Page 160 of Colliding with Ten

“Ayla. It’s your father.”

There was a pause, so long that I thought the message had cut off.

“I saw the articles. I imagine you know which ones I mean. I want you to know it was not a pleasant way to spend my week.”

So now he was centering my trauma as his own. I shook my head. Unbelievable.

“You should have listened to me. This wouldn’t be happening if you had stayed in school, Ayla. I was right, and it would be dishonest of me to pretend otherwise just to spare your feelings.”

He sounded certain, like this was where I’d always been headed. Now here was the proof in headlines that he’d been right about me the entire time. My father was my biggest hater.

“You always thought I was being difficult. I was trying to keep this from happening to you. You could have avoided this if you’d just listened to me, but this is what happens when you don’t.”

The message clicked off. I pulled up his contact and blocked him. Not only that, but the first chance I got, I would change my number. I had to protect my peace. I’d spent years believing that if I worked hard and followed his commands, eventually he’d look at me like a father should. That was hard to admit, but I was finally moving on.

I wouldn’t let him blame me anymore. I’d done nothing wrong except fall for someone I shouldn’t have. I’d worked myself half to death for this fellowship. I couldn’t let it go like this. I thought about AJ, who wasn’t speaking to me. He was the only family I had left. That tore through me. What would Mom say if she were still here? None of my wallowing would fix this. I wanted my life back, and the only way was to take it.

I packed without much thought. I couldn’t live in this borrowed happiness anymore while my life burned. There wasn’t much: a few shirts, two dresses, a pair of jeans, and a ridiculous number of hair products I’d accumulated in a short time. Most of my stuff was still at AJ’s, and I wasn’t sure when I would get it back.

I got to the door before I stalled. I couldn’t leave as I’d done before. This time, I wasn’t running from Lennox to protect myself. If anything, I was running back toward the life I wanted. Whatever I owed anyone else, I owed him the truth, no matter how much easier the door looked than the conversation. So I sat on the couch, bag at my feet, and waited.

The hours slowed as I tried to come up with a plan. I wasn’t going to freestyle this. Then I heard him before I saw him. He was mid-sentence, like he’d been talking to me on the drive home, and I could only hear him now.

“. . . I got the fresh salmon this time, none of that sad grocery store stuff. Then, I found the place Jace was talking about. They had this⁠—”

He rounded the corner into the living room, still holding the grocery bag, smiling unguarded, the way he only looked around me. Then he saw me and the bag. I don’t know what my face looked like, but his expression changed before I said anything. He carefully lowered the bag to the ground as if giving himself time to process and find the words. I’m sure some part of him had decided things were fine.

“You’re ending this?”

“I have to go back,” I said. My voice was steady, a victory because I was resolved to get through this conversation without crying. “To New York and to AJ. I need to get my life back, Lennox.”

“That’s not what I asked.” Lennox shook his head. His eyes searched my face, desperate to find the part where I was joking. When he didn’t, his shoulders sagged. “Are you ending this?”

I held his eyes. If I looked away, I couldn’t say it. “Yes.”

He nodded and kept nodding to himself, turning away as he took a deep breath. “Okay.” He got quiet, then whirled on me out of nowhere. “No. Not okay. Explain it to me. You don’t get to just say you’re leaving and expect me not to ask why.”

I don’t know what I’d expected, but I soon saw that he wasn’t going to make it easy for me. A selfish part of me had hoped he would simply let me go and that we could avoid the pain of having this talk. Yet Lennox had always wanted the truth from me, even if it hurt.

“My life has been upended, Lennox. I haven’t spoken to my brother in almost two weeks. It’s the longest I’ve gone without talking to him. And none of that gets better because I’m happy here. I’ve tried telling myself it does. But it doesn’t.”

“So go handle it. Go to New York, fight for the fellowship, fix it with AJ. I’m not stopping you from any of that. I never once asked you to choose between him and me.”

I knew Lennox wouldn’t, but when everything fell apart, I’d reached for him before I’d reached for myself. There was nothing wrong with leaning on the person you loved. I knew that now. But after everything, I’d let myself disappear behind his shelter, and I needed to know I could still find my way back to me.

“I know you didn’t.” I swallowed around the lump in my throat. “This isn’t punishment. I’m not leaving because of anything you did. You were perfect.”

“Then why are you leaving me?” His voice cracked in the center of that sentence, and hearing it made everything so much worse. “Why can’t you go fix your life and still be in mine while you do it?”

I’d asked myself that same question. I wanted another answer. I just hadn’t found one.

“Because I don’t trust myself yet,” I said. “I need to prove that I can get back my life and be on my own two feet, without someone there to catch me. And to do that, I have to take you out of the equation. I’ve never done it, but I have to now. And when I do, I don’t know if I’m coming back to California. I don’t want to make empty promises I can’t keep.”

There was also something else I wasn’t saying, a fact neither of us wanted to talk about. Claiming my position back on the Hawks would probably mean stricter rules for those non-fraternization clauses. This relationship would become untenable. Going back to New York wouldn’t just be putting three thousand miles between us. It would be going back to a life that would forbid him from being a part of it.

He didn’t speak for a while. He scrubbed a hand down his face, then pinched the bridge of his nose, staring at the floor between us like he couldn’t bear to look at me.

When he finally did, his eyes were glassy. “I made myself very easy to leave before. You know that. I told you that.” He chuckled, but it was an awful sound, no humor in it. “But with you, I didn’t think it would happen.”