14. Chapter 14
“And how many bedrooms are you looking for?” The realtor asks through the phone as I pace the perimeter of my hotel room. After spending two weeks in this overpriced coffin, the walls are starting to cave in on me.
“Two. Minimum.” I stop at the window, pressing my palm to the cold glass.
Outside, the parking lot is empty—nothing going in or out.
Kind of like my bank accounts since my father froze them.
Thank God I paid the tuition before he could cut me off.
Call it what you want—blood money, hush money—I call it payment.
Compensation for the years he stole from me.
Three years I should’ve had with my daughter…
and potentially fucking up any chance I have with her mother.
“Three is the ideal,” I add, even though we both know it’s a fantasy on the budget I have.
“Three?” her voice tilts upwards, confused. “Two was already bumping you into a higher bracket than you were hoping, and if you want to be anywhere near campus, that might be impossible.”
Tell me something I don’t know. Fucking hell, this is why my father paid the big bucks for other people to sort this shit out for him. Actually, having to figure things out, to grind, is a foreign concept to me.
“Sure,” I say, resigned to the fact that this is my life now. If I want to get away from my father—and I sure as hell want to—then I’m going to have to keep moving in this trajectory. “Two is fine, just make sure the second one’s big enough for one of those big tower beds.”
Silence. It’s not long, but long enough to make it awkward. I haven’t mentioned I’m a father, so she’s probably wondering what kind of kinky shit I’m into.
Unless giving up everything is a kink, then I’m pretty damn vanilla these days.
“Well…” she trails off and I can hear her keys tapping on the other end.
I close my eyes, sighing. All I want is a room painted in baby blue with glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling, and a fucking castle bed for Ella if Tiff ever trusts me enough to let her stay overnight. Is that so much to ask for?
On my budget—yes. Yes, it is.
“Ah, I see we do have a two-bedroom on Maple Street. It's about a fifteen-minute walk to campus, not in the best condition, but the price is right.”
“How much?”
She names a figure that makes me wince. It's a third of what I used to spend on a weekend in Vegas, but now it represents nearly half of my dwindling savings per month.
“I'd like to see it,” I say anyway, because beggars, or in my case, disowned trust fund kids, can't be choosers.
“Great. How's tomorrow at ten?”
“Perfect.”
I hang up and drop onto the edge of the hotel bed, the springs protesting beneath me. My laptop is open to a job listings page for St. Michael's campus and the surrounding area.
Barista. Delivery driver. Library assistant. Retail associate.
Jobs I've never considered before, jobs I used to look past without a second thought. Now they represent my lifeline, my only shot at staying in Hope long enough to become part of Ella's life.
I scroll through the listings, each one requiring experience I don't have or skills I've never needed to develop. What exactly am I qualified for? Drinking expensive bourbon and failing upward through life on my father's reputation? Not much call for that at minimum wage.
My phone buzzes. For a split second, my heart stops because I think it’s Tiff, but no. I’m not that lucky. It’s Asher again.
With a sigh, I finally answer. “What?”
“Oh, he lives,” Asher says. “I was starting to think your dad actually killed you.”
“Not yet. Though I'm sure he's working on it.”
“Dude, you need to hear this.” His voice drops, suddenly serious. “Your dad’s losing it. He’s not just pissed at you—He’s—planning something. My dad mentioned lawyers, and some kind of emergency filing. I don’t know the details, but—”
“Let him plan.” I laugh bitterly. “What’s he going to do? Take away the money? He’s already done that. There’s nothing else he can hurt me with.”
“This is Jonathan Nicks we’re talking about—”
“I know,” I snap, then immediately feel guilty. Asher is only trying to help. “Sorry, I’m just… it’s been a long couple of weeks.”
“How’s it going? With your kid?”
The question softens me immediately. “Her name's Ella,” I say, unable to keep the smile out of my voice.
“And she's… she's perfect, Asher. She likes Iced Out and tells terrible jokes and falls asleep holding onto my shirt like—” My throat tightens.
“Like she already trusts me even though she has no reason to.”
“Damn.” Asher is quiet for a moment. “So you're really doing this. Playing house in the middle of nowhere.”
“I'm not playing anything,” I say, defensively. “This is real. She's real.”
“I know, I know.” Asher's tone softens. “I'm just saying… you actually walked away from everything. For a kid you just met.”
“Not just for her.” I can’t help it. I immediately start to think about Tiff’s lips against mine two nights ago, marred only by the fact she shut it all down after. “Some things are still… complicated.”
“Tiff?”
“Yeah,” I sigh. “I may have… fucked that up already.”
“Shocker,” Asher deadpans. “What’d you do?”
“Kissed her.”
“And?”
“And she told me I’m here for Ella, not for her. She set up boundaries and made it very clear that whatever happened four years ago should stay there.”
Asher whistles low. “Ouch.”
“She’s right, though.” I stand, pacing again. “I need to prove I’m not here because of some romanticized memory or because I’m running from my family. I’m here for my daughter.”
“But you’re also here for her.”
“It doesn’t matter what I want,” I say. “What matters is Ella. What matters is showing up, consistently, without ulterior motives.”
“Noble,” Asher says. “Stupid, but noble.”
“Fuck off.”
He laughs. “I'm just saying, you can want both things. You can want to be a good dad and want to be with the girl who—and I quote from your drunk ass four years ago—'made you feel like a human being for the first time in your life.'“
I sink back onto the bed. “I told you that?”
“You called me at three in the morning, crying about some mystery girl from my party. Said you'd never felt so seen. Then, right after the emotional breakdown, you apologized for using my name to get her into bed. Classy.”
The memory is hazy, buried under years of self-destruction and deflection. “I was drunk.”
“Drunk words, sober thoughts, man.” He pauses. “Look, I'm not saying charge in there and confess your undying love or whatever, but you need to show her that you're not just here for Ella. That you're here for them. For the family you never had.”
“That's exactly what she doesn't want to hear.”
“Maybe.” Asher sounds thoughtful. “Or maybe she's scared that if she lets herself believe you're here for both of them, and you leave, it'll destroy her and Ella. She's protecting herself.”
The observation lands with unexpected weight. Of course Tiff would be protecting herself. She's spent four years fighting—fighting my family, fighting to provide for Ella, fighting to survive. Why would she believe I'm any different from the rest of the Nicks empire that tried to erase her?
“So what do I do?” The question comes out more vulnerable than I intend.
“You show up,” Asher says simply. “Every. Single. Day. You prove you're not going anywhere, and then you hope that eventually, she'll believe it.”
“That easy, huh?”
“I didn't say it would be easy. I said it's what you have to do.” He pauses. “Also, get a job. Nothing says 'stable father figure' like unemployment.”
“Working on it.” I glance at the laptop with its depressing job listings.
“Good, and Jamie?”
“Yeah?”
“For what it's worth, I think you're doing the right thing. Your dad's an asshole, and that kid—Ella—she deserves to know you. The real you, not the Nicks puppet.”
I blow out a breath and smile. “Thanks, man.”
“Don't thank me yet. Your dad knows exactly where you are. Whatever he's planning, it won't be pretty.”
“I know. I lived with him for twenty years.”
Once we hang up, I lean back onto the bed and close my eyes.
Tiff’s face is the first thing that comes to my mind.
I want her. Badly, but she’s right. Ella needs stability. She needs someone who shows up, who stays, who doesn’t disappear when things get hard.
I need to be that.
My phone buzzes with a text from an unknown number.
Unknown: Job interview tomorrow, 2pm. Campus bookstore. Manager position. Interested?
I type back without a second thought.
Jamie: Definitely interested, thank you.
Tomorrow things will start to change. I have the apartment viewing and now this job interview.
It's not much. It's barely a start, but it's something.
My father thinks he can plan his way back into control. Thinks he can manipulate and threaten until I fall back in line, but he's never understood the one thing that matters: I'm not fighting for pride or legacy or some abstract concept of family honor.
I'm fighting for her. For them and for the first time in my life, that makes me stronger than he'll ever be.
I'm halfway across campus the next morning, mentally rehearsing answers to interview questions I've never had to consider before, when I nearly collide with someone rushing in the opposite direction.
“Shit, I’m so sorry—”
My voice stops mid-apology when I see who I’m talking to.
Honey Sanderson.
Well, I knew this little reunion was going to happen at some point; I guess I thought I just had a little more time to think about what I was going to say.
“Jamie?” Her voice is as strangled and tight as the bun on her head. It goes with her white, collared shirt and black skirt, but it’s so un-Honey, it makes no sense.
Why is she walking around campus looking like she’s about to go to a meeting with her dad?
“What the hell are you doing here?” she says when she’s managed to regain some composure.