First and Forever (Heartache Duet #2) - Jay McLean Page 0,94
did you do to make her—”
“Nothing!”
“Then why?” I cry out, unable to hold it in any longer. “Why did she hate me so much she wanted me dead?”
Dad takes me in his arms again, as if I’m three years old asking the same goddamn question.
I push him away. “Your hugs aren’t going to fix it, Dad. I’m not a kid anymore. I’m eighteen, and I deserve the fucking truth!”
He swallows, and I can see the fear in his eyes.
“Tell me!”
Dad shakes his head, his eyes drifting shut.
“Dad, please. I need to know,” I beg. “I need to understand so I can stop feeling this.” I press a hand to my chest. “Do you know what it feels like to think that something is broken inside you?”
When he opens his eyes again, liquid pain flows from their depths. “It was never about you, son. She did it to hurt me.”
“Why?”
He grasps his hair, his eyes to the ceiling as his chest rises. Falls. Again and again. “She did it because I told her I was in love with someone else.”
My stomach drops. “You were cheating on her?”
His eyes meet mine again, and he nods once. “Yes.” Then he seems to release a breath he’d been holding on to for years. “With another man.”
Everything inside me stills.
Every memory.
Every moment.
Every laugh.
Every cry.
Everything.
Freezes.
I rear back, unable to look at him.
“Connor, just listen to—”
I shake my head, cutting him off, and lock my eyes on his. Ava once told me we had the same eyes—my dad and me—and I agreed even though I’d never really paid attention before. I just thought I knew him well enough to see them clearly. But now… now I look at him and… “Who the hell are you?” I grab my ball, ignore him calling after me as I leave the house and go to my truck. He stands at the porch, knowing he can’t stop me, knowing he can’t save me.
Not anymore.
It takes over an hour for me to find the turnoff to the exact parking lot I’m looking for. As soon as I get out of the car, I can hear the stream of water, and I follow the sound to the lake clearing. I’m not sure when it was exactly that I decided to come here, of all places. Having this place bring nothing but memories of Ava is probably the last thing I need, but it’s the only thing I want.
We’d both declared the day we spent here The Best Day of Our Lives, and maybe that’s why it called to me. To remind me that once upon a time, I had it all right at my fingertips. I sit at the water’s edge, my mind spinning with too many thoughts, too fast, and I can’t seem to focus on one long enough to steady my pulse.
I think about my dad, and then Ava, and all the moments that led to now, and I still can’t make sense of any of it. And then I remember how much Ava had changed in the past couple weeks. I recall her moods, how quickly she moved from angry to happy to sad to loving to devastated, and I wish I’d seen it then; that something bigger was happening. I should have picked up on it when she demanded Rhys give back the jersey I’d sold him. She was so angry and so passionate about it… because she knew how much it meant to me. How that memory with my dad was one I hold close.
I picture her sitting next to me while I tell her everything that just went down. And it feels too fucking real when I imagine her taking my arm and holding it to her as she looks out at the lake, her eyes glazed, because—I’m too fucking late to realize—my pain was hers, too. I should’ve seen that, and I should’ve told her about my mom, but instead, I chose to protect a woman who abandoned me rather than the girl I love. My eyes close when I envision Ava turning to me, her breath leaving her slowly. “He’s still your dad,” she’d tell me. “He’s still the same man who believed in your dreams more than you did, who did everything he could to make them come true. He’s still that man who held you every morning while you cried because you were so afraid he’d never come back. But he always came back for you, Connor. Always.”