Clarke
“I’m glad you came,” his father said as he and Clarke sat alone in the library. “And I’m glad you brought Ceci with you. I’ll be honest. I wanted not to like her. But that was easier to do when I hadn’t met her. Hell, maybe if I got to know Anker away from the track, I’d like him too.”
“I wouldn’t pin any hopes on that, Dad.”
His father laughed.
“You know, Dad, we’re not—”
He waved his hand. “Never mind that. There’s something else I want to talk to you about. I should have done it sooner.” He hesitated. “I feel like a coward having waited this long.”
Coward?If there was one word that didn’t belong in any description of his father, it was this one. It wasn’t because he joined his sons in many of their adventures—BASE jumping, cave diving, heli-skiing, etc. It was more substantial than that. It was everything he’d done to get to where he was now, given where and how he’d grown up.
“It’s easier for me now that you’re doing better on the track.”
Clarke frowned.
“I owe you an apology. For riding you so hard, not giving you any space after what happened in Aspen. Hell, after what happened with your mother too. Those two things would be hard on anyone, but especially someone like you. Talking with Ceci, it really sunk in.”
“Ceci?”
“Yeah. Your mother would have really liked her.” He paused. “Of all you boys,” his father said, “you always were the most sensitive.”
“Me?”
Clarke was sincerely shocked. He didn’t see himself that way.
His father nodded. “You. I know because you’re like me. You’re so sensitive you can’t show it.” He sighed. “It can’t be easy having me as a father. I’m probably the toughest on you. Maybe because I see so much potential. Maybe because you’re the youngest. You didn’t get as much time with your mother. I can’t stand the idea of your mom being disappointed with me because I didn’t do enough.”
His father hung his head. “I know what it’s like to feel guilty about something you can’t change. Even if people tell you that you shouldn’t feel guilty, it doesn’t matter because you understand the guilt better than they do. It’s not about the role you played. Even if it would have happened without any help from you, you’d still feel the guilt, because you know what’s really at the heart of it—finding out the part of you that you’d always thought was the best of you is capable of hurting those you loved. I regret how hard and how much I worked toward the end of your mother’s life. I regret that I was so focused on bullshit, I didn’t see what was happening, didn’t take her to the doctor sooner. Even if it wouldn’t have changed things, I still regret it.”
Clarke swallowed as he watched his father sweep his hands briskly over his eyes before he lifted his head and met Clarke’s gaze. His eyes were red and glistened with tears.
“You just have to find a way to live with that guilt. Try to do better.” He stood up. “I need you to know that.” He smiled and pulled Clarke in for a hug.
“I know I pushed you sometimes when I shouldn’t have. And I know it didn’t help. Hell, I think it made things worse. You don’t even need me to push when you’ve always been the first one to push yourself, even as a kid. I guess it’s hard for me to stop. It feels like most of my life I’ve been pushing. But that’s no excuse. I didn’t do right by you after your mother died and after what happened in Aspen. But I got to hand it to you, it looks like you’re coming out on the other side ofthat tunnel. And no one could be happier than me. Well maybe one person—a certain woman who’s smiling down on you right now.”
When his father finally released him, he took Clarke’s face in his hands and brushed away the tears that hung on his lashes. “I love you, son.”
“I love you too, Dad.”
Later that evening, as Clarke headed to the ballroom after dinner, he thought about what it must have been like for his father early on, working as many as three jobs as a car mechanic to give all he could to him and his brothers and to build his own business. It suddenly occurred to him how vigilant his father had to be his entire life, why he’d always pushed. In his world, growing up poor and in a dangerous neighborhood, taking his foot off the accelerator even for a moment might not just mean a missed opportunity and a life of poverty, but the end of your life altogether.
As he entered the ballroom, all of this reflection was followed by one word.
Ceci.
And in that instance, just as he had at that masquerade ball, just as he did whenever he entered a room with her in it, he saw her without even looking.
In a soft, pale-blue dress made of tulle. So pale it might almost be gray or silver like her eyes. It was strapless, exposing her shoulders and that fragile neck. The bodice was beaded and embroidered with cascading pink and violet flowers hanging from vines. And down the front of the bodice, embroidered buttons, each one the pistil of a flower that he wanted to pluck open.
Electricity simmered in his fingers and his groin.
But watching her laugh with his brothers across the room and seeing those gray eyes dance, he felt something else—something that didn’t make sense because it felt both heavy and light and made his breathing grow more rapid and ragged.
What would this look like if she hadn’t come? Would that conversation with Dad still have happened?
Chapter Thirty-Two
