Page 137 of Swallow Your Sorries

“I’m not offering up any information for free. You said twenty-one questions and you have nineteen left. Or did you think I wouldn’t notice that wasn’t a question?”

His smirk tells me that he did think that.

“What happened the day you nearly drowned, Elle?”

I release a breath as he spins me around to lift my other leg and I grab the bar tighter for support. “We were at the community pool. I kept wading in the shallow. Holding onto the wall and trying to kick like the bigger kids were doing. Jarett thought I was faking for attention. He hated it when my mother paid me attention. When anyone paid me attention which they normally did just from my hair alone. Anyway, he said the floats I had on were babyish and to take them off. Eventually, I did because I suddenly felt embarrassed by them.Stupid. Stupid for being nine and wearing them like the four-year-olds. I’d gotten out of the water and just sat on the side, dipping my toes. The other kids kept trying to get me to play with them, but I couldn’t stand where they were. Somehow, my not joining them made Jarett mad. furious. Humiliated.”

“Because he hated the thought of something being ‘wrong’ with his kid, even though he’d done nothing to teach you. He’d just expected you to know somehow. Like you’d turn seven and become aquatic.”

He’s talking like he knows Jarett directly. But if he did, he wouldn’t be asking me these questions.

“Like you’d turn twelve and suddenly have the logic of a fully developed man.”

Maybe he does know. Not Jarett, but someone just like him.

“Your father?” I ask, and Gant’s eyes snap to mine as he lowers my leg.

“It’s my game. I’m asking the questions. Go on.”

I roll my eyes. “Jarett threw me in and I woke up in the hospital. I passed out and sprained my foot. I guess the water was too shallow. Sometimes I have flashbacks of it.”

“When I pushed you, you saw your father.”

Again, not a question.

There’s a storm of emotions flickering in his dark gaze, too fast and too convoluted for me to decipher. “What about when you grew into your teens? How did Jarett treat you then?”

My teens? He means when the incident with Madame occurred. I think back to Mum’s paranoia over the Auclairs getting their hands on Jarett. But why would knowing how shitty Jarett was as a father make him any easier to find if that’s Gant’s motive?

“Why are you asking me about my father?” I say as he places my ankle on his shoulder again. “You know I haven’t seen him since…since the incident.”

His eyes bore into my own. “You don’t have to do that.”

“Do what?”

“Protect him.”

“I’m not. I’m telling you the truth. I haven’t seen him.”

“But you’re glad you haven’t because you don’t want to share that information with me. Why do you even care about what happens to a monster like that?”

“I don’t.”

“Then if you knew where he was, you’d tell me, right?”

I hesitate, and Gant arches a brow.

“See?”

“There’s a difference between not caring about someone’s fate and having a hand in its course. What the hell would your father even do to him?”

My heartbeat slows as does my breathing as I wait for the answer because I’d never thought that far ahead about the Auclairs like Mum did.

“Answer my question and tell me what he did to you. I’ll forward the inspirations to my father. Not that he needs any help.”

“Gant—”

“Both of our fathers are monsters, Elle, and monsters do what monsters do. There’s no use in trying to guess about it. Your mind isn’t imaginative enough to come up with the sorts of things they can.”

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