27. Vincent
27
VINCENT
“ Y our father is in the hospital.”
The call from Piper was unexpected, and the reason for it was even more shocking.
“What do you mean?” I asked as my heart dropped to my feet. “Is he okay? And why are you there?”
“He’s fine, just get over here, and I’ll explain everything.”
She gave me the address and hung up before I could ask more questions. When I dialed my father’s cell, it went straight to voicemail. Let’s just say I put the defensive driving tactics I’d learned at a racetrack in Monaco to work on the way to the hospital.
Seeing him in the bed all wired up to a bunch of machines was a wake-up call I wasn’t expecting. He looked frail for the first time ever, and I wasn’t at all prepared for the change in him. And the fact that Piper was sitting beside him made the whole scenario almost impossible to process. An ache shot through my body at the sight of her.
Damn it, I missed her too much.
“Stop frowning, I’m fine ,” my dad grumbled as I walked in the room, before I could even get a word out. “No need to look so stressed out.”
“Would someone tell me what happened?” I asked, glancing between the two of them. “Why are you here, Dad?”
Piper refused to look at me, choosing to watch my dad instead.
“I did something dumb,” Richard said.
“Shit,” I sighed. “What was it? Free diving? Paragliding? How many times do I have to tell you that you need to be more careful about how you?—”
“A bike messenger hit me in a crosswalk.”
I paused to consider the scenario and had to stifle a chuckle of relief that it was such a minor accident—and that, wonder of wonders, he hadn’t actually done anything risky to cause it. “You’re kidding me.”
“Do you want to see the tire tracks on my ass?”
“Seriously?”
He broke into a smile. “Nah, the guy barely clipped me, but I fell and hit my head on the curb. Knocked me right out for a minute, and people panicked. I was awake by the time the ambulance came, feeling absolutely fine. I wanted to go about my business, but they sort of forced me to come to the hospital and have a few tests run, so here I am.”
I glanced at Piper. “And how did…why is…”
I couldn’t find a way to ask why he’d reached out to my fake ex-girlfriend instead of me.
“Well, I know how busy you are most days, and Piper and I had just been texting about the new Callaway fairway wood I’d just bought, so I figured I could reach out to her, and she’d get word to you.”
Shit. I hadn’t told him about the breakup yet, and it sounded like Piper hadn’t either. I guess that was up to me.
“And you’re here now, Vincent, which means I can head out. Duty calls at work; you should be very familiar with that scenario,” Piper said in a clipped voice as she stood up. She turned to my father. “It’s wonderful to see you, even though it’s not under better circumstances. I’m glad you’re okay.” She reached out to give his hand a squeeze.
My father grabbed it and raised it to his lips for a quick kiss on the back of her hand, ever the flirt.
“We need to nail down our golf date, young lady. I want you to correct my swing.”
Piper’s eyes flicked to me. “We’ll see what we can do. For now, focus on taking care of yourself. Keep your feet on the ground, mister.”
I watched Piper walk out of the room, and quite possibly out of my life for good.
“Dad, uh, I’ll be right back,” I said as I hurried after her.
She was striding down the hall at a near jog.
“Piper,” I called. “Hold on.”
She turned around slowly, her expression wary.
I wasn’t sure what I was going to say to her, but I wasn’t about to miss the opportunity to say something .
“Yes?” Piper folded her arms over her chest protectively.
“I just wanted to say thanks for helping out. You didn’t have to do that.”
“Your father is a wonderful man, and I was happy I could be there for him.”
There was so much unspoken in the single sentence. My father was wonderful, but I wasn’t. Piper had the bandwidth to help him, but I didn’t.
“He really likes you,” I said.
She shrugged. Once again, there was so much subtext in the simple gesture. It didn’t matter that he liked her; our relationship was over, so she wouldn’t have a chance to deepen the connection.
“I need to go. Darcy and I have some meetings to prepare for.”
“Yeah, that’s right. How’s it going with Mercedes?” I asked quickly, before she could walk away from me.
She closed her eyes, clearly at the end of her patience with me. “Vincent, stop . Okay? Stop playing nice. You made your feelings very clear at the launch party, so there’s no need to pretend to care about what’s going on in my life. Enough. I’m done. Okay? We’re done.”
She looked raw as she said it, and the sadness in her eyes was a knife to my gut. But she was right. I’d opted out of her life, and I had no right to ask her about it.
“Piper,” I said softly.
I wanted to reach out and touch her so damn bad.
Her jaw flexed as she scanned me, like she was steeling herself to say something, then she turned and walked away without another word.
I cleared my throat and forced myself to ignore the sadness churning inside of me.
I strode back into my father’s hospital room and dropped in the chair next to his bed.
“The three of us should play together soon,” he boomed as I walked in. “I know you’re ridiculously busy, but you can make time for your old man, right? I’m not going to be around forever, you know,” he grinned at me mischievously.
“Dad, seriously? Don’t talk like that.”
“What? It’s the truth. At my age, you need to take stock of the time you have left and prioritize what’s important.” He snorted. “Learned that lesson the hard way. I’ve determined that what matters most is the relationships we have. Like you and Piper. Looks like you’ve figured it out for yourself already.”
I grimaced. I didn’t want to have the conversation now, but he’d given me no choice.
“Dad, Piper and I broke up.”
His cheerful expression shifted to shock. “ What ?”
I nodded. “Yeah. It happened the night of the launch.” Thankfully, Dad had no patience with social media, so he’d managed to miss most of the firestorm.
His mouth settled into a thin line, and I knew what was coming. “You’re making a mistake.”
“Says the man who cycles through relationships like Kleenex,” I retorted, then flinched. I hadn’t meant to say that out loud—it had just slipped out.
He watched me in silence for a few minutes, and the only sound was the steady beeping from the machines hooked up to him. “Do you know why I’m a serial monogamist?”
“Yeah, because you keep looking for the perfect partner, but that woman doesn’t exist. You’re chasing a fantasy and paying the price in alimony payments.”
He flinched, and I felt bad for being so blunt.
“You’re half right,” he began. “I have been looking for something. Something that got away.” He waited for me to look at him. “Your mother.”
I didn’t respond. I’d heard him talk about how wonderful my mom was many times before. This was nothing new.
“Every new relationship was my attempt to try to recreate the magic I had with her. And after the last relationship failed, I tried to fill the void in my life chasing thrills.” He paused. “I just wanted to feel something that was close to the sensation of falling in love with her.”
“Falling in love is easy,” I said dismissively. “It’s the staying part that’s hard.”
“It doesn’t have to be,” he replied softly. “How hard was being in love with Piper?”
“Who said I was in love?” I fired back.
He gave me a wan smile. “You didn’t have to. It was obvious.”
My father was wrong. Love? Me? Impossible.
“I could see it in both of you, clear as day,” he continued. “And now you’ve let it slip through your fingers, just like your ridiculous father.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “As I recall, you’re the one who ended every relationship.”
“Numbers two through four? Sure, that was me. But the only one that mattered? Your mother made that choice, thanks to my mistake.”
I was in no mood to sift through the past. I’d heard his excuses before.
“Do you know that I begged her to forgive me? I literally got down on my hands and knees and told her I’d do anything she wanted, if she’d take me back.”
I frowned at him. “That’s not how Mom tells the story. She said you cheated, it was messy, and then you divorced. And then six months later you were dating someone new.”
“Revisionist history, plus the amnesia of time,” he scoffed. “Given what you’re going through, I think it’s important for you to know the truth. Yes, I made a terrible mistake on that business trip, but I confessed to your mom the minute I got back, assuming that it was something we could move past. I can still remember her face when I told her.”
I could’ve sworn his eyes brimmed, like the pain was still fresh for him.
“I tried so hard to win her back. Gifts, surprises, love notes…nothing worked. It was too little too late. The one thing she’d wanted from me was me , not all the stuff. And by the time I realized that, she was done with me. So I did my best to fill the void in my heart, thinking that if I could just fall in love again, I’d be fine. Then I tried to fill it with adventure. I was looking for that serotonin hit. That high. But nothing even came close to what I’d shared with your mother. She was irreplaceable.”
I shifted as the word echoed around my head.
Irreplaceable .
I was familiar with someone like that.
“You know how it looked from the outside, right?” I asked him. “All of those relationships made it seem like you never took marriage seriously at all—like love was never more than a temporary whim that ran its course and then disappeared.”
He let his head fall back against the pillow. “I know. Your old man just can’t stop making mistakes.” He sat up and locked onto me. “I’m hoping you didn’t inherit that tendency from me.”
I’d been gifted with my father’s head for business, his drive, and even his looks, but the idea that this desperate, needy part of him was within me as well was a concept I couldn’t stomach.
I was more comfortable standing alone. The insecurity of giving your heart away? That sounded horrifying. I wasn’t about to open myself up to the same sort of brokenhearted bullshit my dad went through.
“She loved me too, you know,” he continued. “So much. Seems funny to think about it now, given how I’m just a footnote in her life. But back in the beginning?” He let out a low whistle. “We were something else. We’d stay in bed for days .”
“Dad, come on,” I complained. “I don’t need to hear that stuff.”
He chuckled. “It wasn’t just the amazing sex. We were a team, you know? We viewed the world the same way. We could finish each other’s sentences. She walked me to the door every damn day and sent me on my way with a hug and a kiss, then was there waiting for me with more when I got home.” His expression darkened. “But time does things to a relationship. Summit kept growing. I needed to focus on it completely to keep up with the momentum. Your mom understood, but then I started pulling away from her. Not because I wanted to. Because I thought I had to, especially once you were born. I’d watched my own father retreat into his work. I thought that was what you did—that was what it meant to be a provider. And now you know how that turned out for me.”
A nurse bustled in to take his vitals, giving us both a chance to breathe. The second she left, my dad was back at it.
“I’m begging you, Vincent. Don’t make the same mistakes I did. Based on the way Piper was acting, I’m assuming you were the one to end things. I want you to think long and hard about that. You were good together—I saw it with my own eyes. And she’s special. Just like your mother.”
I stared down at my hands. He was right: Piper was unlike anyone I’d known before. But true to my legacy, I’d fucked it all up.
“Dad, she’s done with me.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” he said. “She’s hurting, but she still cares for you. So go to her and tell her you were an asshole but you’ve seen the light, and you’ll do anything to make it right between you.” He paused as pain flooded his face. “I don’t want you to end up like me.”
I reached over to squeeze his arm. He pulled me into a bear hug and slapped me on the back. Damn. It was exactly what I needed.
“Go get your girl,” he whispered in my ear. “Before it’s too late.”