Dream Chaser (Dream Team #2) - Kristen Ashley Page 0,92
and Boone would eventually need this, and he was right, we both needed to understand it.
“I’m guessing you know I was not a pretty, pretty princess. Not daddy’s little girl. I wasn’t daddy’s tomboy either. I was me. But he was like, the greatest dad a kid could have, on the surface. Handsome. Successful. He walked into a room, and by the sheer force of his personality, everyone looked right to him. That was the dad to have. That was the dad to be proud of. That was the dad you wanted to shine his light on you. And he did, Boone. He shined his light on us. And when he did, the heavens opened, and the angels sang. When Dad made us laugh, because he could be really funny. Or when Dad took us to a movie and then to get ice cream sundaes and we’d talk about the movie and he’d treat us like adults. Like what we had to say was akin to a review from Siskel and Ebert.”
I stopped suddenly, turned my head to the side, and put my bowl by Boone’s.
“Ryn,” Boone said gently, wrapping a hand around the side of my neck.
I looked again at him.
“But he’s like a whirlwind. He’d sweep into a room and sweep you off your feet and then he’d cast you aside, leaving you dirty and broken and used in his wake.”
Boone flinched.
“Jesus.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “It’s like those people who see what they see, only what their eyes can see, which is mostly what that might mean to them, and that’s all. There is nothing greater. There isn’t a whole wide world out there. There is only them and what they’re experiencing. And I’ll tell you something, it didn’t feel great, those vast amounts of time I was outside my father’s blinders and melted completely from existence.”
Boone’s fingers tensed.
“And it didn’t feel great, watching him do that to my mother and brother either,” I went on. “Do you know, I have not spoken to him in years, and do you know what that means to him?”
“What does it mean, sweetheart?” Boone asked hesitantly.
“It doesn’t mean anything, Boone. I’m not in his sights, so I don’t exist. But say, he needs something, and he can get that from me, he will suddenly remember I’m around and expect me to twist myself in knots to give it to him. He does not miss me. He does not wonder why I’m not in his life. But if he needed a kidney, he’d be on my doorstep, and if I told him to fuck off because he didn’t show up for visitations. He didn’t pay child support. He made my mother need to hire attorneys so she could sue him to get the money we deserved or defend herself because he was suing her, when we had nothing. We had dick. But the attorneys had to get paid.”
Boone’s other hand came up to the other side of my neck, he latched on, and he muttered, weirdly urgently, “Baby.”
But I ignored that and carried on.
“Even with all of that, and there’s more, Boone, a load more, he’d be pissed. Insanely pissed. At me. Because what kind of daughter am I, I don’t give her loving father a kidney? What kind of daughter am I, that when the rare happens and he remembers it’s my birthday, and he deigns to phone me, and I don’t take his call, and he calls back and leaves a ranting voicemail message about respect and family? What kind of daughter am I when he never loved me a day in my life and I was born loving him and I’ll die never having that back?”
Boone slid his hands to my jaw, dropped his forehead to mine, and looked into my eyes, saying firmly, “Stop now, baby. Stop.”
I breathed heavily in his face.
“That’s enough for now,” he said.
“I build walls,” I replied.
“Enough for now, Ryn,” he repeated.
“You’re right. I build walls because I’m utterly terrified someone I love is going to cast me aside.”
“Yeah,” he agreed.
“Shit,” I muttered.
“You get it now and I get where you’re coming from now so we can work on that,” he said.
“I didn’t know I felt this much about him,” I admitted.
He lifted his forehead away, but he did it in an “Ah-ha!” motion.
So I asked, “What?”
“Nothing, Ryn. Let’s finish our oatmeal.”
“Oh wise Master, share your wisdom,” I joked.
“Stop being a brat,” he replied, his lips twitching.