supposed to look out for you and steer you onto the right path.”
I scoffed, shaking my head. “For how long, Dad? For the rest of your life? And when you die, then what? Do you plan on outliving me? What am I going to do if I have never been able to make a single decision in my life when you are no longer around?”
He looked as if I’d slapped him. “I trust you will know better by then.”
“How do you know for sure? Is there a test I’m supposed to take? Tell me what I have to do to make you understand I’m not a little girl. This may come as a surprise to you, but I have been making decisions for a long time. I make careful decisions. For you to try and forbid me from doing something I want to do, it’s asinine. You need to check yourself.”
“Excuse me? Check myself? When you talk like that, I think you do still need my guidance.”
I growled and threw my hands in the air. “Why can’t you just let this go? Why can’t you just let me live my life the way I want?”
“Because you are my little girl and I don’t want to see you hurt!”
I saw the softness in his eyes, heard the genuine fear in his voice. I knew he loved me. He cared about me more than anything else in the world.
“Dad,” I said, softening my tone. “I’ll be okay. If I get hurt, I’ll get better. This is part of life. I need to experience all life has to offer, even the bad stuff.”
He shook his head. “You don’t have to experience the bad when I can see it coming. Let me help you.”
“Can we stop this?” I asked, my voice so soft I barely heard it. “I don’t want to do this with you. I don’t want to fight with you.”
He took a deep breath and leaned back in his chair. “I don’t want to fight with you either.”
“Good. Let’s agree to disagree and move on.”
“Evie, it isn’t that simple. I know this kid. He is bad news.”
“I don’t understand how you can say that. You don’t know him. You knew him for five minutes in your classroom ten years ago. He is not the same person he was. I’m not the same person I was ten years ago.”
He shook his head. “A leopard doesn’t just lose his spots.”
“What does that even mean?”
“It means the man is incapable of thinking of anyone except himself. He will hurt you. He’s only using you. You are a pretty young woman and that’s all he sees. I can’t stand the thought of that punk touching my little girl.”
“I get that this might be hard for you to hear, but there have been other men in my life. You have never reacted so strongly to any of them.”
“Because they weren’t him,” he spat.
“No, they weren’t. Xander isn’t selfish. Not by a long shot.”
“That kid thinks it is funny to disrupt things,” he said.
“Things? Like what?”
“My classroom for one. He went out of his way to argue with me in front of the entire class. He tried to make a fool out of me. He thought he was so much smarter than me and everyone else. He was some young punk with no life experience and he was convinced he knew better. He refused to listen to history and reason. He was only about himself and proving his point.”
“He was right,” I said. “Do you know what he has done? How much he is worth because he listened to his gut and did what he knew was possible, despite you and everyone else telling him it was impossible?”
He shrugged as if it didn’t matter. “It doesn’t change who he is.”
“Maybe in your eyes, but I see a man that is a modern-day Jefferson or any other inventor from the past. People laughed at him and told him it wasn’t possible. A lesser man would have given up. A lesser man would have taken the harsh criticism to heart and let his dreams die. Xander didn’t give up. He pushed through and I’m so proud of him.”
“You talk like he is some kind of hero,” he spat the words like they tasted bitter on his tongue.
I couldn’t stop myself from smiling. “Maybe he is my hero.”
He groaned. “He put you under a spell.”
“I’m falling for him,” I told him, looking directly into his eyes. “Not falling. I already fell.”