Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 101662 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 508(@200wpm)___ 407(@250wpm)___ 339(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 101662 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 508(@200wpm)___ 407(@250wpm)___ 339(@300wpm)
“I hate that he’s doing that,” Ava grumbled as we finished checking on the champagne table for the birthday toast later in the night.
“Who’s he and what is he doing?”
“My dad. He’s acting like this was all his idea.”
Oh.
So she’d noticed, too.
“You know what’s crazy?” Ava asked as she lifted a glass of champagne as if she were going to drink it.
I took the glass from her hand. “What’s that?”
“Mom laughs with you. Like, her real laughs. The kind where she tosses her head back in a giggling fit. I can’t remember the last time I saw her do that with Dad.”
My gut tightened. “I’m sure your parents laugh all the time together.”
“They don’t,” she replied. “If anything, all Mom does is cry because of him. She tries to hide it, but sometimes I hear her.” She turned toward me after staring at her parents across the room. She crossed her arms and shook her head. “You don’t like him, do you?”
I swallowed hard. “Your father is a brilliant man. He is decades ahead with his tech—”
“That’s not what I asked, Gabriel. I said you don’t like him. Him being smart doesn’t make him a good person.”
I grimaced, uncertain of what I was supposed to say. I wasn’t there to shit on her father. I wasn’t there to make her feel bad about the fact that her dad was some awful human being that most people thought was a saint. I wasn’t going to tell her about his cheating with their former chef, or him treating Kierra like she was nothing. He was a disgusting pig. But how could I convey that to his daughter?
“We’re just different people,” I told her.
“Yeah,” she agreed, “you are. You’re better than him.”
I arched an eyebrow and shook my head. “No, I’m not.”
“Yeah, you are. Based on that response alone. If I told my father he was better than you, he’d agree. Which would in turn prove that he wasn’t.”
“Ava…”
“I caught him screaming at Mom a few weeks ago,” she mentioned, her eyes flashing with tears. “He thought I was gone to my friend’s house for the weekend, but I came back to pick up my book.” Her voice began to crack as she spoke. “They didn’t know I came into the house, but he…” She dropped her head and shook it in disbelief. “He was screaming at her for something, as if Mom had ruined his entire life. I hid in the foyer because I didn’t know what was happening. I waited to see what she’d done that made him so angry. But then I found out why he was yelling so loud. Why his rage was at a boiling point. Do you know what Mom did wrong?”
“What’s that?”
“She burned herself getting a pizza out of the oven. Her hand hit the top of the oven, and she dropped the pizza, making a mess in the oven. She had a solid burn on her right hand, and he screamed at her for it. For a mistake. And the way he did it…It was so clear it wasn’t the only time he’d yelled at her like that when I wasn’t around. For the first time ever, I saw my dad as something new.”
“What did you see him as that day?”
“A monster.”
I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t going to lie to the girl. Her father was a major dick, and knowing that he’d screamed at Kierra after she injured herself made me want to rage. It was taking everything inside of me to not march across the room and slam his head through a window.
Henry Hughes wasn’t a man. A grown man would never shout at his wife in that fashion. They’d never hurt someone they loved so deeply and humiliate them in public or private. I could only imagine how Kierra felt terrified and embarrassed and hurt by the outburst that he’d unleashed when he thought he was alone to torture her. How often did those kinds of things happen between the two of them?
How often did he hurt her? With and without his words?
“I’m not always the best with my words, Ava, and truthfully I don’t even know what to say right now because what I want to say isn’t child-appropriate.”
“It’s just funny to me.” She sighed and picked up a glass filled with punch, finally surrendering to the fact that I wasn’t going to allow her to down champagne. “He was my hero for the longest time. How could my hero be my other hero’s worst nightmare?”
I wanted to comfort her, but mostly I wanted to find Henry and make him feel how he made my two girls feel—small and scared.
My two girls.
Realistically I knew they weren’t mine, but my heart disagreed. I felt protective of Kierra and Ava.
My eyes began to dart around the house in search of Henry, who seemed to be quickly on the move as he interacted with guests. I figured it was about time I gave him one or two birthday greetings.