Chapter 13
Thirteen
Alfie beat the dawn.
He’d stayed on the phone with me for an hour while I told him everything through my tears. He’d soothed me until I fell asleep. Then I woke to him sliding into my sob-stained sheets beside me, the moon still clinging to the sky.
I curled into his chest and began to cry all over again. I didn’t want to. My head hurt, my skin stung from the salt of my tears, but the crying came anyway. Grief purged itself from my body without asking me if I minded.
I wished my father had never come back. The ache of abandonment was dense, deep into the pit of my stomach. I cried until I ran out of tears, snot smeared on the duvet and I hiccuped painful sobs.
Eventually it subsided enough for me to get up.
I was a mess and I headed into the bathroom to clean up.
I washed my face, then looked at my reflection.
I looked hideous. My face was swollen and as red as my hair which stuck up all over the place.
My eyes were bloodshot. Alfie watched me from the doorway.
I wanted to hide myself. It was hard being with someone as beautiful as him sometimes.
His mouth was set in a firm line, arms folded over his bare chest.
“You look angry,” I told him.
“No. Yes. Yes, I’m angry. I don’t know how to fix this.” Alfie hated a problem he couldn’t solve. Hated it more when that problem affected me.
“You can’t fix it. Some stuff you just have to cry through.” I blew my nose again and leaned against the counter top. My whole body hurt. I felt like I’d fallen out of the Daddy Issues tree and hit every broken branch on the way down.
“I wish he’d been a bastard,” I confessed quietly. “I wish he’d been horrible to me. When I was giving him a hard time I wished he’d done it back.”
“You wish he’d given you a reason to still be angry with him?” Alfie asked. I nodded. “You don’t need permission to be angry with him. He deserves that anger whether he’s sorry or not.”
“Feels pointless if he’s sorry.”
My fathers’ humility had taken all the wind out of my sails.
It gave me nothing to rail against and I hated him for it.
Over the years, I’d imagined thousands of times what I would do if I ever saw him again.
How I’d yell at him, the things I’d say.
As with everything though, reality didn’t match up to day dreams. Anti-climactic. That was the word for it.
“Are you going to see him again?” There was an edge to Alfie’s voice. A biting disapproval at the very idea of it.
“You don’t think I should?”
“I think it’s convenient timing.”
I frowned, trying not to let my hurt show. “You think he wants money? Why bother with me then? I don’t have any money.”
Alfie raised his eyebrows. “Stop being naive, Lola. You’re a billionaire now too.”
I stared at him, stunned.
“Did that not occur to you? That Harrington House will be yours soon? My house in Richmond where you walk around on tiptoe? The private plane you refuse to use to see your own friend? Soon, very soon if I get my way, everything that’s mine will be yours. Did you really not think about that?”
“No. Or at least, not in such literal terms.” I let out a humourless laugh. “Maybe you should ask for a prenup.”
“What’s the point? If you ever leave me you might as well take all this shit with you.” He came to me and I leaned into his chest, my head throbbing in time with his heart beat.
“He knew I had a man but he didn’t say your name. Maybe he doesn’t know that you’re…you.”
Alfie kissed the top of my head, then pulled back. “We’ve been photographed together, Lo. One google search and he’d know.”
“So, you don’t think he could come back just because he cares about me?”
His hard gaze softened. He traced the back of his fingers over my cheeks. “Of course he could but wealth has taught me to be cynical. He didn’t come back when you were struggling to pay rent. I just want you to be aware of that.”
“Oh, I’m aware. Painfully aware. I think he came back to see Natalie. Her and Riley announced their engagement this week, maybe that’s what prompted him to try to reconnect now? And looking her up meant looking me up and then he found out about you? Maybe that could be it?”
“Maybe.” Alfie wasn’t convinced. Neither was I, not entirely anyway.
I didn’t want to believe that John O’Connell had only come back to try and take what he could get, but I would be a fool not to consider it. Alfie was right. Whether I felt it or not, I was about to become extremely wealthy. I needed to start looking out for sharks swimming in my waters.
“Regardless of the reason, I need to see him again. At least one more time. I have so many questions. Where has he been all this time? Does he have more children? Is he married?”
“I can answer some of those. No, he’s not married and as far as records show he never fathered more children.”
I stared at Alfie, wondering how he knew all of that. “Did you have Elliot research him on the plane ride over or something?”
He paused. I got the feeling he hadn’t meant to give me that information. What an un-Alfie-like mistake.
He sighed, as if resolving himself to an uphill struggle. “You know I had Elliot research you when we first met. He put together files on all the people in your life, including your father.”
I put a hand between us, pushing him away slowly. To his credit, he didn’t fight me.
“You’re telling me that you’ve known all this time where he was?” Please say no. Please say you didn’t know. I was desperate to be wrong but his silence was my answer. “And you didn’t think to tell me?”
Another pause. “I decided not to.”
“Why?” I said through gritted teeth. I felt like my world was caving in all over again.
“Because he knew where you were, Lola. In the exact same place that he left you and he didn’t come back.”
“So?”
“So, if I’d told you where he was, you would have wanted to see him and as far as I could tell, he had no interest in seeing you. I thought telling you would just be setting you up for rejection. I didn’t want to see you get hurt.”
I started to laugh. I left the bathroom, returning to the bedroom. No, this was too intimate. I went into the sitting room instead. I wanted to run outside and get away from this mess but I knew it would just follow me. I felt Alfie hovering in the doorway behind me.
Finally, I turned to face him. “How many times are we going to have this fight?” I sounded as exhausted as I felt, like the life had been drained out of me. “All this work I’ve done to trust you again and you’ve been lying this whole time. Hiding something huge from me.”
“I had a good reason.”
“You always have a good reason but I always end up hurt, don't I?” My strained voice echoed in the dark room. Tears were spilling onto my cheeks again. I wiped them away with an angry swipe.
“Perhaps I should have told you.”
“Perhaps?”
“Lola, don’t raise your voice to me.”
“Don’t lie to me!” I yelled, raising my damn voice as loud as I wanted. “You’ve kept my father from me for years!”
“He kept himself from you,” he snapped back.
“But I could have known where he was! I could have known he wasn’t dead! I could have had answers instead of just the endless questions I’ve had for twenty three years!” My chest heaved with grief of betrayal.
“You’re right. I made a decision that I thought was in your best interest. I misjudged. I apologise.” It was a typical Alfie apology. Logical, business-like.
“You’re supposed to be my safest place. How can you be that when you hide so much from me?”
“No more. I promise.”
I let out another laugh without a trace of humour in it. “I believe that promise less and less every time I hear it.”
“Lola—”
“Get out,” I cut him off. My hand raised as if I had the power to block the world from hurting me anymore. Alfie didn’t move. “Just go away, Alfie. Please.”
His jaw ticked. His grey eyes pierced me in the dark. Once he would have twisted me, manipulated my mind into agreeing with his lies and even thanking him for them. So dangerous were his words but not anymore. This Alfie was learning how to walk the path of a good man.
“Alright. I’ll leave you for now. But I’m not going far.”