Chapter 27 #2
The people I was just chatting with excuse themselves, and I’m blissfully free for a moment.
I catch my reflection in the window they were standing in front of.
Perfect make-up, not a hair out of place.
Elegant dress and red bottomed heels. Everything my father would want me to look like. Nothing of myself visible.
No dirt under my nails from the garden, or jam on my skirt from one of the kids. No laughter.
Before someone else can come over, my father’s presence fills the reflection next to mine.
“Time to go, Blossom.”
It’s not a request, so I don’t resist when he takes my arm in his hand and leads me to the exit.
Perhaps he’ll come home with me, meet the guys properly and spend time with the kids, see how wonderful they are.
Then I remember me trying to introduce the guys, his look of derision, his curled lip and harsh words in the car.
My stomach clenches as we make our way outside.
The car we arrived in is idling by the stone steps that lead down from the venue, the driver at the back passenger door. My father leads me to it, helps me inside then steps away. The door shuts, and I watch as he walks to a car behind us.
No goodbye. No final question about my life that doesn’t diminish my choices. That doesn’t make my skin itch.
He’s done with me for the evening, and the warm air turns suddenly chill.
“Home, Miss?” The driver asks, and I nod.
“Y-yes please.”
Hope really is the worst part about our relationship. Not the cutting words. The horrible judgements. But the hope that one day, he’ll see me, and treat me like I imagine a father should treat his only child.
But that’s never going to happen. Because every time I bring hope to him, he hands it back, unopened.
The journey home seems to take no time at all, and my body relaxes as I see lights on inside, the warm glow spilling onto the gravel and making this evening seem brighter.
The door opens before the car even parks, three large silhouettes in the doorway, waiting.
A glow kindles in my chest, heat rippling out from it until it feels as though it’s midsummer inside the car.
“Here we are, Miss,” the driver says as he parks right in front of the door, and he doesn’t even get the chance to get out of the car before Ant is striding down the steps and opening the door for me.
“Hey, Bloom. You okay?” He asks, taking my pale hand in his tattooed one and helping me out. He shuts the door behind me, keeping hold of my hand as he looks me over, his brow deeply furrowed.
“I’m okay, Ant,” I assure him, already feeling the exhaustion of the night, of having to keep up appearances, wash over me. “Just tired, I guess.”
“You don’t look fine, Petal,” Nox says as he comes up next to Ant, the car driving off behind me.
“No, you don’t,” Steele adds, his voice deep as oceans and his stare assessing, but not in a hard way. In a considering way. A caressing way that feels more intimate than it should.
“Shouldn’t you guys be asleep? It’s pretty late,” I say, going to step around them but Ant keeps hold of my hand, refusing to let me walk inside. “Ant, I want to get inside. I’m tired.”
“We couldn’t sleep,” Steele confesses, and I catch the nod he gives to Ant, who releases my hand a moment later. “Now tell us why your eyes look so empty, Flower.”
It’s not a request, but feels so different from the orders my father gives. This is coming from a place of love, and place of worry and care and it makes my chest hurt because why couldn’t my father show even the smallest amount?
“How was family dinner? Did the kids eat enough?” I deflect, stepping around them, my heels sinking into the gravel a little as I make my way to the front steps.
“Blossom…” Nox’s tone is full of warning but I ignore it, walking through into the hall and placing my purse on the hall table. There’s a lunchbox there, and a piece of clay that I think is either a hedgehog or a plant.
“I just want to go to bed, Nox,” I say wearily, feeling my throat thickening and desperate to hold on, just a little longer. I need to be alone, to tend this wound that just won’t close up. “Please.”
“No.” He grabs hold of my upper arm, turning me to face him. His green eyes are blazing, the bronze skin on his face pulled tight as his jaw clenches. “You won’t run from us again, Petal. You will talk to us, tell us what has you looking like you’re fucking bleeding on the inside.”
“Why won’t he love me, Nox?” The words are pulled from the deepest part of me, and come out in barely above a whisper.
His face doesn’t soften, if anything, his expression hardens until it almost hurts to look at him. “Because he’s a selfish cunt who doesn’t know the treasure you are, Princess.”
A sob rips from me then, and I throw myself at him, his arms wrapping around me as he catches me and pulls me into a bruising hug.
“You don’t need his approval, Bloom. He’s never going to give it, baby. And he doesn’t deserve your tears,” Ant says from the side, his arms joining Nox until I’m encased in both of them. I cry harder.
“You are more than he will ever see, Flower,” Steele adds, his warmth coming up behind me. “We see you. We will always see you.”
His large arms come around us all, and they hold me while I cry for the little girl who lost her loving mother too young and was left with a cold, distant father, not realising he would never love her.