29. Laura
29
LAURA
I left the stage, holding my head up high as I let Jason’s words replay in my mind.
Intelligent.
Brave.
I wanted to be both of those, even in the light of what just happened.
I hadn’t come here to be embarrassed with that slideshow that I first saw at that party. I came here to start the fight for the future I wanted.
Kristin ran up to me in the backstage area. Her eyes were open wide with shock as she reached me. “He tried to fix it. He tried to?—”
I held my hand up to cut her off. “No. Not now.”
“But he did try to stop that video and?—”
“Too late, too little. And not now .” Without having to ask, I knew that presentation wasn’t his doing. He didn’t pull that prank, just like he didn’t when his buddies played it at his frat house. I saw how much it angered him, and that was enough proof that he cared about me.
“But—”
I shook my head. “I don’t care, Kris. I don’t care. So they saw me like that. It’s not true, and if anyone wants to believe it, whatever.” I flung my hand in the direction of the stage I’d just left, fuming and humiliated. I told her that I didn’t care, but I did. It hurt.
“It’s already all over online, so what’s new?” I sought out the coordinator for the presentations. “I’ll be damned if it stops me from what I came here to do.”
My family saw those pictures. Everyone did. And I knew their judgment and disapproval would be waiting. But I was not letting them focus on that instead of my presentation. I intended to take the first step of fighting for the major, the career, and the future I wanted, of my choosing.
And that damn prank was not going to stop me.
Intelligent.
Brave.
Jason believed in me, and at this twisted moment, I would too.
“Oh, my God.” The coordinator ran up to me, apologetic. “I’m so, so sorry. The IT guys verified that someone hacked in and swapped your file with… that.”
I nodded, curt and down to business. “Do you still have the right file?”
Kristin gawked at me.
“We do. I’m sorry. I can’t believe…” The coordinator pressed her hand to her brow. “I am so sorry.”
“Then can I still present? As I was supposed to?” I asked her.
She nodded. “Yes, yes. Of course. Of course! We have someone out there fixing the projector and then…”
“Then I’ll present,” I replied.
Because I would be the intelligent and brave woman I always wanted to be.
“You’re fucking amazing,” Kristin said, grabbing my upper arms. “Like, fuck, Laura. Go. Go get it.”
I gave her a wobbly smile, caught up in the roller coaster of emotions. Then with the coordinator’s go-ahead, I re-entered the stage.
This time, I waited to make sure the correct presentation was up. Holding my head high and focusing on the topic I could be passionate about, I gave my spiel on the cancer drug trials.
I refused to look in the direction of my family. I didn’t glance at the row where Jason had been seated.
I just gave it my all and hoped it would be my best.
I was not second-best.
So long as I knew that I was intelligent and brave, like Jason saw in me, I would just be my best.
And I did.
The day after the symposium, I received word that I’d won. The judges marked my presentation the highest, and despite rejecting the topic my father wanted me to do, I won .
While the high of that success cheered me, it didn’t do anything for the overreaching negativity it had to come with.
My father was furious, ranting at me every day this past week for thwarting him and swapping my presentation. He called me selfish, immature, and irresponsible.
My mother was livid, scolding me every day this past week for humiliating her and the family for ‘allowing’ those photos to be shared. She called me disgusting, disgraceful, and slutty.
Between the two of them, I had no mercy from their reminders that I’d never measure up to Mai or be good enough. I tried to banish them from my thoughts, going back again and again to how Jason told me that I was intelligent and brave.
All week long, I heard not a single word from him, and that messed me up even more.
He wanted to make amends, but where was the effort to do that past his rash decision to spare me further humiliation at the symposium?
He said he wanted to talk to me, but where were his calls and texts?
I didn’t see him once, which felt like another step toward misery.
That was why when I stood around with my family at Mai and Mark’s engagement party tonight, I flirted with the idea of leaving now .
They all thought they were so clever, whispering instead of telling me to my face how embarrassing I was to the family. Everyone here probably figured I didn’t care when they brought up that prank.
I couldn’t even go near my father again, too peeved by his constant repetitions of how I’d failed him.
Subjected to their criticism here, I didn’t feel very intelligent or brave.
But at least most of the attention was on Mai and Mark and their engagement. He popped the question a couple of weeks back, and I was grateful there was something else for my family to talk about.
“I just can’t believe you would sleep around like that,” Mom said in the corner again.
Grandma scowled. “You should’ve stayed with Ethan,” she scolded. “He is a nice, respectable young man.”
“Who lacks the knowledge of how to find the clitoris.”
I gasped, spinning around at the sound of Jason’s cocky voice cutting in.
Mom and Grandma did the same, letting out shocked exhales at the sight of this bad boy here.
He hadn’t been invited, and now as more people realized he’d snuck in, they were about to remind him of the fact that he was trespassing.
“What are you doing here?” my mother demanded.
He shrugged. “Crashing the party.”
I gawked at him, marveling at the fact that he’d shown up. No, he wasn’t supposed to be here, precisely, but I couldn’t get over the way he’d come back to me at all.
“Jason…” I said, unsure whether I was ready to warn him to get out now or beg him to help me escape with him.
“Get out,” my mother demanded. “Get out of here now. This is a private party?—”
“No. It’s as public as I need it to be,” Jason argued with her. With his serious gaze locked on me, he licked his lips then exhaled a nervous breath. Seeing this sexy man confident and smug had become the norm. This tense and hopeful expression was new. Different.
Honest.
He gazed at me, beseeching me to believe what he’d crashed this party to come tell me in front of my family that he claimed to target in revenge. “It’s far past time that I apologize to you, Laura. And I want everyone to know how sorry I am.”
Oh, my God.
My heart lurched at his statement. Every second of his looking at me and being vulnerable like this was a tug at my heartstrings until I wanted to reach out to him and wrap him up in a hug.
With a smirk, he glanced over at my father stalking toward us. Seeing his enemy, he frowned. “Well, I want everyone in your world to know how sorry I am.”
I found my voice, shaky and quieter than I wanted it to be. He didn’t have to make a show like this. He wasn’t supposed to share this with the rest of them. All I wanted as I tried to hang on to the intelligence and bravery that he said I had was for him to just come back to me and be the reason happiness made sense in my life again. “Jason, this isn’t?—”
He shook his head, crouching to kneel on one knee.
Down he went, keeping his determined gaze on me until he stared up at me.
I dropped my mouth again and stared at him with pure shock freezing me in place. As he took my hand, gazing up at me seriously, I huffed an incredulous laugh.
This can’t be happening.
Is this really happening?
What is he doing?
I knew what it looked like, but it was so out there, so incredulous of a far-fetched notion that my brain couldn’t process fast enough. I could barely breathe with the suggestion of his wanting to…
“He’s proposing to her at Mai’s engagement party?” someone asked.
“He wants to try to steal her thunder?” another person said.
I couldn’t compute how he wanted to marry me after the way we’d started. And ended.
He put his other knee down too, and I understood that he was just getting on his knees for me, like submitting to beg.
Not proposing.
My bully was on his knees, ready to plead and beg for me to grant him my forgiveness.
I blinked, bewildered to have even thought that he’d want to marry me. He’d told me that he wanted to have me and keep me, but until I fell for him, I misinterpreted that as something physical.
Not something like a tether of love.
“I’m sorry, Laura,” he repeated. “And I will beg for your forgiveness every day of my life. It is all I can do when I love?—”
“What the hell is he doing here?” My father demanded it with the loudest, maddest voice I’d ever heard him use. He stood next to us, looming large and ruining this significant moment. I watched as he tried to ram too close, shoving at Jason’s shoulder, to either make him fall or to stand and go.
Jason didn’t spring up and attack. Holding my hands, his warm fingers so warm and rough wrapped around mine, he turned only enough to address my father.
“I came here to apologize to your daughter who never deserved any of the hell I put her through.”
Oh, Jason.
Dad turned to sneer at me for a brief second, as if regretting that I was tied to him at all. That I was okay with this man touching me and holding my hands. “What? What is he talking about?”
I opened and closed my mouth, looking back at Jason.
“Why didn’t you ever tell him?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Because he wouldn’t have cared.”
Jason narrowed his eyes some more, glaring at my father.
“What the hell is going on, Laura?” Dad demanded. His face darkened with anger, his voice almost thunderous. “What kind of a stupid stunt is this? This is Mai’s party. This is her moment to enjoy. And you have to be so selfish as to ruin it. All your life, you’ve been so hell-bent on competing with your sister and trying to ruin all her happiness. You?—”
Mai was there, a troubled expression of unease as she watched on. “Dad? Maybe you can…”
I ignored what seemed like a feeble attempt to slow my dad down from exploding at me any further. She’d never defended me. She’d never stood up for me, but this wasn’t the moment I’d welcome it or care.
“That’s why I couldn’t have been collateral damage,” I explained to Jason, keeping my gaze on him as he still held my hands and watched me. “You have to hit him where it hurts, and that’s not with me.”
“What?” Dad puffed up his chest, standing as tall as he could while he wedged closer to stand between us. “What the hell is going on? I demand you to answer for yourself!”
“What’s going on,” Jason said firmly but icily, “is that I want to make things right with how I mistreated your daughter. I want to make things right again. Unlike you , who will never care that you ruined my brother’s life.”
Dad furrowed his brow, glowering and not bending on this. I’d seen him mad before, and I’d spent my whole life facing his stern expressions and worrying what would happen when he was defied. Something about hearing someone else standing up to him lit me with a burst of courage that I hadn’t realized I’d been needing to move forward out of this rut that was my life.
Dad cringed, fully enraged. “I didn’t do anything?—”
Jason lunged forward now, gritting his teeth and looking like he wanted to raise his hand and strike my father, but he didn’t. Keeping hold of my hand, he lifted his arm to rake his free fingers through his hair. His nostrils flared as he seethed. “You expelled him. You kicked out my brother William. Without any chance of a proper investigation. Without any hearing or looking into the matter at all, you kicked him out like a heartless ruler high on a power trip.”
“I’m not discussing that,” my father said, chin tipped up high.
“Tough shit,” Jason snarled. “I am. I’m confronting you like I’ve always wanted to. I will never like you and I will never forgive you for kicking him out the way you did. You started the end of his life. You robbed him of his future.”
“I said I’m not discussing?—”
“You ruined him!” Jason yelled, stabbing his finger forward in a point at him. “You ruined my brother’s life, and there is no going back on that. You showed your true colors, how shitty of a person you are. And I hate that I let all my anger at you control me for so long.” He caught his breath, staring him down. “I hate that I wanted to try to hurt you by hurting your daughter, because she is too good for me, too good for this. Too good for you.”
Holy fuck!
Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d hear someone be in my corner like this. That someone could shout in my father’s face and so sternly tell him that he wasn’t worthy of me . That I was too good for him .
Because I was.
You are, Laura. You’ve always been good enough.
I just never had the courage to own up to how my family wasn’t good enough for me, that they would never be worthy of my big heart and love because they insisted on labeling me as deficient and second-best.
But most of all, I wanted to cry and embrace this rough man because that wasn’t true for us.
I was good enough for him, and he would always be the best thing to happen to me.
“Get out!” My father held up his hand and pointed at the door. “I refuse to let you come in here like some self-righteous punk. How dare you try to insinuate that I’m unfair. That I’ve wronged you. Get the hell out of here before I call the cops for trespassing and?—”
I stepped forward, taking up the place between my dad and my man. Pushing his arm down, I shook my head and took over the role of defender now.
“You’re not calling the cops.” My heart raced with adrenaline to finally take a stand. It wasn’t for me. I hadn’t stood up to my father on my behalf yet, but I wouldn’t hold back and watch him try to attack Jason. “You are not doing anything to him.”
Rage glowed in his eyes. “Laura, don’t even think about?—”
“No.” I slashed my hand through the air. “I’m not thinking about telling you off. I’m done thinking about whether I should ever defy you. I am. I will. Because I won’t allow you to tell this man that he’s not welcome here, that he doesn’t belong in my life.”
It was so clear now that having Jason in my life would make me happy. He would motivate me to be stronger, to fight for what I wanted.
My father had only ever wanted to keep me trapped and hold me back.
I could say that now because it was so obvious how much he cared about me. I saw it in his eyes. I heard it in his voice when he took that presentation down last week. He cared enough to come here, to break in here and invade this family’s privacy just to apologize like this.
He was laying his heart on the line even at the expense of having to face my father, the man he hated. I didn’t doubt for a second that my dad had expelled his brother unjustly. It didn’t shock me one bit, so familiar with his high-handed ways.
The whole picture was clearer now.
I asked Jason why me ?
He’d only targeted me not to hurt me , but to attack my father. Jason hadn’t bullied me for the hell of it, for the lack of anything else to do, but because he was so upset and outraged about what happened to his brother.
“You won’t decide whether he can be here or not.” I squeezed Jason’s fingers, tugging him gently to stand closer next to me.
He slid into place, putting his hand on the small of my back. It was a clear show of alignment, that he was with me and not leaving anytime soon.
“I forbid you from being with this deviant, Laura,” my dad growled, jamming his finger at me. “I forbid?—”
“I don’t care!” I raised my voice, feeling triumphant to fight back at last. “I don’t care what you think or what you do. I am tired of your telling me what to do and how to live my life. If I want to be with him, I will. If I want to change my major and go into a career that I’m passionate about, I will.”
“Laura! You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I do!” I squeezed Jason’s fingers with the force of how much I wanted to shout at my father more. And he didn’t flinch, keeping his hand at the small of my back and not wavering as my support.
“I won’t let anyone else tell me what to think or what I can have or want. You can’t tell me that I have to follow in your footsteps or Mai’s. I won’t let you keep me from the education I want to pursue. And I won’t ever let anyone try to tell me who I can love and have in my heart.”
Turning toward Jason, I swallowed hard and tried to steady my breath. “Not even you. I’m not going to let anyone tell me that we can’t be together because of the mistakes we began with.”
He sighed, stepping into my space with a gentle smile.
“I will fight for what I want, even you, Jason.”
I licked my lips, treasuring this pivotal moment when I wouldn’t have to feel like I was less than. I couldn’t so long as I stayed true to myself and did what would make me happy.
“Because I love you,” I told him, fully aware that all my family could see me.
He leaned in to kiss me but paused a breath away. “I love you, too,” he promised, staring deep in my eyes. “And I will never stop making it up to you. I’ll beg for forgiveness and make sure you know how sorry I am?—”
“I do, Jason.” I closed the distance to press my lips to his. “I do forgive you. Because I love you.”
This was the day I’d make the rest of my life happen. The day I’d choose me, knowing I wasn’t second-best.
I would fight for the best in my life, which meant embracing this man and switching my major.
It was past time that I follow my friend’s advice and see to my true happiness, no matter what.