The Bromance Book Club - Lyssa Kay Adams Page 0,99
and whose only point of conversation was to say over and over again how tall you’d gotten.
Yet, somehow, this stranger’s behavior had left enough emotional scars that Thea was going to lose the man she loved. A man who loved her enough that he read, underlined, and quoted romance novels to win her back.
The scars of this stranger in her car now had made her so distrustful that she couldn’t see Gavin’s efforts for what they were—a beautiful, heartfelt, honest statement of his feelings.
“Gavin and the girls aren’t with you?” Dan finally asked.
“No. Just me.”
“Liv?”
“Sorry.”
“Well, I’m glad you came. What changed your mind?”
“I’m kicking over some logs.”
The corner of his mouth ticked up. “And are you prepared for what’s going to crawl out?”
Thea stared out the windshield. “I don’t know why I’m here, actually. I’m pretty sure it’s a mistake.”
“Only if you leave without saying it.”
“Saying what?” She wrapped her hands around the steering wheel.
“Whatever it is you think you need to say to clear out those logs.”
“I don’t have anything to say. I think I just wanted to see.”
He tilted his head. “See?”
Thea met her father’s gaze directly for the first time in years. “How you look at me.”
His features slipped for the smallest of moments, and a small crack in her chest opened up. Like a fissure spitting steam from the Earth, it threatened to release the noxious gas of years of suppressed backstory. And God, did it feel good to relieve some of the pressure.
“I wanted to see if you look at me like Gavin looks at our daughters. Have you ever looked at me like that?”
He let out an impressed hmph. “And you thought you had nothing to say.”
Thea shook her head and pressed the button to start her car. “You should go in. You’re going to be late for your own wedding, and this has clearly been a mistake. I’m going to get nothing out of you that matters.”
He let out another one of those impressed laughs. “I know I was a shitty father, and I know I’m a sad cliché for hoping that it’s not too late to make up for that.”
“It is,” she said, more steam billowing out. “It’s too late.”
“Then you should be happy to know that I suffer for it. I have to stand back and see the woman you’ve become, the woman your sister has become, and know I can’t be part of it. I see your gorgeous daughters and know I can’t be a grandfather to them.”
Thea let her hands fall to her lap as her mouth dropped open. “No, that doesn’t make me happy to know that. At all. It makes me really sad, because it didn’t have to be that way. You chose to stand on the sideline of our lives, to replace us over and over again with someone else.”
“I’ve never tried to replace you, Thea.”
The fissure whistled with fresh steam. “You let your second wife sell our house. You let her say that we couldn’t live with you. You chose her and every other woman over your daughters. Why?”
“Because you and Liv were better off without me!”
The fissure becoming an eruption. “Is that really what you tell yourself?”
“It’s what I told myself then. I was never going to be the kind of man who coached your softball team or, or—”
“Made Saturday morning pancakes?”
“I made money. That’s what I did, and I did it well, and that’s how I could be a father to you.”
“Well, while you were telling yourself that, Liv and I were growing up believing something was wrong with us. Something that made people leave us, would always make people leave us. And now I’m about to lose my husband because I pushed him away out of fear.”
Dan looked over sharply. “What’s going on with you and Gavin?”
She waved her hands to ward off the question. “I’m not here for fatherly advice, so don’t, like, pull a muscle or anything. Just tell me one thing.”
Oh, God. She was going to do it. She was going to ask the question that had haunted her her entire life.
“Do you regret . . .” She puffed out a breath. “Me?”
“Never,” Dan said, his voice rough and certain. “Never. Not once.”
Thea closed her eyes.
“Look at me,” her father ordered. And for the second time, she met his gaze directly. “Your mother getting pregnant was the best thing that ever happened to me. I was simply too stupid and selfish to know how to be the father you