I could endure it.
I had to.
“Want to go meet your father, Lainey?”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Zoe
It wasn’t a long drive back to Miami.
But I swear each mile I drove had my stomach twisting tighter and tighter until it was just one big knot with no hope of untangling.
I tried to keep my mind on the current moment. But it wasn’t long before I was the woman I had been just two years ago.
So young.
So inexperienced.
So hopeful.
And wholly, indisputably, unbearably freaking naive.
I could see how I’d been tapping on the steering wheel, belting out some pop song I would quickly grow to hate. How I would keep checking my reflection in the mirror at red lights, fixing any flyaway hairs or smudged makeup, wanting to make my best possible first impression.
Growing up with a single mom who’d just barely been getting by, all I knew were the lower-class suburbs of my hometown.
So as the navigation had me turning onto a street of mini-mansions, I’d been full of wonder.
So wide-eyed.
So easily impressed.
Too starstruck not to know it was all smoke and mirrors, that everything was an illusion, a carefully curated image.
This time, driving down that same road, all I felt was a sick sort of disgust. For all the time I’d spent there, for running myself ragged for someone else, for allowing someone to whittle me down until I was the exact shape they wanted.
Then the second I could no longer fit that picture-perfect image, I was useless. As easily discarded as last week’s trash.
Even if the man throwing me away was the father of the damn baby growing in my stomach.
“God, I hate this place,” I told Lainey as I turned into the driveway.
I hated that as I drove over them, I knew the pavers that made up the horseshoe drive cost fifty thousand dollars. That the gardener who kept all the hedges shaped and the weeds at bay received a wad of cash each week from Travis while he refused to send a dime my way.
I hated the lush green lawn.
The bright spotlights, so people could admire the grandeur even at night.
The crystal-clear pool out back.
The endless hours of my life I would never get back, standing near that pool, getting screamed at by the man who was supposed to care about me.
I shook those thoughts away.
I choked back the sick feeling in my throat.
I squashed my pride.