Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
A person has never truly experienced horror until they're standing between two people they desperately didn't want meeting each other.
I reluctantly turned away from Kain and faced my father. Dad squinted his eyes in the dark over my shoulder in Kain's direction. I wondered if I could make this situation better by running away. Maybe if I just bolted, Dad would be distracted and not focus so much on Kain.
Still, my feet were frozen in place. Dad's expression soon turned to one of recognition and I inwardly groaned. My father looked back at me, eyes wide, his expression almost begging me to tell him I didn't know the man behind me.
“Daddy,” I said nervously, “I can explain...”
I could have the best explanation in the world, but I knew my father didn’t want to hear a word of it as he shook his head in disbelief, his eyes bouncing from my face to Kain.
“Lauren?” he said, voice laced with an edge of betrayal. He didn't even sound angry, just sad.
Oh, this is worse than I thought it would be. I looked at Kain to see how he was handling this intense encounter. His face said it all. Kain looked exactly like someone who was seeing something he wasn't supposed to see—a cross between uncomfortable and pensive.
I wondered if he blamed himself. I wondered if he blamed me.
I would have given anything to read his mind for this particular moment.
My guess was that Kain was probably asking himself if it would be appropriate to excuse himself.
There's not a person in the world who would stay for this incoming storm if they didn't have to.
His eyes found mine in the darkness and it looked like he might say something, but then Dad started talking to him. Well... Yelling at him.
“What is this?” my father shouted, perhaps hoping this was all an elaborate prank. Neither Kain or I volunteered to be the first to speak up. Unconsciously, I positioned myself in a way so that I was directly blocking access to Kain from my father.
Dad never did anything to make me feel like he might attack a boyfriend he didn't approve of, but I figured it was better to be cautious than anything.
If Kain and my father got into a physical argument, whose side was I supposed to take? I asked myself this in the silence that dragged on, but then immediately came to my senses and checked myself. Shut up, Lauren, Kain wouldn't fight your father.
A harsh truth hit back. Dad could very well attack Kain.
Kain spoke first, his voice unbelievably relaxed for the situation. “Lauren and I—”
Dad cut him off. “There is no Lauren and you!”
My father spat the word ‘you,’ like Kain was less than nothing. I’d never really heard Dad speak to anyone so scathingly, not even in court. Even though they were just words, the hatred in my father’s voice made me want to wrap my arms around Kain and protect him.
Kain's expression was one of general irritation, but he remained calm, understanding even. Clearly, Kain could make sense of my father's behavior, even if he did feel disrespected. When he met my eyes, I tried my best to communicate a nonverbal apology. A look I’m sure he recognized, because he offered me a brief, encouraging smile. It’s okay, his eyes said.
“Lauren, what the hell do you think you’re doing?” Dad grabbed at my wrist, forcibly pulling me further away from Kain.
Dad's yank was rough and caught me off guard, disorienting me and causing me to stumble a little. Without much thought, Kain reached out to help me find my balance, his arm wrapping around my back to steady me. At the sight of Kain touching me, Dad's face was lit with rage.
“Don't touch her! Don't you fucking touch her!” It looked like Dad might lunge forward to physically force us apart himself.
Kain's hand remained on my back, his unbothered disposition only serving to infuriate my father more.
I held out a hand to Dad's chest, stopping him as he advanced.
He looked at my outstretched hand as if it were a knife to his chest.
“Do you have any idea who you're dealing with?” Dad asked me, holding out hope that maybe I just didn't know what I was doing.
“Daddy,” I tried my best to keep my voice steady, but it still shook a little.
“This is Kain. We're... I...” I couldn't find the words. I tried to start again. “Daddy, this is Kain Montgomery,” I repeated, laying emphasis on his last name. There was a long pause. I couldn’t be sure if everyone was breathing, it was so quiet.
“He's my boyfriend.”
If this were a soap opera, this would’ve been the part where the frame froze and the music and credits began to roll.
Viewers would have to tune in tomorrow for the next installment of my messy ass life.
I could’ve got on my knees right then and there and begged God for a studio audience, two or three cameras, and a director to yell, “CUT! Great job everyone. We’ll resume filming tomorrow. ”
Tomorrow. It seemed years away.
I was in the real world. Fucking messy as ever. There was no freezing time in the real world. Life does not come with a pause button. However, as my words began to find meaning in the mind of my father, you couldn’t tell me that life didn’t suddenly develop a fast forward button.
Dad moved impossibly fast, pushing past me, going straight for Kain. Handfuls of Kain’s shirt were snatched up by my father, his movements alarmingly rough, as he shouted his disapproval, his anger getting the best of him as he pulled the front of Kain’s shirt closer to him.
“Stay the fuck away from my daughter.” Each syllable was paired with a shove, each one progressively more violent than the last.
“Daddy!” I tried unsuccessfully to insert myself in between the both of them. “Daddy, let him go!” I was on the verge crying, catching Kain’s attention, concern crinkling between his eyebrows. Dad, however, was still fixated on my boyfriend, cursing under his breath before the first fist flew.
I was the only person that flinched. With Kain’s attention divided between both my father and I, he remarkably managed to find the reflexes to catch my father’s punch in his palm. Kain’s hand closed around my father’s thwarted fist, catching it less than an inch from his face. I couldn’t breathe.
They were the same tall height with very similar athletic builds, so it was anyone's guess what would happen if this situation escalated further. I didn’t know much about the way men fought, but judging from how Kain made it look incredibly easy to do what he just did, I already knew who was more experienced.
Being honest with myself, it was no question what would happen if they fought.
I was having so much trouble catching my breath.
I wasn’t getting enough air in my lungs.
Kain had my father in a vulnerable position.
One of Daddy’s hands was gripping the front of Kain’s shirt, while the other was balled up in an unsuccessful punch caught in Kain’s left hand.
Kain was not only right-handed, but he was the only one of the two men before me with a free hand.
If he wanted to, he could have my father laid out on the ground right now.
Do I have asthma? Am I having an asthma fit?
“You need to breathe.” It took me a stretched second to realize that Kain’s words were for me.
Was he being serious right now? My father’s punch was caught mere centimeters away from his face and he was telling me to breathe?
“You’re having a panic attack. Calm down.
I’m straight. Your Pops is straight.” Kain looked at my father, eyebrow raised with a look of wary mistrust, before he let go of his fist. “See? Baby, breathe.”
I snuck a look at my father. Dad did not try to punch him again.
Instead, my father was fuming watching all of this go down.
Dad was seething not only at the sound of Kain freakin’ Montgomery calling his daughter ‘baby’, but, I suspect, the sincerity of it all.
Kain wasn’t doing this for the sake of being cheeky. He was dead serious.
In that moment, it became clear that Kain did not give a single good goddamn about my father, or his approval.
There were parts of me that suspected that it might’ve been incredibly satisfying for Kain to knock my father out.
I didn’t know a lot, but I knew that being challenged by another person, and ultimately deciding not to fight them despite knowing you could beat them…
That was a big deal in everyone’s world, not just Kain’s.
That night, Kain had made a conscious decision to not fight my father. That wasn’t for lack of ability. It was for me…
I assumed Dad knew it, too.
“That’s it,” Kain encouraged as my breathing slowed. He reached out, caressing my cheek with a gentle thumb, completely oblivious—or just indifferent—to how this visibly agitated my father. “Mm-hm, that’s my girl.”
My heart would have fluttered if not for my fear that Kain’s actions would only reawaken my father’s violent anger.
Kain was seriously pushing it. I suspected my father’s anger, in no time, would bubble over to the point where it wouldn’t matter if Kain killed him so long as he could get in one good punch.
“You have to…” I took in one long breath and exhaled the word, “…go.” Before Kain’s recklessly intimate gestures initiated another climactic confrontation, I squeezed myself in between my father and him.
“You have to go,” I repeated, facing him.
Kain glanced over my shoulder at my father, and then back at me. “I’m fine. I promise I’m fine. Please.”
***
Dad was looking at me as if he could no longer recognize me. As the front door to our sleeping house had shut, I had made the foolish mistake of thinking Dad would just let me walk up to my room. Instead, with a too-tight grip on my upper arm, Dad had silently forced me into his office.