14. It Was Always You
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
IT WAS ALWAYS YOU
S pring was always Aniyah’s favorite time of the year, even when she was missing her man, that wasn’t her man, that definitely was her man.
April had arrived without ceremony.
More time had passed since that night with Trevor than she realized.
At first the distance between them had been intentional.
She needed space for the sting of his words to fade into something that didn’t live so close to her skin anymore.
Trevor had given her exactly what she asked for without protest, without hovering, without turning every conversation into a quiet request for forgiveness.
That alone told her more about the man he was trying to be than any apology ever could.
They still talked, of course they did.
Text messages in the mornings before school started, usually something simple. Good morning. Hope the kids behave today. He would send pictures of Zara holding up a drawing she did in the evening and insisted on showing Aniyah before she went to bed.
Aniyah still came to pick Zara up every Saturday for their nail dates and lunch. The little girl overflowed with joy every time her car pulled into Trevor’s driveway. She hadn’t come inside since their fall out. Trevor respected it and never pushed her—that made her heart ache more.
At night they spoke on the phone when their schedules allowed, exhaustion softening their voices into something easy and familiar. The conversations rarely lasted long, but they lingered afterward in ways Aniyah hadn’t expected.
Trevor never pushed.
When he picked Zara up from school he stayed outside, leaning against the fence while the children spilled onto the sidewalk.
Zara almost always threw her arms around Aniyah’s waist before remembering she had a father waiting two steps away.
Aniyah would lock eyes with Trevor and fight the urge to run to his arms.
Those moments were brief. Trevor kept the distance she asked for, even when the warmth in his eyes said he would have closed it in a heartbeat.
Still, the absence had weight.
Some nights Aniyah caught herself staring at her phone longer than she meant to, rereading one of his messages while a quiet ache spread behind her ribs.
The moments she saw something funny and reached for her phone before remembering she shouldn’t call him just because she wanted to hear his laugh. The way his voice sometimes lingered in her ears long after their nightly goodnight.
God, she missed that man.
The thought passed through her mind as she stood near the classroom window, watching Zara kneel beside another student on the reading rug.
It was lunch time and just as Aniyah’s teachers had done in the past, she opened her classroom for those who may not want to sit in the cafeteria.
Only Zara and Jada choose to eat in the classroom.
The girls were stacking bright plastic blocks into a tower that leaned dangerously to the left, their giggles filling the space every time the structure wobbled.
Zara had changed so much in the past few months that sometimes it caught Aniyah off guard.
She laughed easily now. Raised her hand when she knew an answer instead of shrinking into her seat. During story time she volunteered to read out loud, her small voice bright and confident in a way that made Aniyah’s chest swell with quiet pride every time she heard it.
Dr. Sanders was doing good work.
Trevor was too.
Zara had done a complete one-eighty from the quiet, withdrawn child who walked into Aniyah’s classroom at the start of the year carrying confusion she didn’t yet have words for.
Now she moved through the room like a child who understood she was safe, the kind of confidence that only grew when the adults in your life finally became steady ground.
Aniyah rested her hip against the edge of her desk, folding her arms loosely as she watched Zara carefully add another block to the tower.
The whole thing toppled immediately.
The girls burst into laughter, blocks scattering across the rug like confetti .
Aniyah smiled.
Her phone buzzed softly in the pocket of her cardigan.
She pulled it out without thinking, expecting Trevor’s name to light up the screen the way it often did around this time of day. Instead the name staring back at her made her stomach tighten.
Dad.
Aniyah stared at the phone while it rang, the vibration humming faintly against her palm.
That man had always had impeccable timing when it came to reopening wounds.
The ringing continued.
Across the room Zara gathered blocks into a small pile, chatting happily with the other student beside her while they prepared to start again. Their voices drifted through the classroom like background music, light and unbothered.
Aniyah answered on the fourth ring, “Hello.”
There was a pause before her father spoke, “Aniyah.”
His voice sounded older than she remembered. The sharp edge that once lived in it had been worn down by time, though the familiarity of hearing him say her name still felt strange, like a sound from a life she had already stepped out of.
She leaned her shoulder against the wall, her gaze drifting back toward Zara and Jada across the room.
“What do you want?”
Another pause stretched across the line.
“I’d like to see you.”
Aniyah watched Zara carefully rebuild the tower she and her classmate had just destroyed, the little girl’s tongue poking out in concentration.
“For what?” she asked.
“I think we should talk.”
The words hung between them. Years of unsaid things pressed quietly against the silence that followed. Dinner table arguments. Expectations delivered like ultimatums. The moment she realized his approval had always come with conditions.
Aniyah exhaled slowly, her fingers tightening slightly around the phone. She was about to make a choice she knew she would regret in the future.
“Send me the address,” she said.
On the other end of the line her father went quiet for a moment.
“All right.”
Then the call ended.
Aniyah lowered the phone and slipped it back into her cardigan pocket as she pushed away from the wall. Across the room Zara finally managed to balance another block on top of the tower, her small face lighting up with triumph.
Aniyah walked over and crouched beside her, tapping the block gently with one finger.
“Well look at that,” she said softly. “Engineering skills.”
Zara beamed up at her. She wished she could feel that happiness that Zara felt in that moment.
What had she just gotten herself into?
“ It’s just like Rodger to choose this swanky restaurant ,” Aniyah thought as she walked into the entrance of La Petite Mort. Her nerves over taking her. Trying to act like this is just a regular business meeting wasn’t going to fly. Even with those nerves overflowing, she held her head high.
Aniyah paused just inside the doorway, letting her eyes adjust while she scanned the room.
She found him near the back window exactly where she expected he’d be—upright posture, hands folded neatly on the table, the quiet authority that had defined most of her childhood still sitting comfortably in his shoulders.
Time had softened the edges, though. Silver threaded through his auburn hair now, and the certainty that once lived in his expression had been replaced by something more careful.
When he saw her, he stood.
“Aniyah.”
Her name landed softly between them, unfamiliar in a way that caught her off guard. For most of her life it had only been spoken when it was followed by instruction, correction, or expectation.
She walked over but didn’t hug him. She slid into the chair across from him, smoothing her coat over her lap before resting her hands lightly on the table.
“You said you wanted to talk.”
The waiter appeared at his elbow, already reaching for a wine list, but Aniyah shook her head politely, “I’m fine, thank you.”
Her father dismissed the menu with a small nod before turning his attention back to her. He studied her quietly, his gaze moving over her face like he was trying to memorize the woman she had become without his permission.
“You look well,” he said.
Aniyah felt the faintest curve touch her mouth, “I am.”
He absorbed that, though his fingers tapped once against the table like the silence made him restless.
“I heard you’re still teaching,” he said after a moment.
“You heard right.”
His gaze drifted briefly toward the window where evening traffic moved past in slow ribbons of light, “I always imagined you in a hospital, being an attendee.”
Aniyah leaned back slightly, folding her arms loosely. The old script between them was so familiar she could almost hear the next line before he spoke it .
“I know, I’ve heard it for years. If this is what you wanted, I can go.”
A quiet pause stretched between them.
“I realized now…that I may have been…too hard on you,” he said finally.
Aniyah exhaled slowly, her gaze steady on his.
“You treated me like shit. No need to sugar coat it. I differed from the path you laid out for me, and I no longer was good enough to be your daughter,” she said calmly.
His eyes lifted, he opened his mouth to rebut. Aniyah quickly cut him off.
“We are here because you never loved me without condition,” The words were quiet, but they landed with weight. Her father flinched almost imperceptibly, the reaction small enough that anyone else in the restaurant might have missed it.
“Of course I loved you, Aniyah. I just wanted the best for you,” he said, though the conviction in his voice sounded thinner than she remembered.
Aniyah tilted her head slightly.
“No,” she replied gently. “You wanted the version of me that made you look good, which for the life of me I don’t see how this one doesn’t?! Is it the teaching? The scars I can’t help or my ‘wretched disease’ as you called it in the past? Please, father, explain.”
His gaze dropped to his hands. He looked much smaller than the man she remembered. His face wore the look of anguish, she almost felt sorry for him—almost.
“I spent years trying to come to terms with the fact that you didn’t love me,” she continued, her voice steady even as the memories behind it still carried teeth. “I isolated myself, dove into school and work without making genuine connections with the people around me. You did that.”
His jaw tightened now in aggravation Aniyah was sure .
“I did love you, I just knew you were capable of more.”
Aniyah let out a small breath that sounded halfway between disbelief and the other half in irritation.
“Do you hear yourself right now? Have you listened to anything I’ve said? More importantly, do you remember my sophomore year in high school?”
Her dad looked over at her in confusion. The fact that he didn’t remember was yet another slice to the heart.
“That was the year I started realizing I didn’t want to be a doctor,” she said. “The year I told you I liked writing. That I wanted to be a teacher.”
His expression stayed carefully neutral, but something in his shoulders stiffened.
“That was the year you stopped looking at me the same way, I wasn’t your pride and joy anymore. I was a nuisance that dared to be different.”
“Aniyah—”
“No,” she said gently, cutting him off before he could steer the conversation somewhere safer. “Let’s tell the truth tonight.”
The restaurant hummed quietly around them, plates clinking somewhere behind her, a low conversation drifting past from another table.
“You remember the dinner table conversation,” she continued. “The one where you told me I needed to stop thinking small.”
His mouth opened slightly, but she kept going.
“You said I was wasting my potential. That if I insisted on throwing away the opportunities you worked so hard to give me, then maybe you’d made a mistake raising me to believe I could choose my own life.”
Her father’s gaze dropped to the table again. Aniyah felt the old ache brush against her ribs, but it didn’t grip the way it used to. It passed through her instead of settling .
“Do you know what that sounded like to a sixteen-year-old girl?” she asked quietly.
He didn’t answer.
“It sounded like I was a mistake, that my dreams were a mistake .”
Her fingers tightened slightly against the edge of the table, though her voice remained calm.
“There are a lot of things I could forgive you for,” she said. “Pressure. High expectations. Even the way you dismissed my career.”
Her eyes held his.
“But making me feel like I was unwanted the moment I stopped being the daughter you planned for…” She paused, letting the weight of the truth sit between them. “That’s not one of them.”
Her father finally looked up again, regret flickering across his face.
“I never meant?—”
“I know.”
The answer came quickly.
“That’s the thing about words, though. Intent doesn’t erase impact.”
He leaned back in his chair, rubbing a hand across his forehead like the conversation had pressed against something he’d spent years refusing to examine. This was not how this dinner was supposed to go.
“Your mother thought I was pushing you toward stability,” he said quietly.
Aniyah nodded once, “I know she did. She reminds me every chance she gets.”
“She still thinks you’re wasting your education.”
Aniyah released a soft breath .
“That’s her choice, what she thinks is no longer my concern and let her know, I will no longer be answering her phone calls.”
With that, she pushed her chair back and stood up.
“I’ll make this easy for you, Rodger. You can live your life like I never existed,” she said quietly. “That seems to be what you wanted anyway.”
Rodger stood quickly attempting to stop her, “Aniyah?—”
Aniyah was already starting to walk away. For a moment he looked like he might reach for her, then his voice called out, “I didn’t ask you here so you could leave like this,” he said.
Aniyah stopped to turn and meet his gaze, her voice held a finality that her father wasn’t used to, “I came here so I could. For years I yearned for you to reach out and tell me these years were a nightmare, that I was still your little girl who you love more than anything. After Grandpa died, I got the reality check I needed. I was nothing more than a pawn in your chess game and your wife was complicit in your treatment of me. You’re a sorry excuse for a man, and I want nothing to do with you.
Give your wife my regards because after today, I don’t want to hear from either one of you. ”
Aniyah turned, not giving Rodger the chance to interject again and walked out the restaurant with her head held high.
She stepped onto the sidewalk—the city air wrapped around her, cool and alive with the rhythm of Manhattan at night.
Aniyah paused beneath a streetlight and drew in a slow breath.
For years she had carried the weight of his disappointment like proof she had failed.
Tonight she realized something else entirely.
It had never been hers to carry.
Her shoulders lifted as she exhaled, the tension leaving her body in a slow, steady release.
Free.