Chapter 30 #2
Calista tensed and toyed with a loose thread on her shorts.
“I don’t know. Part of me gets why he did it, but another part .
. . Attie, I trusted him. I opened up to him in ways I never opened up with anyone and he was keeping this huge, life-altering secret from me.
It’s like finding out your favorite book has a secret chapter that changes everything. ”
Athena nodded and her expression was thoughtful. “I get that. But, Cal, I’ve seen the way Reid looks at you. It’s like you personally hung the moon and stars, then threw in a few planets for good measure. Whatever his reasons for keeping this secret, I believe he truly loves you.”
Calista wanted to hold on to the connection she’d felt with Reid, but the hurt and betrayal were still too raw, like a sunburn that made even the gentlest touch feel like sandpaper.
“I don’t know if I can trust him again. He took my heart, used it as a hacky-sack, then tried to give it back with a ‘no harm, no foul’ attitude. ”
“You don’t have to decide anything right now. Give yourself time to process. Reid’s a big boy, he can handle being in the doghouse for a while. Maybe we can get him one of those cone collars they put on dogs after surgery.”
Calista chuckled at that. “What about you? How are you feeling about all this craziness? And don’t say ‘fine’ or I’ll push you into the ocean.”
Athena blinked and looked surprised by the question. “Me? Oh, I’m peachy. Just found out my entire family history is a lie, but hey, at least it’s not boring, right?”
“It’s okay to have feelings about this too. It’s your family being turned upside down as well. You’re allowed to freak out a little. Or a lot. I won’t judge.”
“Don’t worry about me. You’re the one who just had your entire identity ripped to pieces. It’s natural for you to focus on that. I’m just the supporting character in this particular episode of ‘Who’s Your Daddy?’ ”
“Still, your feelings matter too. We’re in this together, okay? Whatever happens, whatever we discover, we face it as a team.”
“I like the sound of that. You and me forever.” Athena hooked her pinkie around Calista’s.
“Me and you forever and always.” She bumped her shoulder against Athena’s. “Unraveling family secrets and supporting each other through existential crises since . . . well, coming to Hobby Island. We’re new, but we’re dedicated.”
Athena cocked her head, studying something on the ground.
“What is it?” Calista turned to see the sun glinting off something gold in the sand.
“Is that your locket?” Athena asked.
“What?” Calista hopped off the rock and hurried over. She bent down, heart skipping.
It was the locket she’d lost. She picked it up.
“Oh my gosh,” she whispered, brushing sand from the locket. She glanced back at Athena, who had come up behind her, peering over her shoulder. “I can’t believe it’s here. Washed up on Mermaid Cove.”
They returned to the rock and Calista opened the locket. Inside was the photo of her and Athena when they were toddlers, their baby faces smiling up at her. No damage at all.
“It’s a sign,” Athena said. “Mamá is still looking out for us.”
They sat there together, the ocean whispering its secrets, the locket clutched in Calista’s hand. A piece of the past returned to them.
Athena glanced over Calista’s head and squinted down the beach.
Calista turned to see a man loping toward them. “Who is it?”
Her sister slid off the rock. “Here comes your daddy. I’m gonna go back to shell collecting and give you two some alone time.” She pointed a short distance away. “But I’ll be right over there if you need me.”
Calista sat fused, watching Gavin approach. Her pulse galloped faster with each step he took toward her, and by the time he reached the rock, her heart was pumping so much hot blood to her extremities, her mind floated dazed, and dizzied.
He stopped before her, his hands crammed deep in the pockets of his cargo shorts, shoulders slumped, eyes downcast. He looked less like a PGA legend and more like a kid who accidentally set the kitchen on fire trying to make breakfast in bed for his folks.
“You want to talk,” she said. Not a question. Questions were for people whose lives hadn’t been drop-kicked into a parallel universe.
“May I sit?” He waved at the spot Athena had just vacated.
Calista shrugged, her chest so twisted with emotions she couldn’t wrap her tongue around words. Not that she even knew what she wanted to say.
Gavin took a tentative step forward as if approaching an unpredictable animal. “I’ve owed you this conversation for years, Calista. An explanation, an apology, the whole messy truth.”
She studied him, wary. Regret tugged down the corners of his mouth, but his gaze never left her face. Her skin burned with the heat of his stare, but inside she was frozen solid.
He eased onto the rock but left a significant amount of space between them. Good. She wasn’t ready to have him that close to her.
For a long time, neither of them said a thing. She shot a glance down the beach. Athena had walked several yards away, well out of hearing range. Drawing in a deep breath and then blowing it out slowly through clenched teeth, she turned to him.
“Let’s start with why,” she said.
“Wh-why?”
“Why did you leave me with him? Both you and Mamá knew what Benjamin was like—how he treated me.”
Gavin pressed a palm to his forehead, his eyes murky with regret.
He carried three decades of secrets. “God, I wanted to whisk you away, I wanted that so much, but things were so complex. Demetra and I were terrified of Benjamin and what he might do. He isn’t exactly the ‘let’s discuss this rationally over a latte’ type.
Staying close seemed like the best way to protect you. ”
Calista let out a bitter laugh. “Protect me? Stellar job there, really. Gold star.”
“You’re right. I have no defense. I failed you.”
“You know, I could never understand why Benjamin treated me so badly, but now it all makes sense. When did he find out I was your kid?”
Gavin lifted his shoulders in a helpless gesture.
“I don’t think he does know . . . not for certain, but you do look so very much like me.
” His voice softened along with his eyes.
“The moment I met your mother, I fell head over heels, and she felt the same for me, but we were both married. We resisted the attraction for years, and then one night, she and Benjamin had a huge argument at a tournament. He kicked her out of their hotel room, and I found her sobbing in the corridor.”
“You escorted her to your room and nature took its course?” she asked.
“Yes. We knew it wasn’t smart, but we couldn’t regret it.” His voice and his eyelids lowered. “Especially when our night together ended up with you.”
“You were together just that once?”
“While we were both still married, yes. Neither one of us wanted to ruin our marriages. Back then, we didn’t fully understand how toxic Benjamin was.
Oh, we knew he was a control freak, but we didn’t grasp the extent of it until he used Demetra’s depression against her to file for divorce and get full custody of you girls. ”
Calista’s anger was a hard thing in her chest. She appreciated Gavin was in a tough spot but couldn’t help resenting him.
“I tried to support your mother as best I could, but she moved to Hobby Island after the divorce and cut off all ties with me. I was married, but I stayed in your lives as much as Benjamin would allow. It helped that I lived across the street and could watch you grow up.”
“All this time,” she whispered, and felt her anger soften. “You were there.”
“No. Not in the way I should have been, and it ate me up inside. In my grief over being unable to tell you who I was—how could I when you were so young—I pushed my wife to have a baby. She didn’t want kids, and my pressuring her ended our marriage.”
“Is that why you made Reid your ward when his parents were killed? To assuage your guilt over abandoning me?”
“Maybe. Who knows. I just know, next to you, Reid is the best thing that ever happened to me.”
“You think my birth was a good thing?” She hated that she sounded like that desperate little girl who felt so unloved after Demetra was gone, hurt and confused over why her own father seemed to despise her.
“Calista.” His gaze locked onto hers. “You are the best thing about me. I wanted to tell you so many times, but while you were still in Benjamin’s orbit, I was simply a coward.
Terrified he’d take it out on you even more.
I thought about telling you after you left golf, but you moved away and seemed to want space from your old friends, your old life, and I didn’t want to make things harder for you.
But I can see now, those were just excuses to make myself feel better. I’m sorry.”
She curled her fingernails into her palms. This was her father. Her real dad. He was flawed. He hadn’t done right by her, but the look in his eyes left no doubt. He loved her.
Her breath stalled.
He reached out his hand, and she couldn’t stop herself from taking it.
His face dissolved into stunned disbelief and he squeezed her hand as joy washed away the disbelief.
“I am so sorry I failed your mother, failed you. I was wrong. Weak. Letting fear call the shots instead of doing the right thing.”
Compassion for this man welled up inside her. What good did it do to hold on to anger? The past was over. He was here now, trying . . .
“I want to make amends. It’s why I’m here.”
She squeezed his hand back. “Stop beating yourself up. Benjamin made me who I am, for better or worse. I’m stronger than steel because of him.”
“You don’t have to let me off the hook. I deserve your condemnation. I need to tell you something else.” Guilt and love played tug-of-war on Gavin’s face, and he dropped her hand.
Afraid what he would say might push her away?
She braced herself. “What is it?”
He gritted his teeth, winced. “When I learned you and Reid started dating, I panicked and told him to end things with you. I convinced him if Benjamin knew, he would take it out on you because he hated me, and Reid was my ward. Benjamin would have done it too. I couldn’t dare risk it, so I messed around in your relationship. ”
Calista gave a little gasp and touched two fingers to her mouth. Reid had let her believe Benjamin was the one who’d told Reid to break things off with her. Now, to find out it was Gavin? She didn’t know how to respond.
“Don’t blame Reid, Calista. He was just a kid trying to protect the girl he loved, and he did love you. Still does.”
“You’re the reason Reid dumped me? I drowned my pillow in tears and wrote poetry that would make emo bands cringe, because of you.” She turned it into a joke and added a laugh to make it less painful for them both.
Gavin looked ready to test theories about spontaneous human combustion.
“Don’t let me off that easy. The leak about Benjamin’s million-dollar Chevron tournament Vegas wager?
That was me too. I hoped it would wake you up to who Benjamin was, and it did.
You left. I was trying to help, but you know what they say about good intentions and road construction materials. ”
She laughed. Serious as this topic was, her father, her real father, had a terrific sense of humor even in the midst of accepting responsibility for some serious shit.
Gavin gave a half laugh, nervous and unsure, and he glued his gaze to Calista, taking his cues from her. She studied him closely. It was like looking into a mirror—same chocolate-brown eyes, same nose, identically shaped lips.
“And Reid knew all this and kept quiet for fifteen years? What? Did he minor in secret-keeping along with his business degree?”
“No, no.” Gavin’s laughter danced up the musical scale, getting higher, thinner.
“Reid didn’t know I was your father until Demetra died.
Everything before that was just a kid caught in the cross fire of adult screwups, trying to do right by you.
He caught me bawling my heart out when I heard about Demi, and I broke down, confessed.
He promised he wouldn’t reveal my secret, but he did tell me he was coming here to be with you. ”
“He came to Hobby Island for me and not for his vlog?”
“You believed that?”
She nodded and bit her bottom lip.
“Oh, Calista.” Gavin shook his head, cupped her cheek with his palm, and gazed deeply into her eyes. “I hate how I let this happen to you. Is there any way I can repair it? I need to make amends. I want a relationship with you if you’ll allow me.”
Reid.
The name flashed in neon in her brain palace. Funny, sexy Reid, who looked at her like she was the only person on Earth. Reid, who’d been carrying the weight of secrets that weren’t even his to keep.
Reid.
Who she’d left standing there in the dark, shell-shocked and hurt, while she ran away to have her existential crisis.
“Calista?”
“Huh?” She shook her head. What had Gavin said?
“Do you want to have a father-daughter relationship?” He looked so terrified she’d say no.
Compassion flooded her. Keeping secrets all these years couldn’t have been easy for him. Forced to watch her from afar. Her heart ached for what he’d gone through. At least she’d been blissfully ignorant.
“I’d like that,” she said.
“Really?” His face lifted, gratitude a gift in his eyes.
“Yes.” She bobbed her head.
Gavin looked as if he didn’t know whether he should jump up and down or grab her into a tight hug. He went in, she pulled back and held up a palm, laughing. “One step at a time, Dad.”
“Yes, yes, yes.” Sunbeams shone from his eyes, heating her with his love. “Right.” He put his arms behind his back. “Slow is better. Thank you.”
“I’d love to spend more time getting to know you, but there’s someone I need to apologize to first.”
“Reid?” Gavin—Dad—slid off the rock to the ground and held out his hand to help her to her feet.
“Of course Reid. Always Reid.” Grinning, she took her father’s hand, thrilled at the idea she’d had a good enough dad all along. “I have to go. I need to find Reid. I may have slightly overreacted. I need to fix this before he decides to join a monastery or something.”
“Good. Go.” He smiled and waved her off. “Go get him.”
She turned to go, her brain already rehearsing what she would say to Reid.
“And Calista?”
She stopped, looked back at Gavin. “Yes?”
“I’m here. Whenever you’re ready to talk more. I’ve got twenty-nine years of dad jokes saved up, so consider yourself warned.”
“Thank you.” She bobbed her head, put the locket around her neck where it belonged, and went after Reid.