Page 84 of Love.V2
Right back where I’d started, except for one massive difference. Tess was here.
***
My dad’s recently renovated Brentwood bungalow was nice, but it wasn’t huge. It was easy to follow the sounds of scraping and rustling in the kitchen.
I looked at the stale art on the walls while I padded down the white carpet. It reminded me of our old condo. A memory flashed.
You need life. Color. Plants.
I stopped dead in my tracks on the threshold of the kitchen. Had I told Tess we should have a baby? For the life of me, I couldn’tremember anything other than snippets of our conversation in the car last night. Had she been mad? Disappointed?
She was here, right? Wasn’t that a good sign?
“Dylan?”
I glanced up to find my dad sitting at the kitchen table with his computer, surrounded by piles of papers and folders.
“Hi.”
“Hi.” He looked at me, taking in the rumpled clothes I’d been wearing for over twenty-four hours. “Rough night?”
I laughed humorlessly, looking around. Tess wasn’t here. “Yeah.”
“Tess told me about Henry. I was sorry to hear it.” Dad’s lips tilted down before he shoved away from the table to pour a cup of coffee. “She told me a lot of things, actually.” The look he speared in my direction froze me. I’d been about to excuse myself to find her, but something about his face locked my knees.
“Oh?”
“Oh. Your girl’s feisty. Never realized.” He handed the mug over without meeting my eyes. “I should probably apologize for that. In fact, maybe I should apologize for a lot of things.”
In the morning’s fuzziness and with everything that had happened clouding my brain, my last encounter with my father had faded to the back of my mind. Now it came roaring back. The accusations. The bristling fight.
I sighed, staring down into my coffee. “Dad, I don’t think now’s really the time—”
“No, I think it is.” He motioned for me to sit on one of the upholstered chairs at the kitchen table. “Tess came knocking late last night,and before I could get a single word out, informs me that my son has been through a trauma and that I was going to open the door and let you both sleep here.”
Even with the tension filling the air, I smiled. Tinker Bell really had relocated that spine of steel. “Yeah, that’s my girl.”
Dad grunted. “Since she woke up this morning, she’s been on a tear. Commandeered my office.” He gestured at his laptop and the papers on the table. “She’s been in there on calls and video meetings all morning, and she has your phone.”
“My phone?” A wave of relief crashed over me. I hadn’t left it behind.
“It started buzzing three different times when she was in here grabbing coffee. She checked the screen, silenced the call, then flipped it back over.”
Everything inside me was liquifying. She’d told me…yesterday? Two days ago? It didn’t matter when. She’d told me she’d fight for me.
I hadn’t expected a warrior.
I should have.
“I’ve been, er, thinkin’ a lot about what you said to me the last time I saw you,” Dad began, fidgeting with a pen. “I know I might have…overstepped some. I assumed a lot of things about your relationship that I shouldn’t have.”
“Dad,” I started again. I didn’t want to have a come to Jesus moment right now. I wanted to find Tess.
“And Tess didn’t mind telling me this morning that I’ve made a lot of assumptions about other areas of your life, too.” Dad winced, finally looking up at me. “I always just wanted you to be happy, son. And Irealize now I might have pushed you too hard to do that on my terms. I haven’t given you the chance to find your own happiness. And I’m sorry.”
I let the words sink in, taking a deep breath. “Thank you for saying that.”
Dad grunted. “Well, I mean it. I might have…well, IknowI’ve been hard on the twins, too. Maybe…takin’ some things out on my kids that I need to work on myself.”
