Chapter 2
Rhiannon
When I burst through the doors and out of the wedding room, I’m not sure where to go or what to do. Do I look for Dad? Wait for my sisters? Stick around to stab George through the chest with the heel of my uncomfortable stilettos?
The decision is made for me when Dad, who I find standing at the window with a tumbler of golden liquid in his hand, gestures for me to follow him.
When we get inside a smaller conference room, the air thickens, growing heavier and more stifling with each passing second of silence that fills the room.
My chest is tight, my hands slimy, and if he doesn’t speak soon, the list of excuses and defense bubbling in the back of my throat might break free.
I silently pray he doesn’t make me defend my actions. I want him to understand, just this once. Hell, even go so far as be proud. Does Dad do proud? If he does, I can’t say I’ve seen it in almost three decades, but God knows that doesn’t stop me trying.
From the deep V between his eyebrows to the firm set of his lips, something tells me he’s not proud, not even close.
There’s a vibration around him that suggests he’s fuming.
My fingers find the delicate ink on my collarbone as I note my breathing.
In for four, out for seven. In for four, out for seven.
The anticipation of what he’s going to say is unbearable, the tension so thick, the silence so excruciating, I struggle not to break it.
Should I speak? Can I speak?
The weight of years of eldest-daughter-responsibility ratchets up the anxiety in my veins and the tension in my muscles, as my brain scrambles to find an acceptable answer to the unasked questions that hang between us.
I suck in a breath, unsure of what’s going to tumble from my mouth when I open it, but this silent standoff between us is insufferable. I need to say something, anything, get the disapproval, the lecture, the yelling out of the way so we can move forward.
My knee trembles, making the cool fabric of my dress rustle against my skin.
Dad heaves out a painfully heavy sigh, his eyes steely hard as they hold my gaze. The more he stares, the more layers of shame envelop my body. My mind spins. My jaw drops. My head starts shaking from side to side as a million excuses battle for space at the back of my throat.
“What on earth were you thinking, Rhiannon?” He searches my face like he might find the answer written in the professionally applied makeup painting my features.
What was I thinking? I was thinking he was a cheating piece of shit who hurt me, and I wanted to hurt him back, hurt both of them.
Dad doesn’t let me finish, so I clamp my mouth shut, wedging my lips between my teeth in an act so practiced, so familiar, that it’s second nature.
“I can’t understand why you’d do that to your family, your sisters. What possessed you? Did you think that was funny?” He waves a hand at the door behind me. “Was that funny to you?” His voice is harder, rising in volume as control of his temper wavers right in front of my eyes.
My shutters come down. He doesn’t care about my side of the story. He doesn’t want to hear about my pain, what I’ve been through. He just wants to lecture me about what he thinks I should have done about my future with a man who treated me so poorly.
Tears burn behind my eyelids, and excess saliva pools in my mouth as I shake my head.
I wanted this time to be different. I wanted him to be on my side, to say he supports me, even if he didn’t agree with my choice to do what I did. Maybe I even wanted him to suggest or outrightly say that he understood it. But none of that is what’s unfolding in front of me.
His expression somehow turns even sterner. “Because I can’t fathom what reason you could come up with to justify doing what you just did.”
I open my mouth to push back, to argue I’m a grown woman who doesn’t need to justify her behavior to her father, but he shakes his head in time with mine, making the words I’ve never been brave enough to say to him die on my tongue.
“I don’t want to hear it. It’s done now; it’s time for damage control. We need to get ahead of this.”
Damage control? Damage control?
The weight of his disappointment presses on my shoulders, urging my knees to buckle.
“You embarrassed me, Rhiannon.”
He doesn’t ask how I am, how long I’ve known about George, and the idea he might have been proud of me for leaving a toxic relationship slips through my fingers like sand in the wind.
A vaguely hysterical laugh threatens to bubble up inside my chest. How could I have thought he’d have been proud of me? Just because it’s a life-long decision doesn’t mean Dad would finally be in my corner.
In some moments I feel like I don’t know him at all.
The man who got me into rugby, who shaped and guided me throughout my entire life.
The man who’s been to every single game I’ve ever played.
The man on an untouchable pedestal stands before me dressed in a gorgeous, expensive tuxedo looking at me like I just killed his beloved family pet instead of liberating myself from a double whammy of betrayal and noxiousness.
I embarrassed him?
Damage control?
What about “We’ll figure things out together, Rhiannon?” or “What support do you need right now, Rhiannon?”
That laugh is still lodged in my chest, threatening to break free like an untied balloon someone has let go of in a crowded space.
“We’ll have to loop in the PR team to mitigate the fall out. I’ve already called the energy drinks company that wanted to sponsor Clíodhna.”
His words fall on my head like icicles, slicing through my self-indulgent haze as the reality of the consequence of my actions fall around me. My breath seizes as I wait for him to tell me I ruined Clí’s chances of getting some extra money about her.
She’s a single mum. Our professional rugby gigs are abhorrently underpaid. If I cost her an opportunity… “Did they…?”
He holds up his hand. “They’re fine to continue their working relationship with your sister.” He pins me with a glare. “But I wouldn’t go knocking on their door with your hat in your hand any time soon.”
The knot of anxiety loosens in my stomach. I didn’t cost anyone anything. This time.
“Did you even think of the potential consequences?” He doesn’t pause for me to tell him I went over everything in my mind with a fine-tooth comb. “Of course you didn’t, you just wanted to get your own back on George.”
He starts pacing, finger tapping his bottom jaw as he does when he’s thinking a problem through. “We’ll talk to him, of course. I bet he’ll want to smooth this over and sort this out between the two of you so we can get the train back on the tracks.”
My heart stops dead in my chest.
I once read that the relationships between oldest daughters and their fathers are the most quietly devastating dynamics, but I never truly understood what that meant until those words came out of my father’s mouth.
Since I was little, he’s never led me wrong. But listening to him prattle on about how we’re going to “fix” this “misunderstanding” with my cheating ex-fiancé is soul destroying. Maybe he doesn’t understand, maybe if I can find the right words to tell him how I’m feeling he’ll get it.
My head shakes again.
“What do you mean, no?”
“I won’t go back to him, Daddy.” I’m suddenly seven years old in the living room, my lungs too small for my chest, my rapidly beating heart too big, and my head swimming in the anxiety of being in a confrontation with this behemoth.
He’s quiet for so long that the urge to fill the quiet between us needles me once more, but he holds my stare, studying me like he would a complex play on the field, or a new player he hasn’t gotten a handle on yet. He’s looking at me like I’m a stranger.
Another slash makes its way through my heart. I’m not sure if I’m more angry or devastated, but my body is quietly vibrating with something. Even if I fought back, told him how I’m feeling, all the reasons swirling in my brain, I’m not sure I can make him understand.
My stomach clenches harder, tighter, a wave of what feels dangerously close to grief washing over me as I stand with tears trickling down my face. I swipe at them with frustrated fingers.
“Now, don’t be getting on like that.”
Of course, he’s spied the tears, and of course to him, they’re nothing but an annoyance, a weakness. It couldn’t be that I’m brimming with words, with anger I’ve never allowed to spill out of my mouth in his direction.
The walls are closing in, the air thinning out around me as my father, a man who has undeniably loved his wife for decades, longer than I’ve been alive, wants me to go back to a man who treated me like shit.
It’s happening in slo-mo, like a long, drawn-out nightmare where I’m watching myself face him while screaming at myself to say something.
“You want me to marry a cheating piece of shit?” The words tumble out on a ragged breath, tears still coursing down my cheeks. “That’s what you want out of life for me?”
My whole life, I’ve lived on the edge of a cliff, every decision, big or small toeing the right side of the line to make sure I didn’t disappoint him. Every decision leading to this moment.
He starts, eyes flinching wide like I asked him to perform open heart surgery. “If you’re not getting back together with George, I need to figure out what the next steps are. I need to make some calls.”
And just like that, I’m dismissed. He pulls out his mobile and taps on the screen, pausing to make eye contact for just long enough to tell me it’s time to leave.
Any elation and bravado from leaving my wedding have fizzled into a steady drone of doubt. I was justified in what I just did, I know that in my gut. But… maybe he’s right. Maybe I took it too far and really screwed things up.