Letter Eighteen #6
Nic took my arm and hauled me all the way out to the car, idling by the slush-piled curb, Hal sitting at the wheel. He practically tossed me in the back seat, then climbed in beside me. Even through my coat and sweater, my arm stung from his grip.
Rage. Black rage, filling me up. I shook with it. I wanted to punish him. I wanted to hurt my dad for taking yet another thing away from me. My freedom. The pictures of my mom. College. And now this: the only person who knew my darkest secrets and loved me, anyway.
Hands clenched into fists, I whispered, “I hate you.”
Nic drew back. “What did you say?”
“I hate you!” I screamed. “I fucking hate you!”
I screamed it over and over. I shoved him.
I slammed my fists against his chest. This is what years of feeling powerless had done to me.
Made me manic. It was that scream, building and building and building in my chest, finally let free.
That dark rage, taking hold, in control, driving me to a point of madness I’d never before reached.
Never in my life had I hit my dad or said I hated him, but in the back seat of that car, while Hal stared straight ahead and pretended not to hear, I attacked Nic. I released all that pent-up rage.
I fucking let.
Him.
Have.
It.
Eventually, Nic managed to catch one wrist. Then he caught the other one.
“That’s enough!” he yelled, gaze wild as he held my arms between us, locking them in place.
I struggled to free myself from his grasp, the rage still burning hot, and I’m really not proud of what happened next, Casey, but I did to my dad what I’d done to that asshole, Greer, just before he put his hand to my throat. I spat in my dad’s face.
And then: a blazing look I’d never seen there before, marring my dad’s features. A kind of rage, filling him, turning his eyes scary dark. He grabbed my chin, like he had yours the day he’d learned about the Halloween party, his fingers digging into my jaw.
“You want to tell me you hate me?” he demanded.
“You want to spit in my goddamn face? Go ahead. Treat me like shit. Punish me, after I’ve done nothing but love you.
All you do is hurt me. All you do is rip my heart out—every chance you get.
You think you can push me, and I won’t push back?
Think again, you spiteful little bitch. You little—”
“Nic,” Hal boomed from the front. “Nic.”
Nic released my face, his expression clouding over with shock. I scrambled backward across the seat and pressed myself against the door, crying hard, the kind where your chest is heaving and you’re gasping, fighting to catch your breath. He reached for me, but I shoved him away.
Nic put a hand to his mouth. His eyes filled with tears. He cocked his head to the side, thickly saying, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” He reached for me again, his hand shaking. “Come here, honey. I’m sorry, baby. Please, Elliot.”
I shook my head.
My dad—who almost never cried—began to cry, fat tears rolling down his cheeks as he whispered it over and over: “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
It killed me to see him like that. Killed me to know my actions had driven us to this place, this moment, leaving us both in tears.
Because those things he said? They were true, weren’t they?
I’d just hurt him—hurt us, worse than ever before, in the back seat of that car.
What kind of person hit their dad and spat in his face?
Someone who wasn’t safe around other people, that’s who.
“Please,” he whispered, inching across the seat, gently tugging on my arm. “I’m sorry, baby. Forgive me, Elliot. Please.”
This was my dad—the powerful man he was, never defeated by anything—begging me.
Eventually, I allowed him to pull me against his chest.
“It’s okay,” I told him, breathing in his citrusy scent, instantly soothed by the familiarity of it.
“It’s not okay. I’m never supposed to hurt you.” He eased me back and took my face in his hands, swiped away my tears with his thumbs. “Elliot, I’m sorry.”
“I forgive you.”
“Are you okay?”
I shook my head. “But I don’t really hate you. I’m sorry, too.”
Hal drove us to the firm. I sat in my dad’s office while he tied up some loose ends. At one point, he left the room to talk to his CFO, so naturally I took that opportunity to rummage through the drawers of his desk.
And I found them, Casey.
The papers.
The ones that had been sitting there “for quite a while now.”
Several forms, not yet filled out, for a behavioral health hospital in Arizona. It had a program for teens suffering from self-harm, one for teens who were contemplating suicide, and another one for teens with serious conduct disorders. Namely: hurting people.
My dad hadn’t been messing around when he’d threatened to send me there. It hadn’t been some idle threat to get me to apologize to Sienna. He’d been serious.
But this is the really messed-up part: I sliced through my skin with those papers, giving myself a massive paper cut.
And for just a little while, as I squeezed that fresh cut and stared down at the traffic below, listening to the honks and sirens and a jackhammer going off in the distance, the guilt that had plagued me in the backseat of that car finally loosened its grip.