Chapter 24 Her Father’s House #2
Her father’s expression shifted.
A flicker of relief.
As if maybe she had finally seen reason.
She hated that flicker enough to keep going.
“And I hurt him first.”
His face tightened.
“That memo?” Lena’s voice shook now. “Those words were mine. I looked at him and saw a campaign before I saw a person. And then he let me see more, and I—” She swallowed hard.
“I cared. I care. Not because he made me reckless. Not because he manipulated me. Because I know what it feels like to be trapped inside the version of yourself everyone else finds convenient.”
Her father flinched.
Good.
No.
Not good.
Necessary.
The paper trembled in her hand.
“You keep saying Nico is dangerous because he makes me forget consequences,” she said. “But he is the first person who noticed I have been living inside consequences my whole life.”
Her father’s face changed.
There.
Pain.
Real pain.
“Lena,” he said softly.
She hated that softness too.
Because it made her want to stop.
Made her want to be good again.
Made her want to apologize for bleeding on his kitchen floor.
She did not.
“You think he made me honest?” she said. “Maybe he did. Maybe that’s what scares you.”
His jaw worked.
“I am scared,” he said.
The admission quieted her.
Her father looked toward the framed photo on the wall near the breakfast nook. Her mother in her sundress. Laughing. Alive.
“When your mother died,” he said, “I promised myself you would never feel unprotected.”
Lena’s chest tightened.
“Dad—”
“I did not know how to raise a daughter alone.” His voice stayed controlled, but barely.
“I knew tennis. Discipline. Structure. Schedules. I knew what to do with a player when he was falling apart. I did not know what to do with a twelve-year-old girl who smiled at her mother’s funeral because everyone kept telling her how brave she was. ”
Lena stopped breathing.
The memory hit so hard she had to grip the chair.
Her father looked at her.
“I saw that smile,” he said. “And I hated myself for being relieved.”
Her eyes burned.
“No,” she whispered.
“Yes.” His mouth tightened. “Because if you were smiling, I could pretend I was not failing you.”
The kitchen blurred.
For years, Lena had believed her father had missed the mask.
He had not missed it.
He had accepted it because he needed it too.
That hurt in a different way.
A deeper way.
“I thought if I kept you close,” he said, “if I kept the lines clear, if I kept the wrong people away—”
“Wrong people like Nico?”
His face hardened slightly.
Not enough to erase the grief.
“People who could hurt you.”
“Everyone can hurt me.”
“That is not comforting.”
“It is true.”
He looked away.
Lena set the printed email on the table between them.
“I applied for the Meridian internship,” she said.
Her father’s head turned slowly.
There it was.
The other secret.
The one she had carried because leaving Westbridge felt like betrayal before she even said it out loud.
His voice came quiet. “When?”
“Before all of this.”
“How long before?”
“A month.”
He absorbed that.
Badly.
“You were not going to tell me?”
“I was.”
“When?”
“When I knew whether they wanted me.”
His face tightened. “You should have told me.”
“Why?” she asked. “So you could explain all the reasons it was too far, too competitive, too risky, too soon?”
“That is unfair.”
“Is it?”
Silence.
Her father looked down at the table.
Lena’s anger softened around the edges, which was inconvenient because she was not finished needing it.
“I want a life that belongs to me,” she said.
His eyes lifted.
“I want work that is mine. Mistakes that are mine. Love that is mine, even if it’s messy and badly timed and attached to a man who thinks emotional communication is an extreme sport.”
Despite everything, her father’s mouth twitched.
Barely.
Then it faded.
“You love him?”
The question landed quietly.
No accusation this time.
No order.
Just a father asking the question he had been trying not to hear the answer to.
Lena’s throat tightened.
She thought of Nico standing behind the fence last night, turning away.
She thought of his face when he read the memo.
She thought of his mother’s voice on FaceTime.
She thought of the kiss on Court One and the way his hand had hovered before touching her, asking permission even when he was shaking with want.
“I don’t know what to call it,” she said.
Her father held her gaze.
“But yes,” she whispered. “I think so.”
The words did not explode.
The house did not collapse.
No alarm went off.
Still, everything changed.
Coach Hart turned toward the sink, bracing both hands on the counter.
For a moment, Lena saw the man behind the coach.
The father behind the rules.
The widower behind the control.
Then he spoke.
“I can forgive a publicity stunt,” he said.
Her stomach dropped.
He looked back at her.
“But if Nico Reyes breaks your heart, I do not know how to stand on a court and coach him through it.”
There it was.
Not just control.
Fear.
Complicated. Unfair. Human.
Lena’s eyes stung.
“You may not get to decide that,” she said softly.
“I know.”
The admission cost him.
She heard it.
Before either of them could say more, her phone buzzed.
Then his.
At the same time.
Lena looked down.
A message from Maya.
The gossip account just teased a drop for 8 a.m. Tomorrow. Same time as the hearing.
Her father picked up his phone.
His face went still as he read.
Lena’s pulse quickened.
“What is it?”
He did not answer.
“Dad.”
He turned the screen toward her.
A new anonymous email.
This one had a subject line.
LAST CHANCE TO BENCH HIM BEFORE THE FULL STORY DOES IT FOR YOU.
Below it, one sentence:
Ask Nico why the clip everyone saw was not the first time he almost lost control because of his mother.
Lena stared at the words.
Cold spread through her.
Her father’s voice came low beside her.
“Lena.”
She looked up.
This time, he did not sound like a coach.
Or a judge.
Or a man drawing lines.
He sounded afraid.
“What exactly do you know about Nico’s past?”