Page 347 of Mad Girl

“Casey just left to meet a friend,” he said. “But right before he walked out the door, he mentioned something about moving back to England over the summer.” Nic’s jaw ticked. “For good.”

I could only blink at him.

“So I’ll ask again,” Nic said, stepping farther into my room. “What have you done? What happened? Why is he out partying again?”

“He told me he loved me, and I can’t live up to that.”

Nic’s head dropped between his shoulders. Then he hiked up his dress pants, sank into my desk chair, and rubbed at his forehead. “Why not?”

God, what a loaded question that was. So deceptively simple it bordered on cruel. As if he were really asking: What makes you impossible to love, Elliot? Why do you always push people away? Why can’t you just let yourself have something good for once? What’s wrong with you?

Nic lifted his head to look at me. “Why can’t he love you?” He sounded tired. Annoyed. Fed up. “Because you hooked up with Michael first? And you never told him?”

“Yes,” I whispered.

“But if things had played out differently—if you’d told Casey about Michael right after it happened—do you think it would’ve changed how he feels? Do you think it would’ve stopped anything more from happening between you two?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

“It wouldn’t have changed a thing, Elliot,” he said with a sigh. “But it still would’ve ended the same. You’d come up with a hundred reasons he shouldn’t love you, because that’s what you do. You look for reasons to hurt yourself.”

Nic was right—always stating what I had hard time admitting to myself, always—and I hated it. But what I hated more? That he’d called me out while failing to acknowledge why I did those things.

“And why do you think that is, Dad?”

Without missing a beat, he said, “Because I love you too much.”

I huffed out an incredulous laugh. “Wow. Too much? Are you serious?”

“Yeah. I love you so much, I made decisions that ultimately weren’t good for you. I held on too tightly. I thought if I kept you close enough, you’d be okay. But then I also let go at times—when I probably shouldn’t have.”

He stared down at his hands, clasping them tightly between his knees, knuckles paling. “Like that day at the beach all those years ago. You and Michael were arguing near the pool house. You asked him to hurt you, and he did. He pulled your hair until you cried.”

My stomach turned. He’d seen that?

“I watched it happen,” he confirmed. “I knew I should step in, but I just—I trusted him not to take it too far. And it never happened again—that I know of, anyway—so I let it go.” Nic rubbed at the back of his neck. “When I saw you kissing him by the pool house two summers ago, I let that go, too.”

For once, Nic wasn’t trying to control the narrative. Just telling me the truth.

“I knew what that kiss would probably lead to, but I also wanted you to have that freedom, you know? To be a teenager. To do normal teenage things. John wouldn’t approve—because of your history, because I’d told him about the hair-pulling incident—but I thought it might help. Maybe you’d get it out of your system—whatever it was you needed from Michael to move on from the stabbing—and that would be the end of it.”

“So that’s what loving me too much looks like?” I asked, incredulous. “Letting me beg a boy to hurt me?”

“If I didn’t let you have that, you would’ve found more destructive ways to punish yourself.”

“And when you locked me in your office after the stabbing, was that love, too? Or do you think maybe that’s the reason I can’t stop punishing myself?”

Nic swallowed but didn’t say anything.

“You left me in there,” I said. “You didn’t answer when I called your name. You made me feel like a monster. Like you saw me differently after that. Like you stopped loving me as much.”

Nic shook his head. “No. Never.”

“And you wonder why I can’t accept love from Casey, when you’re the one who taught me how scary it feels to let someone love me. To feel that love change when I do something wrong.”

“Elliot, my love for you has never changed,” he said. “I didn’t love you any less after the stabbing, and I never intended to leave you in there. It just—there are things you don’t understand.” That last part, he’d whispered.

“I understand you’re a liar. You’ve been hiding things from me my whole life. Do you know how that feels? You’re my dad. I’m supposed to be able to trust you.”