Page 13 of Winning Her

I wasn’t sure which room I was supposed to take, but my feet moved on their own. I went up the stairs to the second floor and strode down the hallway until I stopped at a specific door. I stared at it for a moment, before reaching out and pushing it open. It was unlocked. When I looked inside, nothing had changed.

Seriously.

There was no thick smell of dust in the room, so someone must have at least cleaned it. But they could have made some changes. The room looked exactly as I’d left it when I went off to college. Shit, that was more than a decade ago.

Was this supposed to make me feel guilty?

I walked into the room feeling suspicious. I set my suitcase down, then walked around the room just a little. It should be impossible that no one had touched or moved anything in there. My memory wasn’t so impeccable that I would remember every detail, but as far as I could tell, nothing had moved. It was bringing back some memories for me that I would have rather remained buried.

After the quick tour around my room, I dragged the suitcase over to the bed. At least the bed was made, something I didn’t remember from when I’d left the room for the last time. This was worse, though, as if whoever left it like this had been waiting for me to come home.

I opened my suitcase and started pulling out clothes an item at a time. It was a pretty big suitcase with quite a few outfits, but for an impromptu trip of an unknown length of time, I’d packed lightly.

Once I had everything arranged on the bed I started moving them over to the closet, trying not to wrinkle anything. I hurried and was done in a matter of minutes. It was calming for my mind as well, and I didn’t feel quite so unsettled afterward.

I left my room, feeling like I could go start looking for my dad now. I wasn’t sure yet if I was going to go to the closer hospitals in the area or just track their numbers down before leaving. There was impatience growing in my chest because I still didn’t know the state my father was in. A large part of me was still greatly worried.

I was headed for my car the moment I got outside but I never made it. Instead, I heard a car approaching and looked up in surprise.

What the hell…?

It was a private ambulance coming up the drive. There was only one reason I could think of for it to be here. Either it was coming to take my father or bringing him back. Whichever one, I didn’t know why the vehicle had to be there. If Dad was feeling unwell, he should have been at the hospital already, and if he was there then he should stay there, not come back home.

I was holding my car door open when the ambulance stopped several feet away, closer to the door. I walked over, my fists clenching at my sides.

Damn it, Dad! Why aren’t you in the hospital?

The back of the ambulance opened up, and I went over to greet my dad. A couple of people in white hospital outfits jumped out, and I could feel my fingers clench a little tighter. No one had told me what exactly had happened to him anyway, and my mind was to the point of making things up on its own.

It had to be bad, right? Or someone would have just told me. I slowed to a stop beside the ambulance. I wanted to move closer and assess the situation, but I also didn’t want to get too close. I didn’t want to see Dad lying down looking helpless if that was the extent of it. I wasn’t sure what I would do if I saw him like that. I thought of all the times I could have come home and refused his invitations.

As much as I didn’t want to be back here, or be part of the new family he’d made, he was still my dad. He was still my family. I might resent his choices, but that wasn’t a good enough excuse to not see my old man when he’d requested it of me. Even if it was more of a demand than a request.

But I couldn’t picture Matthew Thompson lying down looking all helpless, and I didn’t think I could remove the picture from my mind if I did see it.

I didn’t get to because as the two paramedics exited the ambulance, my step-mother, Alice came after them. I was surprised to see her there, though why should I? She was the man’s wife. My nose scrunched up as I stepped back.

She was the one person I didn’t want to see the most. I’d been avoiding thinking about her at all, but with her now in front of me, I couldn’t help myself going on the defensive. My back straightened and I forced my face to be expressionless. If there were one person I would never willingly show any emotion to, it was this woman, because if I did it would be intense dislike.

That would just be rude, wouldn’t it?

“Hello, Trent,” she said, smiling at me. “I’m surprised to see you here. Emily said you were coming back home, but…”

I just stood there, trying very hard not to scowl down at her. She was a small woman, and with my six-foot-five height, I pretty much dwarfed her.

“How’ve you been?” she asked, and I wondered why she was even trying to strike up a conversation.

She and I had barely talked in all the years we’d lived in the same house. When I couldn’t avoid her, she’d start talking to me, and I would either stare at her until she stopped, or I would walk away. There was nothing I had to say to her, anyway. Well, besides one thing.

You stole everything from me.

They were words I’d thought about her since the moment she came into our family. I was sad after my mom’s death, but eventually, I would have been fine. Maybe not got over it, but got used to the heartbreak enough that it didn’t hurt quite as badly every day.

But then my dad met this woman, and she took his love away from me. The day she walked into the mansion, Dad was all smiles while I was still grieving, and afterward, he spent even less time with me than he had before Mom had died. I’d seen him sitting alone in his office a few times, staring off into nothing, so I thought he was grieving the same as me. I didn’t mind that he didn’t make time for me because he was hurting as well.

Alice showing up out of nowhere was like a slap in the face.

He didn’t wait all that long for her to give him offspring. More distractions away from me. To the point he probably had no idea what was going on with me by the time I hit my teens. So I’d just neglected to tell him I was leaving when it came to college. I just packed my things one day and left, only for him to call me a month later wondering where the hell I’d gone.