Something about the night with him was perfect. Every part of it was ours. We’d owned one another. I’d felt his highs and his lows. He’d fucked me and then made love to me.
He’d made me feel ravaged and then like a treasure.
I wanted to box the night up, put it in a safe and go back to it every time I missed him.
And I would miss him.
Very much.
Because today, I knew we were over.
I slid out from under his arm and made my way quietly to my closet that morning.
I pushed all the clothes aside until I got to the black dress I’d worn for my mother’s funeral.
Black bled all the colors together, dark and ominous and full of everything. I applied a heavy eyeliner to match the dress and took in the end result.
I’d barely gotten ready in silence while the man I loved slept in my bed. I’d left my hair mussed from the bed, lips bruised from the night, and cheeks flushed from knowing what we had done.
My dress tightened enough at the waist that my breath felt a little shallow before it flowed out to accentuate that I was in fact a woman, not a girl anymore.
My eyes burned boldly green against the makeup. They were the only color that stood starkly out.
I looked at Jax one last time; took in the way he swallowed up the room even while sleeping. That presence, that infallible magnetism, and that boldness that radiated from him couldn’t ever be compared to anyone else. I knew I was walking out on the one man I’d never be able to get over.
Yet, as I took in his sun-kissed skin and his dark hair, his full lips and his sculpted chest, I knew that I’d never, ever find the strength to walk away again and do this on my own.
And I did have to do it on my own.
I’d faced my father for years with my mom as a shield.
I had to face him alone now.
Jax would try to shield me. I didn’t want that.
I’d done the proper thing, the right thing, things for everyone else for far too long.
I quietly made my way out of my apartment and texted Rome that I needed his truck to see my father. He met me outside with his keys.
No questions. No words.
He handed them over as he stood there in his sweats and then pulled me in for a hug. After kissing the top of my head, he turned back to our building and let me go.
The drive lasted as long as any drive would of that length. This time I didn’t dwell on memories or conjure up walls and barriers. I just focused on the road, on me, and on who I’d become without him in my life.
The past few months with Jax had changed me. I’d changed me too. I had more trust in myself. Confidence. Determination.
As I pulled up to the same building I’d been to the day before, I focused on getting through the gates, not on the cars that had followed me here, on the media I knew had been assigned to my apartment throughout the night to try and get a glimpse of Jax or me or both of us together. Only a few had caught me leaving in Rome’s truck and those few got pictures of me now.
Jax would soon know I was here. Soon, so would the world.
I didn’t focus on that because I was focused on this being about me.
Today, I didn’t come here for Jax or to see my father.
I came because I needed it. This was for me.
After being patted down and following the guard, I turned the corner to where he sat, waiting.
Frank. My father. A tormentor and an enforcer throughout my life. Someone I hadn’t seen in years, yet remembered vividly in all my worst dreams.
The memories had faded but his face, the one that held so much anger and rage, hadn’t.
That face, the one that hardened before he struck my mother, was one I would never forget. I would see it forever. Even if today, his face was relaxed and subdued. He squinted a little as if he was just a little curious, eyes bright and clear from being sober.
He looked older, more worn down, and a little skinnier. His silver hair was still combed to the side nicely, and he didn’t look as bad as I had hoped.
When I sat down across from him, neither of us smiled. We took each other in like we were both a species neither one of us had come across.
Maybe I thought he would start the conversation. Maybe I thought it would flow naturally. Maybe I’d been hopeful. Nothing came out of his mouth though. Nothing came out of mine.
I just stared at the eyes that looked so much like mine and wondered how we’d gotten here. How I’d not come sooner. How he’d not contacted me sooner. How Mom would have felt about it all.
Not that it mattered.
She was gone and it was because of him.
I cleared my throat. “I’m here just this once.”
My voice felt weak, even to my own ears. I must have appeared small, insignificant, and still so young to him. So many times he had overpowered me and made me feel just that way, I couldn’t shake it.
“I’m glad you finally came.” His voice chilled me to the bone. Somehow, it had remained starkly precise and cut through all my thoughts. I wondered if that voice and his mannerisms, the way he held himself to this higher standard, had allowed him to build his company, to maintain it even while behind bars.
I wrung my hands together under the metal table and tried to hold his stare. “There hasn’t been a reason for me to come visit you in the past.”
“And now?”
“Now, I’ve come to terms with how I want to live and it doesn’t include wondering about you or how you feel.” I shifted and held that gaze as I said my next words. “It doesn’t include wondering what you and Jax talk about.”
His eyes narrowed in the slightest, then he broke eye contact to really study me. Study my posture. Study my clothes. Study my hair. I saw him focus on every single detail. I let him.
I didn’t squirm or fidget under his analysis. Never had I wanted to move so bad though. He didn’t deserve to get to take in his own daughter. It wasn’t his right when he’d taken so much from me. Yet, again, I let him.
I wondered if that’s what he wanted or if he wanted to make me feel small, wanted me to shift and show him weakness.
“You’ve grown up, Aubrey,” he finally replied when he was done taking stock of me. He frowned, and the wrinkles that weren’t so prominent years ago on his forehead stood out. “I’m not sure I’d agree with your choice in showing off how you’ve grown up. But you have and …”
I cut him off. “I’m not here for your approval. Quite frankly, I don’t care about it.”
“Don’t talk over me, Aubrey.” His jaw ticked. “I’m your father.”
Those three words. How I hated those three words.
They used to foreshadow so much pain. Today, I’d change the course of what they meant to me.
“You’ve never been a father to me, Frank.”
His eyes widened, but I just shrugged.
“Fathers take care of their children. They love them. They protect them. You didn’t do those things for me. I lived in fear of you.” My heart pounded as words poured out of me. Words meant to hurt but also meant to release me from years of frustration and resentment. “Mom should have left you. I should have run away. We should have told someone or buried your name in truths with the press.”
He slammed his hand down on the table and got a reprimand from the guard before he spit out at me, “You didn’t do any of those things. You did as you were told because that’s what a daughter and a wife does.”
“And does a husband and a father try to light his family on fire?”
His face got so red, I thought he might burst across the table. Instead, he whispered, “It should have been you trying to save me in the fire. Not your mother. Your mother listened. She tried. She kept her wits about her. Unlike you.”
I could only imagine that my face got as red as his. That I looked like I wanted to jump across the table at him too. “You think it should have been me but it shouldn’t have been anyone. We should have let you burn, Frank. We should have let you die there. Now, instead, I’m without the one person who loved me from my very beginning. I have to carry her memory with just the trust fund she left me. Believe me though, I will carry on her memory even if you won’t. Even if you try your best to continue to never acknowledge her death, her life, her spirit.”
His smile was slow but it crept up as I talked and was a bright, blinding white like I’d made his stupid day by the time I finished what I had to say.
“You want to know why your boy comes here to visit every now and then?”
I didn’t answer him but he knew I wanted that. He knew I was basically salivating to know. His smile told me I shouldn’t. His smile reinforced what I thought I knew when I’d left Jax this morning. Whatever I found out today would end us for good.
“He comes to help me keep my business afloat.”
My stomach churned as bile rose in my throat. I wanted to ask why but knew I didn’t have to. Frank looked too excited. He was leaning over the table like he couldn’t wait to continue his story.
“He didn’t want me to tell you. He started coming here from some guilt. You know, he could have woken me up in that fire, saved us all a lot of trouble. He didn’t though, and it scared him as a little boy. He wanted some sort of redemption by coming to visit me. He threw that trust fund in my face and I laughed, Aubrey. I laughed so hard.”
I looked at him bewildered, not understanding what he was getting at.
“Neither of you knew—your mother never had access to my money. To any money. That trust fund was set up by the Stonewoods for you. They didn’t want you to feel like a charity case. Without me though, and without them, you are. Your mother never could have left you anything because I made her. I owned everything. I still do. Well, except for some of my company now. You know who owns a part of it?”
I shook my head, wanting it all not to be real, wanting this to be a dream, wanting to wake up.
“Jax owns a part of it now. So, I would have kept our little trust fund secret like he’s always wanted me to in order for him to come here and keep helping me, but now he’s invested enough in my company that he wouldn’t dream of screwing me and himself over.”
“You made this agreement to not share anything with me?” My voice sounded far away. So far down a tunnel that I could barely hear it.
“It was the only way, sweet daughter of mine.”
I stood up so fast the chair I sat in tipped back and clattered to the floor.
He chuckled to himself, like I’d made his day.
I knew I told him he was sick, that there was no redemption for a man like him. Something along those lines but I couldn’t be sure of anything else except that he yelled to me as I walked away, “My daughter should wear white and dress like a lady. Remember that next time you come to visit me.”
There wouldn’t be a next time, I told myself as I rushed to get out of there. I couldn’t remember how I stumbled to the truck, how I managed to get it started and maneuver my way out of the gates and around the frenzy of paparazzi that must have caught wind of me visiting. I didn’t even remember the drive home.
I almost expected Jax to greet me when I got through my apartment door but the place only had a lingering smell of him.
As I shut the door, I gasped for a breath of air. It felt like the first breath I’d taken since I’d run from the truth, from the reality that I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to stomach or get over.
Jax had made a deal or two with the devil. Deals he’d tried to keep from me. Secrets he’d hidden from me for so long. With all this time together, he’d never told me.
I started for my room but before I got further, Katie and Vick barreled in the front door with Rome following behind them, looking somewhat bored and a little irritated.
‘You ready for the launch?’ Vick belted out like she was yelling across a stadium.
‘Launch?’ I racked my brain, stumbling through the chaos of emotions to figure out what she was talking about.
Vick looked surprised and then frowned with a little bit of disgust as she replied, ‘Brey, Jax has been working on this music app forever. Pull it together!”
I probably looked stunned because they all looked at me like I was crazy.
Vick continued as if I was a child that she needed to explain the situation to. “His concert to launch the app is a huge deal. The media has been covering it for weeks. He never, ever performs! They say he won’t ever again after this. Do you think that’s true?”
I opened my mouth and then snapped it shut. I knew the answer but now I wondered. Did I really know him at all? Was anything he’d said true?
“Girl, you okay?” Katie stepped forward but I stepped back. I needed a minute. Or a freaking lifetime.
Rome stepped in front of Katie and blocked me from their view as he turned to them and said, “I need to talk to her for a minute.”
Silence descended over my apartment, and I knew they were all throwing looks at each other. Rome must have won because he spun and grabbed my arm to pull me to my room.
I followed, probably because I couldn’t find a thing to say to any of them. I couldn’t explain what I was going through. I couldn’t explain my feelings. I couldn’t do anything because I didn’t know anything. My world had crumbled, the floor was gone from beneath my feet, the air had been sucked from my lungs, and my vision was probably playing tricks on me.
“What happened this morning?” he asked as he closed the door.
I sank onto my bed and stared at my knees like they would give me an answer.
“Brey, you have to talk. You have to let it out. Whatever it is.”
“I can’t,” I whispered. “I don’t know how.”
“Try, baby girl.” He sat down next to me.
“Everything I thought, everything I knew, it isn’t.” I sighed and put my face in my hands. “Nothing is as it seems.”
“Life normally isn’t. Remember, you’ve been through the worst, and you still got through it.”
“Was it the worst though?”
“Even if it wasn’t, you’re strong enough to get through it. You’re you. You fight, you bleed, you fall, you get back up. You don’t give up. You survive.”
“What if all I’ve been doing is surviving?”
“Then you’ll start living today, baby girl. Life’s not over.”
I let his words roll over me and let myself absorb it, know it, and own it. I had to. It was the only way I was going to get through the rest of the day.
As I stood up, I pushed the flurry of emotions down and mentally pulled up my big-girl pants. “You’re right.”
As I said the words, both of our phones chimed and within a couple seconds both Katie and Vick were bursting into my room.
Katie yelled, “What in the flying fuck, Brey?”
Vick, at the same time, yelled, “You went to visit that monster without telling us?”
Both pummeled at me then hugged me without an answer. I didn’t return their embrace. I just said, “I can’t talk about it, you guys. I just can’t.”
Vick started to protest but Katie threw a death stare around the room. “Vick, don’t. And, Rome, you fucking knew.”
He started to deny it but she cut him off. “Don’t try to lie. I’m already thinking of a way to kill you slowly.”
His mouth snapped shut.
My phone rang, but Katie moved as fast as a python striking to turn it off.
“Everyone should probably silence their phones,” Vick announced.
“So, the media got the word out about me going to see him then?”
“It’s out there.” Katie let out a frustrated sigh.
“Fuck.” I let the swear slip. “I forgot about the launch. I forgot about everything when I went this morning, honestly. And after today, it doesn’t matter. Jax and I are over, but I didn’t want to harm his launch or the app. I just … I had to go.”
They all stared at me like I’d spoken in a different language.
Katie was the first to say something. “You and Jax aren’t over.”
Vick and Rome stayed silent as I tossed my glare around the room. “Of course we are, Katie.”
“Whatever you learned today, girl, you are going to talk to him about it.” She didn’t ask, she commanded.
“What he says won’t matter.”
“Maybe, but you are not done getting your closure. You say what you need to. You go to that launch today. Let Vick get you ready. Or better yet, let me get you ready if you want to go there and kill him.”
I shook my head like I couldn’t fathom the idea. “Don’t retreat back into this shell.” Her determined stare showed so much more than she said. Katie knew me better than all of them, and I knew her. She’d gone through enough to believe she was giving me the right advice. She didn’t care if she was pushing, she thought the pushing would save me.
“It’s not a shell, it’s survival and …” The words died on my lips as Rome cleared his throat.
Start living today.
Closing my eyes and breathing hard before I said my next words wouldn’t wake me from this nightmare because it was real. If life blew up in your face, you had two choices: stare down at the explosion, lament what was and what could have been or chose to fight your way out, become someone new, and build something new for yourself. I wanted to be someone better, someone different, someone stronger.
“Fine.” One word that would change the course of the rest of my life. I knew it. I knew today would be the turning point.
“Fine?” Katie retorted like she couldn’t believe it.
“Yep. Fine.” I straightened a little and pushed my wild hair back from my face. “Let’s get ready. Katie, you’re helping me get ready, not Vick.”
Vick grumbled.
“I’ll talk to Jax after the launch.”
