Letter Twenty-Eight #7
I already knew this, didn’t I? Nic had admitted as much when I’d brought up the office incident during that whole sex toy fiasco: “It’s one of my greatest failings as a parent.”
Michael sighed. “My dad thinks Nic has a lot of unresolved trauma after being with your mom and seeing what she did to you.”
I let out a shaky breath.
Michael ducked to meet my gaze. “Are you okay?”
“I don’t know.” My entire world had just shifted. But one thing had become crystal clear: Nic had been lying to me my whole life.
A couple hours later, worn out from crying, I laid my head on Michael’s shoulder, letting the warmth of his body seep into mine.
It wasn’t the comfort I craved—he wasn’t you—but it was something, and that felt like enough.
I’d just begun to drift off to the low hum of ESPN when my eyes snapped open and my heart jolted. Because of you, Casey.
You were standing in the doorway. Perfectly still. Watching us.
I caught the tightening of your jaw—the briefest glimmer of hurt in your eyes—before you backed up and headed for the stairs.
My stomach churned.
“It’s late,” Michael said, flipping off the TV. “I should head home.” He squeezed my hand. “Promise me you won’t hurt yourself?”
“Promise,” I whispered.
“Text me later, okay?”
I nodded.
As Michael slipped out the front door, I ventured upstairs, paused on the third floor landing, and hesitated, heart pounding, before trying your doorknob.
You’d locked me out.
Two days later, I came downstairs for a snack, still rattled by what Michael had told me—about the crib, the straps, the crying. I hadn’t said a word to you about it. Hadn’t said a word to anyone. Not even Tinsley when she texted to say she hadn’t heard from me in a while.
I was surviving the way I always did: by keeping quiet. By trying to forget. By trying even harder not to hurt myself.
So when I found Bree sitting at the kitchen island that day with a bunch of homework spread out in front of her, I nearly turned back around.
And maybe I should have.
“Hey,” I said, slowly approaching. “Where’s Casey?”
“Taking a call from his sister in your dad’s office.” Wavy blonde hair fell over her face as she studiously jotted something down in her notebook.
“So,” I said eventually, tapping my fingers on the countertop, “will we ever talk about why you’ve been avoiding me for months now? Or why you accused me of faking my head injury at Christmas?”
Bree lifted her head. “Did you know Casey’s moving back to England over the summer?”
“What?” It had come out a rasp, like all the air had been knocked from my lungs. “Did he tell you that?”
“Yeah. Just now. Said he might be, anyway.”
Panic bloomed—sharp, stinging, and unbearable—in my chest. What the fuck.
Bree leaned back in the stool, twirling the pendant on her necklace, watching me. “What did you do to him?”
“I didn’t do anything to him,” I lied. Were you thinking of leaving because of me? Would you really do that? Over one ruined night?
“Why else would he leave? When your dad’s setting him up to have a promising future here?
” she asked, cocking her head at me. “It just sucks, you know? Because he’s the first friend of Michael’s I’ve ever actually liked.
Casey breathed some much-needed life into this family, after years of you sucking it dry with your drama.
We’re all much happier with him around—or we were, until you started causing even more trouble.
It’s a shame you have to drive everything good away by just… being you.”
Her voice—those horrible statements—slipped beneath my skin with quick, cutting precision. She knew my weak spots, how to hit them just right, how to weaponize my worst fears.
Bree leaned across the counter, voice soft and venomous as she reached out to swipe away a fallen tear with her thumb. “You know what I wish?” she whispered. “That we could keep Casey, and you’d move away instead.”
I staggered back, another hot tear sliding down my face.
“Hey,” you said, strolling in from the hallway, still holding your phone. “What’s happening?”
“Nothing.” Avoiding your gaze, I furiously swiped at my cheeks and slipped from the room. I couldn’t ask you about moving back to England with Bree there. Wouldn’t dare give her the satisfaction of watching me shatter if you confirmed it.
“Then why are you crying?” you called after me.
I hurried upstairs without answering.
That evening, I sat in bed with a pair of scissors, my hand trembling around the blades, fighting the urge to cut myself.
When a knock sounded on my door, I shoved the scissors underneath a pillow.
Nic entered, home from his business trip, still wearing his suit and tie. His eyes blazed, hands flexing by his side. “What have you done?”
I’d messed up so many times by then, I had no idea which thing he was referring to, so I waited for him to inform me.
“Casey just left to meet a friend,” he said. “But right before he walked out the door, he mentioned something about moving back to England over the summer.” Nic’s jaw ticked. “For good.”
I could only blink at him.
“So I’ll ask again,” Nic said, stepping farther into my room. “What have you done? What happened? Why is he out partying again?”
“He told me he loved me, and I can’t live up to that.”
Nic’s head dropped between his shoulders. Then he hiked up his dress pants, sank into my desk chair, and rubbed at his forehead. “Why not?”
God, what a loaded question that was. So deceptively simple it bordered on cruel. As if he were really asking: What makes you impossible to love, Elliot? Why do you always push people away? Why can’t you just let yourself have something good for once? What’s wrong with you?
Nic lifted his head to look at me. “Why can’t he love you?” He sounded tired. Annoyed. Fed up. “Because you hooked up with Michael first? And you never told him?”
“Yes,” I whispered.
“But if things had played out differently—if you’d told Casey about Michael right after it happened—do you think it would’ve changed how he feels? Do you think it would’ve stopped anything more from happening between you two?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
“It wouldn’t have changed a thing, Elliot,” he said with a sigh. “But it still would’ve ended the same. You’d come up with a hundred reasons he shouldn’t love you, because that’s what you do. You look for reasons to hurt yourself.”
Nic was right—always stating what I had hard time admitting to myself, always—and I hated it. But what I hated more? That he’d called me out while failing to acknowledge why I did those things.
“And why do you think that is, Dad?”
Without missing a beat, he said, “Because I love you too much.”
I huffed out an incredulous laugh. “Wow. Too much? Are you serious?”
“Yeah. I love you so much, I made decisions that ultimately weren’t good for you. I held on too tightly. I thought if I kept you close enough, you’d be okay. But then I also let go at times—when I probably shouldn’t have.”
He stared down at his hands, clasping them tightly between his knees, knuckles paling. “Like that day at the beach all those years ago. You and Michael were arguing near the pool house. You asked him to hurt you, and he did. He pulled your hair until you cried.”
My stomach turned. He’d seen that?
“I watched it happen,” he confirmed. “I knew I should step in, but I just—I trusted him not to take it too far. And it never happened again—that I know of, anyway—so I let it go.” Nic rubbed at the back of his neck. “When I saw you kissing him by the pool house two summers ago, I let that go, too.”
For once, Nic wasn’t trying to control the narrative. Just telling me the truth.
“I knew what that kiss would probably lead to, but I also wanted you to have that freedom, you know? To be a teenager. To do normal teenage things. John wouldn’t approve—because of your history, because I’d told him about the hair-pulling incident—but I thought it might help.
Maybe you’d get it out of your system—whatever it was you needed from Michael to move on from the stabbing—and that would be the end of it. ”
“So that’s what loving me too much looks like?” I asked, incredulous. “Letting me beg a boy to hurt me?”
“If I didn’t let you have that, you would’ve found more destructive ways to punish yourself.”
“And when you locked me in your office after the stabbing, was that love, too? Or do you think maybe that’s the reason I can’t stop punishing myself?”
Nic swallowed but didn’t say anything.
“You left me in there,” I said. “You didn’t answer when I called your name. You made me feel like a monster. Like you saw me differently after that. Like you stopped loving me as much.”
Nic shook his head. “No. Never.”
“And you wonder why I can’t accept love from Casey, when you’re the one who taught me how scary it feels to let someone love me. To feel that love change when I do something wrong.”
“Elliot, my love for you has never changed,” he said. “I didn’t love you any less after the stabbing, and I never intended to leave you in there. It just—there are things you don’t understand.” That last part, he’d whispered.
“I understand you’re a liar. You’ve been hiding things from me my whole life. Do you know how that feels? You’re my dad. I’m supposed to be able to trust you.”
“I know. You’re right. I’ve hidden a lot.”
“Like paying off Sienna right before you made me apologize to her.”
“I had to, honey. She threatened to press charges.”
“Then there’s John—why hide that?”
A muscle in his jaw flexed. “Hide what exactly?”
“That you’re attracted to him.”
“I didn’t hide it—not well, anyway.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I must’ve missed the part where you kissed him. Or held his hand. Or told him you loved him. Or the numerous other ways you could’ve shown me you’re in love with your best friend.”
He swiped a hand through his hair, nodding. “He has a public image to uphold. It was easier to keep it behind closed doors—with Libby, too.”
“Do you love them equally? Or do you love him more?”
He leaned back. “What makes you think I love him more?”