Nash Brothers Box Set - Carrie Aarons Page 0,147

their child’s head. But mine did. Without me even knowing it.

I’m reeling and dizzy when I try to stand to head to the bathroom to empty my bulging bladder.

My eyes hurt as I turn on the lights in my house, the glow stinging my eyes. Every cell throbs with pain and exhaustion; I feel like I’ve simultaneously pulled an all-nighter and am coming off the worst hangover of my life.

There are so many things I want to do. My hands clench into fists as anger I’ve never experienced washes over my muscles. I want to break something, to hear the crunch of my knuckles against a hard surface.

I want to scream until my lungs are hoarse. I want to shed every tear behind my eyes. I want to demand answers from Bowen, ask why he followed their stupid rules, ask him why I wasn’t enough to risk it all for.

But the thing I want to do most? I want to confront my goddamn father.

All I can manage to pull on are the closest sweatpants and shirt, my hair hanging limply around my face. I’m half-mad with delirium as I drive over to my parents, the route completely memorized as if it’s on the back of my hand.

Most likely, I look like a disheveled vagabond when I stumble into their kitchen. It’s dinnertime, and they’re seated at the table, my father at the head and my mother sitting dutifully at his side.

“Why did you do it?” My finger points wildly in my father’s direction, my voice unhinged.

If I was in the right frame of mind, I might have thought I needed to stew on this. To wait to confront him until I was presentable, until he couldn’t refute me with his sly, underhanded tactics.

But I was raw, an open, beating vein that was gushing blood without any sign of stopping.

“Lily?” Mom rises from her chair, so much confusion in her eyes.

“You threatened him! Bowen. You told him to stay away from me.” I can feel my eyes bulging out of their sockets.

My father, very calmly, wipes his mouth with his napkin. “Why, Lily, what a pleasant surprise.”

There is nothing left of the father I knew. This man is evil … power, greed, and control have gone to his brain and corrupted it.

“Don’t do this. Don’t lie. Give me the truth!” I scream, my brain unraveling. “You watched me fall apart for months. You’ve looked on as I’ve gone loveless and childless for years. Because Bowen is the only man I’ll ever love, and yet you kept us separated for what? Because your ego couldn’t handle a man who wasn’t just like you being with your daughter? Because you deemed him too unworthy of me? Because he didn’t fit into your perfect political family picture?”

This is it. I’ve finally snapped. Broken out of the chains my parents have placed on me from a young age. I’m no longer obedient, or speak only when spoken to, or put their needs and that of my father’s career above my own. This betrayal, this absolute abuse of love and dedication … it has destroyed us. Even further than my relationship with Bowen.

“Lily, what in the world?” My mom looks bewildered, shifting her eyes back and forth from my father and me.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He has the audacity to sit there and deny this.

I feel like ripping my hair out, strand by strand. “You are my father. How could you do something like this?”

“If you’ve had some sort of fight with your … friend, I don’t see what that has to do with me. Other than I told you it would end badly.”

My God, I might punch him. I’ve never felt this kind of anger toward a human.

“My friend? Bowen is the love of my life and a hell of a lot more of a man than you’ll ever be. He was truly trying to protect me, from both your threats and from seeing what a horrible monster you are!”

I turn to my mother. “Bowen told me the reason he left. Why he’s stayed away for ten years. It’s because our fathers made a pact to keep us apart, and if either of us tried to get back together with the other, they’d expose secrets about us or try to tear us down. What would your husband have done to destroy me? His own daughter? He was going to let slip to everyone in town that the reason I was ejected