Chapter 17 #2
“Holy shit.” I press my hands to my cheeks as tears prick at my eyes. I expected our ranks to shrink today. I didn’t expect to feel strengthened. “You guys. I don’t even know what to say.”
“Don’t say anything.” Devon pulls me into a hug, his still-damp skin cool against my sundress. “Save those pipes for the performance. We can take the lead on the dance side.”
More hugs follow. Jasmine squeezes me so hard I squeak. Marcus lifts me off the ground entirely. By the time they release me, I’m laughing and crying and feeling lighter than I have in months.
“Okay, okay.” I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand. “Pizza first. Then we talk logistics. Sound good?”
The group descends on the pizza boxes like locusts, and the afternoon dissolves into a chaotic mix of brainstorming and pepperoni and arguments about which songs need the most work.
I’m in the middle of it all, scribbling notes on napkins, fielding suggestions, watching these incredible people come alive with creative verve.
This is what it’s supposed to feel like. A team. A family. Something worth fighting for.
Taio
I watch the whole thing from the kitchen window.
From where I stand, I can see her by the pool, this tiny figure in an oversized hat and billowing sundress.
She’s laying herself bare, confessing doubts to people who dance behind her every night, who could so easily turn on her.
Yet there she is, reaching out with open palms instead of clenched fists, asking them to catch her when she could have pretended to never stumble.
Then it happens—the dancers burst into applause, circling around her with open arms. I watch her face transform: first shock, then a trembling smile, then something luminous and grateful spreading across her features as she realizes they’re still with her, all in.
My chest twists, warmth spreading outward until I’m smiling like a loon, alone in the kitchen, watching a woman I’ve known for less than a few weeks command the loyalty of an entire dance team through sheer vulnerability and authenticity.
This is what she does. She walks into rooms full of people who have every reason to resent her, and she wins them over by being exactly who she is. No pretense. No manipulation. Just Charlie, messy and imperfect and somehow radiant because of it.
I think about the book still sitting in my bag—the romance novel I’m three-quarters through, the one where the hero and heroine keep circling each other, kept apart by circumstance and fear and all the reasonable obstacles that make stories interesting.
I’ve read dozens of these books. I know how they work.
I know the beats, the tropes, the inevitable moment when everything clicks into place and the couple gets their happily-ever-after.
But standing here, watching Charlie through a window, I feel like I’m caught in the middle of a plot without any guarantee of how it ends.
The inkling is there. That spark I’ve envied, the one that only exists in fiction, the one I’d almost convinced myself wasn’t real. It’s small, but it’s growing. Every time she laughs. Every time she says something ridiculous. Every time she looks at me like I’m the only person in the room.
I’m falling for her, one idiosyncrasy at a time. The realization should scare me more than it does. Instead, it feels inevitable, like I’ve been moving toward this moment since the night I knocked on the wrong hotel room door.
My phone buzzes in my pocket.
I pull it out, expecting Charlie, or maybe Sage with some tour update. Instead, the screen displays a number I know by heart but never saved as a contact.
Otisville Federal Correctional Institution.
My lungs bottom out, like an anchor suddenly dropped.
I step away from the window, moving through the kitchen and into the hallway where the noise from the pool party fades to a distant murmur.
The phone is still buzzing. I could let it go to voicemail.
I could pretend I didn’t see it, didn’t hear it, didn’t feel the immediate clench of obligation in my chest.
I answer.
“You have a collect call from an inmate at Otisville Federal Correctional Institution. To accept charges, press one.”
I press one.
“Taio?” My father’s voice comes through the line, slightly distorted by prison phone quality but unmistakably him. That smooth baritone that used to read me bedtime stories, that commanded boardrooms and charmed investors, that told me I could be anything I wanted when I grew up.
“Hey, Dad.” I lean against the hallway wall, closing my eyes. “How are you?”
“Oh, you know.” A pause, weighted with unspoken accusation. “Same as always. Counting the days. Watching the clock. Waiting for someone to visit.”
Here it comes.
“I checked the visitation schedule online. Your name isn’t on tomorrow’s list.” His tone is carefully neutral, but I know it well. It’s the one he uses when he wants you to feel guilty without having to explicitly accuse you of anything. “Did something happen? Are you sick?”
“No, I’m not sick. I’m in Miami.”
Silence.
“Miami,” he repeats flatly. I can hear the machinery turning in his head, that analytical mind that built an empire on calculated theft and betrayal. “What’s in Miami?”
“I got a new job. It requires some travel.” I keep my voice light, casual, like this is a normal conversation between a father and son. “I’ll be back in New York soon. I’ll get on the visitation schedule the second I’m back.”
“A new job.” The words land heavy with skepticism. “What kind of job takes you to Miami on such short notice that you can’t even tell your father about it?”
“Private security. Personal protection detail.” It’s not entirely a lie. “Good money. Steady work. The kind of opportunity I couldn’t pass up.”
“Private security.” He lets that hang there, and I can practically see him turning them over, examining them for weaknesses. My father never takes anything at face value. “For who?”
“I can’t really discuss the details. Client confidentiality.”
“Client confidentiality.” A soft laugh, but there’s no warmth in it. “You sound like a lawyer. Or like someone who’s hiding something.”
“Dad, I’m not hiding anything. It’s just work. I’m under an NDA. I can’t say more, especially not on a recorded line.”
“Mmm.” The sound is noncommittal, loaded.
“And this work couldn’t wait until after visitation?
You know how much I look forward to seeing you, Taio.
It’s the only thing that gets me through these weeks.
Sitting in that room, watching the clock, knowing you’re coming…
it’s the one bright spot in this whole miserable existence. ”
His words land with surgical precision, right where they’re meant to—a direct hit to the center of my chest. I press my palm against my sternum as if to contain the spreading ache.
Dad makes Otisville sound like Alcatraz, but I’ve seen the “prison” where he’s serving time.
All the calls may say Otisville, but he’s serving at a Satellite Prison Camp.
Barely there security. Dormitory-style housing.
Recreation areas. A commissary better stocked than my corner bodega.
The man who once owned three vacation homes now acts like sharing a bathroom is torture, as if the real punishment isn’t the bars but the indignity of consequences catching up to him.
“Dad, I’m sorry. It came up suddenly. I didn’t have a lot of choice about the timing.”
“There’s always a choice.” His voice is gentle now, reasonable.
That’s the thing about my father—he can turn on a dime, switch from interrogation to understanding so smoothly you wonder if you imagined the sharpness.
“But I understand. You have your own life to live. I can’t expect you to put everything on hold for me forever. ”
“It’s not like that—”
“No, no. It’s fine. Really.” He sighs, the sound of a man who’s made peace with disappointment.
“I’m not trying to make you feel bad, son.
I just miss you. It gets lonely in here.
The other inmates, they’re not exactly intellectually stimulating company.
And the guards—well, you know how they treat people like me.
Like I’m still dangerous, still capable of…
I don’t know. Orchestrating a Ponzi scheme through the prison phone system. ”
Despite myself, I almost smile. “Are you?”
“Perhaps. Visit and find out.” A hint of his old humor surfaces, then fades.
“How are you, really? How’s the commissary? Do you need me to add more money?”
“I could use some, actually. They raised the prices on everything again. Coffee’s up to four dollars a packet. Four dollars, Taio. For instant coffee that tastes like burned rubber.”
“I’ll transfer some tomorrow.”
“And my prescription cream—the good one, for my back—they’re saying I need a new authorization form. Some bureaucratic nonsense. I’ve filled out the same paperwork three times now, and every time it gets ‘lost’ in the system. I think the medical staff here actively enjoys watching me suffer.”
“Your rash is still acting up?”
“It’s spreading,” he complains.
“I’ll call them. I’ll take care of it.”
He sighs in relief. “What would I do without you, Taio? You’re the only one who still believes in me.”
“You have your legal team too—”
“The legal team believes in billable hours. They don’t care about me.
They care about the case, the precedent, the media attention.
You’re the only one who actually…” He trails off, and when he speaks again, his voice is thick.
“You’re the only one who still sees me as a person.
Not a case number. Not a cautionary tale.
You see me for what I am. A good father caught up in everyone else’s misfortune. ”
I can’t believe that’s still his narrative. Like theft slipped on a banana and fell into him.
“You’ll always be my dad. Nothing changes that. Family first.”
His laugh is bitter. “Your mother used to say that. One day I’m her husband of eighteen years who she promised to stand by no matter what, the next I’m a stranger she can’t wait to forget.”
I close my eyes, pressing my forehead against the cool wall. “Dad, you lied to her for a long time. Mom went through a lot more than you realize—”
“I know, I know. The shame. The scandal. The way her friends looked at her.” His tone grows mocking.
“All that woman cares about is public appearance. She didn’t care who was paying the bills as long as her ass was dressed up in Gucci and shoes had red bottoms. After everything I did for her, I thought, at least, she’d be loyal. ”
I exhale, giving up on the narrative. It’s like trying to convince an early colonist that the world isn’t flat. He lives the only story he’s allowing himself to accept. “Well, I’m sorry it didn’t work out that way. But you do still have me.”
“Do I?” Another pause, heavy with meaning. “Suddenly you’re in Miami. On some new job you couldn’t even mention before today. Missing visitation for the first time in—how long has it been? Three years? I’ve never had to sit in that room and wait for someone who wasn’t coming.”
“Dad—”
“I’m not blaming you.” His voice cracks, just slightly—practiced or genuine, I can never quite tell.
“I’m just saying, I see the pattern. Your mother pulled away slowly too.
First it was one missed visit. Then two.
Then she stopped answering my calls. Then she moved to a different continent.
” He takes a shaky breath. “I can’t lose you too, Taio.
You’re all I have left. The only person in the world who still gives a damn whether I live or die in here. ”
I know what he’s doing.
I can see it clearly—the comparison to Mom, designed to trigger my deep-set fear of being like her. The fragility, calculated to make me feel protective. The implication that my absence is the first step toward abandonment, that one missed visit will inevitably become two, then ten, then forever.
It’s manipulation. It’s textbook. I’ve read enough about narcissistic parents to recognize every technique he’s using.
And yet…it works.
“You’re not going to lose me,” I say to him. “I’ll figure something out. Maybe I can fly back for a few hours tomorrow, do the visit, and fly back.”
“You’d do that?” The hope sounds so genuine it makes my chest ache. “For me?”
“Of course.”
“Taio.” His voice warms, filling with that paternal pride that used to make me feel ten feet tall. “You’re a good son. The best son a man could ask for. I don’t deserve you.”
“Dad, stop.”
“I mean it. After everything we’ve gone through, you could have walked away.
Most people would have. Hell, most people did.
Friends, colleagues, everyone who swore they’d stand by our family disappeared the moment the indictment came down.
But not you. You stayed. You fought for me.
” He pauses. “You’re still fighting for me. ”
“Always.”
“I love you, son. More than you’ll ever know.”
“Love you too, Dad.”
“Don’t forget to call about my cream.”
“Roger that.”
The call ends with the prison system’s automated click. I stand in the hallway for a long moment, phone still pressed to my ear, listening to nothing.
Through the window at the end of the hall, I can see a sliver of the pool deck.
Charlie is gesturing animatedly, explaining something to her dancers while they cluster around the pizza boxes.
Her laugh carries faintly through the glass—bright and genuine and completely unaware of the conversation I just had.
Two worlds. Two versions of myself.
I’m trying to move forward, but I’m always a hostage to him. To guilt. I’m serving a sentence for a crime I didn’t commit.
But what choice do I have? Dad stole everything to dote on me.
Doesn’t that make me…complicit in a way?
I don’t know. I don’t want to think about it anymore.
I want to rewind the clock by an hour, catch the tail end of her goofy striptease, and re-experience the pure bliss of kneeling between her thighs and giving her something no man had given her before.
I want to disappear into Charlie, if only reality would stop biting us in the ass.
And honestly, even if I could figure out a way to resolve my dad’s issues, I’m no match for Charlie.
When is she ever going to proudly claim an escort as the love of her life? No one would see us in a tabloid and think—couple goals. They’ll only see the scandal we are.
I pocket my phone and head toward the pool, toward the woman who makes me want to believe in happy endings…
Even when I know better.