Page 11 of Pulse
I glanced away. How could I tell him that I was exactly like my mother? The woman he’d left. Ash had left me, too. It wasn’t in the same way as Dad had left us, but it had the same ending.
“Did he do something to you?” Dad asked quietly, prodding a finger right into the open wound that was my heart.
I squeezed my eyes shut.
“What did he do to you Ren?”
“He left me!” I shrieked, the floodgates opening. “He left me just like you did!”
I shoved Dad hard, pressing the flats of my palms against his chest, but he grabbed my wrists, yanking me hard against him. He’d never shown me any affection before. He’d never hugged me or kissed me on the cheek…nothing…so when his arms caged me against him, I struggled at first, but then it was all too much.
I sobbed against his T-shirt, battering him uselessly with my fists. I fought to forget because I didn’t want to be this. I hadn’t cried since that night I turned up at Josie’s. The same night Ash had left. I didn’t want to be that person who cried at the drop of a hat. I wanted to be the person who stood up and fought.
But I wasn’t really fighting, was I?
“I’ve been waiting for that for a whole year,” Dad said quietly.
I had a lot of anger inside of me, but all this time I didn’t realize what the anger was. I just thought I was born that way, that it was who I was. Turned out, it was what I was made into. I was angry at my mum, I was angry at my dad, I was angry at Monica and Hammer, but most of all…I was angry with Ash.
“Everyone leaves,” I choked out between sobs.
“I’m sorry Ren. I’m sorry I did that to you.”
“Why didn’t you come back? Why did you just disappear?”
“Guilt,” he said without hesitation.
Finally he was giving me answers. Tough love, but it was an answer. A reason.
“I did a fucked up thing, Ren. I wasn’t a good person back then. I regretted it, but I felt like it was much too late to go back. It was my own stupid guilt and fear that stopped me going back to face you and your mum. I’m certainly not proud of it. You showed me up that day you walked in here looking for me, you know that?”
I sniffed, my throat constricting in on itself.
“I reacted badly then too. I reacted that way, shoving you into the storeroom like a dirty secret, because I felt like a failure. I am a failure. I failed you and I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry?”
“Of course I am,” he said, squeezing his arms around me. “But I’m trying to make things right. We mightn’t have the most conventional father daughter relationship, but I’m trying the best way I know how.”
By training me. By showing me everything he knew.
“I’m not going to leave you again,” he murmured into my hair. “That’s a promise.”
I wiped my tears away, my cheeks red with embarrassment.
“I’m with you all the way,” he said, placing his hands on my shoulders. He pushed me back so he could look me in the eyes and show me his sincerity. “Every fight, every training session, every interview. I’m with you for it all. Start to finish. No matter what.”
“You promise?”
“I promise,” he replied. “On one condition.”
I cocked my head to the side.
“No more underground fighting, okay?”
The father I’d always wanted or a dirty underground fighting racket? I wanted something to hold onto and The Underground seemed to be something a little too unhealthy for my current mindset. Dean had made me realize that. Dad had driven the notion home.
Seemed like a no brainer.
I nodded. “No more Underground.”
