CHAPTER 10 #2
But I hadn’t understood my father’s reach back then—the way his donations opened doors, how judges played golf at his country club, how easily he made problems vanish and appear.
I only learned that lesson after I’d already agreed to go with him, after I’d made him swear to drop the legal custody threats against June, after Colt had looked at me and told me to leave.
I learned it much better once I became his employee.
He exhaled once, the sigh a slow toxin, and I could picture him perfectly, sitting at his large desk, fingers tapping against the rim of his whiskey glass, assembling his words like ammunition.
“Your fiancé has called my office three times today. He says you’re not answering him either. I told him you needed a little time to breathe, but, Blaire, this is not how adults handle things.”
I could feel myself shrinking, making room for his voice, even as something inside me bristled. “Dad, Grant cheated on me. There’s nothing to talk about. You saw the photos.”
The cheating was just the final straw. I’d endured worse from Grant, things I was ashamed I allowed, but seeing those photos had finally jolted me awake, like cold water to the face after years of sleepwalking.
“Don’t be dramatic,” he snapped. “Every relationship has its problems, especially under stress. You can’t throw away a good man because of one mistake.”
A good man.
The words sounded hollow coming from my father, who wouldn’t recognize genuine goodness if it introduced itself with a business card.
Grant wasn’t good. He was polished. He remembered my drink order, but he forgot my birthday.
But he also had a bank account that made powerful men lean in when he spoke.
Grant was handsome and charming, and for a fleeting moment, I’d let myself believe I could breathe without thinking about Colt.
But six months in, that charm had changed to his hand pressing firmly against my lower back when important men approached.
He’d interrupt me mid-sentence to “clarify” what I was saying and asked me to change if he didn’t like my dress.
He had once looked at me with admiration, but as the months passed, I recognized the same clinical appraisal I’d seen my father and his friends wear when assessing thoroughbreds at the races. He was calculating my value and checking for flaws.
He liked that I fit so well in the crook of his arm and looked good doing it. And he loved my father, while I— I had been starved for their approval.
After leaving Willow Grove, I was heartbroken. I had molded myself to be exactly what they wanted. I wore dresses that made my father nod with approval. I laughed at Grant’s jokes with practiced timing, desperate for them to see the polished version of myself I’d created.
I hadn’t realized how easily I was losing myself. Each day I’d grown more agreeable, more digestible, for the sake of earning their love. But love wasn’t something they gave in return.
Grant’s cheating hadn’t been a crisis of character; it was a minor strategic error. A mistake that could easily be swept away as if it had never happened.
My father and Grant were not good men. They were men who had always gotten their way, and somewhere along the line, they convinced themselves that was the same thing.
“One mistake?” I could feel my anger rising and forced it down, glancing at Ruby’s sleeping form to make sure my volume hadn’t disturbed her. “He was sleeping with his assistant for over a year, Dad. That’s not a mistake.”
“Regardless,” he tutted with the sharp click of his pen in the background. “Grant is willing to move past it. One bad decision shouldn’t destroy what you’ve built together.”
I nearly laughed. “What we built? You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“You’re being childish.” His voice was harder now, the veneer of civility cracking enough to reveal the rage beneath, and I remembered how Grant had said the very same to me.
“Grant will provide for you. What is it you think you’re going to find back in Willow Grove?
” He laughed, but there wasn’t a trace of humor.
“What kind of life do you think you’ll have there? ”
I bit into my bottom lip to stop myself from saying what I really wanted to. “I’m going to help June with the farm. I think I’m going to come up with a plan to sell her jams online and market them.”
“The farm?” he sneered, disgust dripping from his words. “You have a marketing degree from Duke. Instead of working on my staff like we planned, you’re going to waste it by selling jams on a dying farm?”
A slow burn built in my chest, and I clamped my eyes closed. I wanted to scream. I wanted to reach through the phone and shake him until he rattled, until all the years of me swallowing my own voice came up and flooded every inch of this house.
Instead, I pressed my nose to the top of Ruby’s head and breathed. “I love this farm, and when I’m thirty, a piece of it’s legally mine. My mama saw to that.”
He paused for a long second before he spoke again.
“You’re missing the point, Blaire.” His words sliced through the line before he cleared his throat.
“The wedding venue is still reserved. If it’s canceled, people are going to ask questions.
Reporters are already sniffing around waiting for any story they can find.
You need to fix this before it gets out of hand. I will call Grant’s father?—”
There it was. He didn’t even try to hide the truth of what he cared about.
Not my heartbreak, not the way Grant had betrayed and humiliated me.
Grant’s father was a far more powerful man than Grant, and my father needed him.
And he needed his perfectly painted image to keep things exactly where he wanted them.
A carefully crafted facade I helped him create.
He’d been a shit father for most of my childhood, nothing but a ghost as he walked away from my mother and me without a backward glance. He hadn’t even come to her funeral.
But when he came, when he took me from Willow Grove, he wore fatherhood like a tailored suit.
He dragged me to every donor gala and country club function that would have me.
I learned how to walk in heels, how to smile and hold my tongue when he wanted me to, how to make myself a perfect extension of his ambition.
I had wanted so badly to make him proud. I wanted him to see me, to choose me. I told myself that if I did everything exactly right, he’d soften, and maybe even apologize for the wreckage he’d left behind.
But he never did.
He taught me how to be useful, and right now, I was not useful to him.
“I’m not marrying Grant.”
He was so quiet I could hear my pulse in my ears, but then he exhaled, his disappointment raking over every inch of me.
“You’re making things unnecessarily difficult.” His voice was even colder now, more precise and damning. “Do you understand what you’re giving up?”
My eyes flicked to Ruby as she shifted, her hand twisting into the fabric of my shirt, and I suddenly felt equal parts pity and anger for my father.
“I do.”
“I’ll let you sleep on it,” he said, his voice tight with forced patience. “Don’t throw away everything because Grant didn’t live up to your expectations. I expect you to answer when I call next time.” The line went dead, and I let my phone slide off my shoulder and onto the cushion beside me.
Ruby stirred, breathing a little harder than before, and I realized I must have tightened my grip around her. Her face squished against my arm as she blinked up at me, her blue eyes still glassy with fever and sleep. “Are you leaving?”
“No.” The word poured out of me, and I hated myself for the panic in my own voice. I softened it, ducking down to brush her sweaty hair back from her cheek. “I’m here.”
She blinked again, her eyelids fluttering twice before falling closed.
I watched her as sleep claimed her again, and Lou’s words from last night rose like a tide.
Some people aren’t built for staying . My father and Ruby’s mother were the same.
It didn’t matter how they left, they still left behind the same emptiness.
I couldn’t draw in a full breath as I realized I never wanted to be someone who created that feeling in her.
I sat there for a long time, the light outside the window pooling across the living room. I watched it crawl up Ruby’s arm and over the gentle curve of her lips. I traced my finger over her face before I reached for the thermometer, checking again.
I pressed it gently to Ruby’s forehead and let my focus narrow in on her, on the way the numbers ticked across the screen.
Finally, it beeped. One hundred point two.
Blaire: Her temp is down to 100.2. She’s asleep. Call me when you’re close.
I clutched the phone like it was the only rope in a rising flood, hating myself for needing his response, for caring what he thought. Yet, I still checked every few seconds to see if those three dots would appear.
I wrapped my arms around her, pulling her tighter into my chest, one hand running slow and steady down her spine while the other still gripped my phone.
I focused on her steady breaths until mine settled with them.
The afternoon wrapped around us both, and I was already fast asleep before the phone buzzed in my hand again.