23. Heather
23
HEATHER
T his is it, the moment I need to decide what I’m going to do once and for all. I’ll admit that I’m not exactly in the best frame of mind for it, but I don’t have any choice in the matter. My dad is trying to take me away from Landon yet again, but I can’t have it this time around. I’ve taken the time to understand him, and now I need him to try and understand me.
“Dad.” I take his hands in mine and stare into his eyes. He might be flooded with rage at the moment, but I’ll find a way to make him hear me. “I know what you’re trying to do here. I get it, and I understand even more after your telling me what happened to Mom, but I know what I’m doing here. I understand what I’m doing when it comes to Landon. I know him.”
“It’s because of his father that you are here,” he growls angrily. “If it wasn’t for his family, then none of this would have happened. Do you even understand that? Is that getting through to your thick skull? I don’t know how else to explain it to you.”
“It was Bill Ross who started this ball rolling. It was he who did this, not Landon. Landon saved me.”
“You’re going to die.” He pulls away from me, staring at me like I’m lost to him now. “Oh, my God, you’re the same as her. I’ve seen it your whole life. As you were growing up, I feared that you were like her, but now I can really see it. You’re just like your mother. Her influence has gotten to you even without her being here. I can’t save you, like I can’t save her.”
“No, Dad, I’m not trying to get in the middle of a murder here. I’m not shacking up with a criminal. I’m begging you to just let me stay with the man you have hired to protect me. I’m asking you to let me make my own judgments when it comes to my safety. Landon has saved me over and over again. He’s here to rescue me. He got hurt trying to help me.”
“You have feelings for him.” Dad shakes his finger at me hard and fast. “That’s what this is. That’s why you’re blinded. Well, I can’t allow that. I can’t let you be with someone who is going to take you down a bad path. I’ve fought too hard to let you slip away anyway. You might think that you are tough enough to survive because you’re an adult now, but she was the same way. She was the same, Heather, and you don’t get it. I can’t lose you too, I’m too scared to lose you too. Not to him.”
I can see my father breaking down, and of course that makes me incredibly sad, but I have to stand strong. This is going to be a turning point for us from here on out. This is where we establish our relationship from now on.
“Dad, don’t fall out with me. You can’t fall out with me about this. You need to just listen. Just hear me out. You need to listen to me for just a few moments. You’re doing a lot of shouting and not a lot of listening to me. Just wait a moment.”
The other police officers have made themselves busy keeping everyone away from us. That hasn’t gone unnoticed by me. I’m so freaking grateful for it, but I don’t know if it would be better for them to try and sort my father out. They could try and make him see straight here because he’s losing his damn mind over here and I’m a little out of my depth.
If we were back in our hometown where he had police buddies who probably saw him go through the pain and heartache the first time around, they might know what’s the best way to help him, but these guys are just backing away.
“You are going to have to choose,” Dad tells me while darting his eyes furiously between me and Landon. “I can’t listen to you telling me what a good man you think he is when I can so clearly see otherwise. I don’t see how I can make you change your mind.” He huffs heavily. “I can’t do this. I can’t have my heart broken by you too. You need to pick.”
“You aren’t given me an ultimatum, are you?” I ask him with sheer disappointment in my voice. I can’t hide how this is making me feel. The fact that my dad would even think about doing this to me on today, of all days, is too much.
“Don’t.”
“You can’t love him enough to really be putting him before me.”
Dad’s eyes are begging me, pleading with me, but I already know that I’m not going to be able to give him what he wants. I can’t turn my back on Landon, not now. I really do feel like we share something special and we finally have the chance to see if it can go somewhere. I can’t lose him again.
“You wouldn’t.”
“Dad, if you are really going to make me do this, then I have no choice.” I’m calling his bluff, I’m trying to make him see how crazy this is. “I can’t let you pigeonhole me anymore. I really am an adult, and you need to see it. You have to at least try and understand. I know what I’m doing, and even if a mistake is made, it’s my mistake to make.”
“But what if your one mistake is your final one, huh? The one that gets you killed. I can’t sit back and let that happen.”
“Landon doesn’t want me to get killed either,” I insist. “You are judging him by a man you knew fourteen years ago. You haven’t even had one conversation with Landon to get to know him. You’re acting like a crazy person.”
“Don’t do this.” Landon touches his hand to my arm, actually reminding me that he’s there. I just got myself so mixed up in this fight with my father that I forgot about him. “I don’t want you to go because it terrifies me, not being able to protect you, but you don’t want to cut ties with your father. He only wants to protect you. Clearly, something happened with your mother which makes him nervous to leave you with me, so you should go with him. Don’t lose him by choosing me.”
I stare into his eyes and see how serious Landon is about this. He’s torn, he really doesn’t want me to go anywhere, but he also can’t stand me to separate from my father. How the hell can my father not see what a good person Landon is?
“I lost my father,” he reminds me. “I didn’t talk to him for years and now he’s gone. It leaves me sad at what I missed out on and also upset with the feeling that maybe I could have done more to help him. I only have my mother left and she’s in jail. I can’t do anything for her at the moment, but you still have a chance here. You can make things work with your father.”
I do understand what he’s saying to me, but at the same time, it makes see both people a lot more clearly. After everything that we’ve been through, my father is still desperate to control me, and Landon wants to protect me, but in the way that’s best for me. He doesn’t want to push me in any particular direction. That makes it easier for me to want him.
“Dad, I’m not going with you,” I tell him seriously. “I don’t want to choose, I don’t want to lose you, but I’m not prepared to walk away from Landon. I know that he cares about me in all the right ways, and you need to understand that too.”
Dad’s face goes almost purple with anger. I know that I’ve pushed him over the edge this time around, which doesn’t feel right. Naturally, my instinct is to try and please my father because that’s what I’ve always done, but if I want to make changes, then that’s what I’ll do. I’m sure that this whole mess won’t be forever. We can fix this. He won’t actually push me out of his life forever. He’s my father, for crying out loud. He cares for me and loves me over everything else.
“If you go with him now, then I’ll never speak to you again. I’ll never deal with you. You will be cut off and I won’t even think about you anymore.”
Oh. It seems not. It seems that my father really might be done with me. That feels cold and horrible. I almost want to burst into tears under the pressure of it. It’s really hard to remain strong, to be honest.
“I can’t go through this a second time, Heather, you know that. I’ll have to just… just forget about you, and you will have to forget me too.”
He stands firm for a moment, waiting to see if I’m going to buckle under pressure, but I don’t. The guilt trip might be working internally, stripping me down from the inside out, but it isn’t going to make me back down. I can’t. Not now.
“Right, well then, I guess I have no daughter anymore.” He flings his hands in the air in frustration. “I’ll get out of here.”
I shudder as he leaves. It’s pretty challenging for me not to burst into tears, but I keep myself standing tall. Just about.
“Are you sure that this is what you want to do?” Landon asks me quietly. “He seemed pretty serious then.”
“He might be,” I reply, unable to keep the shaking from my voice. “But I can’t keep living under his regime. I know he’s like that because of my mother, but that doesn’t give him any excuse to treat me like a child.”
“What… erm, what happened with your mother?” he asks. “You never told me that.”
I feel deflated and sad. “Yeah, I know, but I only just found out. I’m actually too emotionally drained to go through it all right now, but I’ll tell you everything. I will. For now, can we just get the hell out of here?”
“Where are we going to go?” Landon says, but not so much to me, almost to himself. “We need to be somewhere safe for the moment. I think we’re going to have to ask Max what’s the best thing to do.”
I shrug my shoulders because honestly, I don’t care where we go. As long as we don’t end up in my father’s home, my apartment, or even’s Landon’s place. I just want to be somewhere no one can find us so we can have some time alone. I have a whole lot that I need to get my head around and to process, and I can’t do that while looking over my shoulder.
“I want to go far, far away,” I whisper. “I want to get out of here, away from everyone.”
“Away from all the danger, I know.” Landon misunderstands, really, because the danger is the last thing on my mind… although avoiding that will probably be better for us. I don’t want to end up in the back of another black van. “Don’t worry, I’m going to make sure that everything is okay. You can trust me.”
This time, it’s my choice to be locked away from the world, if that’s what ends up happening, which makes all the difference. I’m the one in control. That’s all I’ve ever wanted, to have my own power.