.
