Page 79 of Between Now and Forever

“Wake up. Wake up, Liz.”

“I’m awake!” I call, but he doesn’t seem to hear me. His face grows darker every time he yells.

“Elisabeth, wake up!” My father’s hand wraps around my bicep and yanks me out of my nightmare.

The flash of relief I feel at the reprieve evaporates when his hand moves to grab the front of my T-shirt. The collar of my shirt cuts into the back of my neck as I’m dragged out of bed and onto my feet.

My heart explodes into a wild thumping as my sleep-bleared vision clears, and I find myself looking up into my father’s murderously angry face.

The last time I saw him, he’d been in his study conferring with his priest and advisor. He hadn’t spared me a glance then, and I’d been glad. Every time he looked at me these days, I saw nothing but his pain.

I know he misses his golden child, James. I haven’t let his indifference bother me. I’ve been focusing on getting up to speed on things at Wolfe so that when he needed me, I’d be ready.

But, something has clearly gone very wrong since I went to sleep last night.

There’s real loathing in his expression. A pin prick of ice-cold dread stabs at the very center of me and widens a crevice that's been forming for years.

I’ve seen him like this before, the night he put my mother out. That I’m the one facing that level of wrath, immobilizes me.

“Daddy…” I implore with a whimper, even though I know it’s futile to try and reason with him when he’s like this.

His hand flies out, the back of it catching me under my jaw and sending me flying into my headboard. Pain explodes in my shoulder and my head starts to pound, but adrenaline sends me scrambling to find my feet.

He grabs my shirt again, but this time his hand moves down with a swift, sharp tug and rips the front of my shirt clean away.

“What are you doing? What’s happened?” A thousand emotions crash around inside me like storm waves. It’s discombobulating and terrifying. I grasp desperately at my shirt again, trying to shield my naked body underneath.

“Why are you feigning modesty now?” He scowls at me in disgust.

“Wha-What do you mean?” I ask bewildered by his expression and his anger.

“Who is this?”

“Who is who?”

He holds up his phone and presses play on a video. I take the phone from him and hold it closer to my face so I can see. My whole world comes to a screeching halt.

I cover my mouth to stop the loud gasp of shock that I feel.

It’s Carter and me outside the church. Him helping me into the car. Kissing me…

It blurs under the tears that fill my eyes.

What in the world is going on?

I look up at my father, my eyes wild with pleading for him to listen. He’s looking at me like I’m a piece of rotten fruit he found in the back of the fridge. Like he’s about to throw me away. My heart feels like it’s too big for my chest and might burst.

“Where did you get that?”

He slips the phone back into his pocket and sits down on my bed.

He pats the spot next to him and when I don’t move he reaches out, grabs me by the wrist, and pulls me down next to him.

He smooths his hair and takes a deep breath. I’m shaking, and the tears are falling even though I’m not crying.

“Right before the funeral, Will Oh came to see me. He was the last person to speak with James and he wanted to pay his respects. Imagine my shock when he told me that James was on the phone with him on Friday night when a call interrupted theirs.”

He sniffs loudly and clears his throat. The cold I had worked its way through the house over the last month and everyone has had it.

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