flower bed for a dozen painful heartbeats. Until my father cleared his throat.
He stood on the other side of the flower bed, looking sheepish.
“How much of that did you hear?” I asked carefully.
“Well, once she started talking, I couldn’t exactly walk out. If my knees were young enough to crawl, I might have.”
“Don’t worry. I won’t let her take us to hell with her.”
“That’s not what I’m worried about, son.”
I drew a noisy breath and shifted my gaze to my hands in the dirt. “Don’t worry about me either. I’m fine.”
“You’re not, but why should you be?”
“It doesn’t matter. I shouldn’t have gotten involved with her in the first place.”
“And why not?”
“Because we’re different,” I said to the mums.
“Since when does that hurt?”
“Since I was stupid enough to think I could be with someone who puts herself above everyone else.”
“But that’s not all.”
“No,” I huffed. “It’s not. Girls like her aren’t interested in simple lives. They want some asshole with a PhD and a penthouse, not a man who plays with flowers in the dirt. We’re different, Dad. There’s no getting past that.”
“I dunno. Seems like you’re the one with the problem, not her.”
I paused, glaring up at him. “You can’t be serious. She cares so much what they think of her, she lied about me. She wants to sell our family out for a fucking television show. How am I the one with the problem?”
“Well, for starters, you didn’t even hear her out. You’re so convinced you’re right, you decided for the both of you.”
“I heard enough the other night to have good reason.”
“Son, listen to me.” He watched me until I met his gaze, silver brows drawn. “I know it feels safer to run—you got that gene from me—but think about what you’ll lose. And for what? Fear? Pride? Lila Parker does not strike me as the kind of woman to be anything short of a straight-shooter. And I suspect you care very deeply for her.”
“I do,” I said around the lump in my throat.
“When I met your mother, she was the heiress to a fortune, and I was the son of a plumber. She ran in society, and I ran snakes through drainpipes. Never in a million years did I think she’d want someone so beneath her. But what you don’t seem to understand is that love doesn’t care where you come from, only who you are. That, and snobbery works both ways. You thumbing your nose at the things she wants is no better than her thumbing her nose at yours.”
“So, what … I should hear her out? Give her a chance to make it right?” I shook my head at the question he never asked, the same one Luke had suggested. The one that just one hour ago, I was willing to take. “If it were just about the other night, that’d be one thing. But a reality show? That’s too big for me to look past.”
“She didn’t exactly say she accepted the offer. Only that she got one.”
I frowned. “No, she said—”
“That she got an offer. That was all. I won’t tell you what to do, but I will say this—I’d hate to see you let love go for the sake of vanity, Kash.”
Before I could argue, he turned and headed back to his post in the zinnias, leaving me with his words ringing in my ears.
Mostly because he wasn’t wrong.
I was running away, so convinced I wasn’t enough that I’d doomed us from the start, turned us into a self-fulfilling prophecy. I’d turned my nose up to the life she wanted, what she’d worked for, partly because I hated—desperately hated—seeing her be demeaned. But also because all the things her life represented were patently opposite of mine. And that comparison made me feel less than, even though this life made me happy. It was all I wanted, besides her.
But the show. The thought of her participating in a reality show made my stomach turn, and my heart sank into its waiting arms. She might not have come out and said it, but she’d taken that offer. Everything she’d ever wanted had been handed to her on a silver platter, tarnished with lies and deceit. The devil had made her an offer, and I couldn’t imagine a world in which she’d refuse. I also couldn’t imagine a world in which she wouldn’t have told me right then and there that I was wrong if she’d turned it down.