Page 97 of Trust Again

“I screwed up, Dad,” I whispered.

“Whatever happened, we’ll fix it. We always manage.”

His eyes were on me but I couldn’t bring myself to look at him.

“I’m sure it’s not as bad as you might think right now,” Dad continued.

“It’s even worse, Dad. Believe me,” I croaked.

“Should I be worried?” he asked, alarmed.

I turned to face him. “No. It’s… something personal. I hurt someone pretty badly and now I have to live with the consequences.”

In other words, Spencer never wanted to see me again.

“Then say you’re sorry, Dawny. If an Edwards screws things up, they take responsibility. They don’t crawl into a hole in the ground,” Dad said sharply.

I stiffened. “I did apologize, and it wasn’t enough.”

He snorted and set his beer can on the coffee table. “That’s not how I raised you.”

Stunned, I dropped my slice of pizza in my lap. “Excuse me?”

His gaze hardened. “When you ended things with Nathaniel, I was worried about you, honey. Oh, you tried to make me think everything was fine, but I knew things were not okay.”

A lump formed in my throat and I blinked to hold back tears. Farewell, Robo-Dawn.

“It took months—and a move to a new city, a new life—for you to be happy again. To laugh again. And now you’re here with swollen eyes that you don’t want to talk about, even though we agreed we were going to be honest with each other from now on.”

“Dad…”

“I’m not finished,” he said softly, but firmly. “What Nate did to you was terrible, and it threw you off track. But you can’t just give up every time you face a difficult situation. That won’t work.”

I closed my mouth again.

“How do you think things would have gone for us if I’d just given up when your mom left us?” he asked insistently. “It was damn hard. But that just brought you and me closer together. It brought us here.” He took my hand and squeezed it gently. “What I’m saying, honey, is… you can’t just give up. You’re twenty years old. Twenty. You’re allowed to make mistakes, hell, you’re even supposed to make them. That’s what your twenties are for. But you can’t just stand still and let life carry on without you. Because I guarantee you this: if you do this every time things get hard, you’ll never really live.”

I let his words soak in, every single one of them, like a dry sponge. Something clicked. I got it: slowly but surely, I was wasting my life.

My move to Woodshill had started out as an escape, but the life I’d built there was much more than that. More than I’d ever dreamed it could be. I was going to a great college and had the best part-time job, but had still managed to spend the year hidden behind my laptop, never telling anyone about my writing because I was ashamed of it. How crazy was that? To be ashamed of something that made me so happy. Just because I was afraid people would criticize me. And in fact, when I finally told them about it, all my friends were happy for me—even proud of me!

I had wonderful, honest, loyal friends and… I had Spencer.

Spencer, who always believed in me and told me everything. Spencer, who said each day was a new beginning, and who—despite his burdens—was one of the happiest people I’d ever met.

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” I mumbled. “I’m a fool.”

Dad grunted. It sounded like he agreed. “You’ll pull it together, Dawny.”

I really hoped he was right.

Chapter 34

Friday morning, Allie came to Portland with some of my things. The door was barely open before she hugged me while juggling my bags.

“I miss you, girl, but I’m pissed off at you, too,” she said, squeezing me so hard that I could barely breathe.

“I know,” I responded and hugged her back just as tightly.

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