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I got to my feet to follow her. She had a point. They had already made up their mind. If I was to change it, it wouldn’t be tonight.
“Cara, if you leave this house right now, you are not welcome back.” Stan’s voice was gruff and unflinching.
“Daddy!” Katie gasped. “That’s unreasonable.”
Linda shushed Katie. The young woman looked frantically to me and Cara. She’d done all she could. It was clear the Smith girls were beholden to what their parents wanted for them.
Despite my negative feelings toward Cara’s parents, I couldn’t stand for her to choose me over them. I was still new in the trajectory of her life. They had been there from the beginning. “Cara, you stay.”
Her eyes flashed with fire. “Are you out of your mind?”
I shook my head and then held an open hand up to her parents. “Well, I wish I could say it was lovely to meet you, but it’s clear the feeling isn’t mutual. So I’ll take my leave.”
If anyone responded, I didn’t hear them. I tuned out the sounds of the house as I walked through the front door. My whole body was buzzing.
“Wesley!”
I turned around. Cara had followed me out, dressed to leave. “Cara, I mean it, you can’t follow me.”
“They’ve always told me what I can and can’t do. Don’t do that to me, too, Wesley. Please.”
Who was I to ignore her pleading? Especially when she was choosing me?
Cara blew past me to the car and waited for me to unlock it.
I took one glance back at the house as if it were cursed. And in a sense, it was. Or at least, it seemed to have cursed my relationship with Cara.
What that meant for us, though, I wasn’t yet sure.
Chapter25
Cara
The entire drive home was silent. Not even the radio played.
I couldn’t make sense of what had just happened. I knew my parents were going to give him a hard time, but I had no idea they weren’t even going to give him a chance.
Not even givemea chance.
It was clear that any move I made to be my own person somehow offended them if it wasn’t in the realm of what they deemed appropriate.
So when they said, “It’s him or us,” I chose with my heart. My parents needed to understand I was an adult and could make my own life decisions.
I couldn’t stand the thought of losing Wesley. Letting him leave would have most certainly been the biggest mistake of my life thus far.
Besides thinking of what just happened back at my parents’ house, I couldn’t help but worry about Wesley’s feelings. Would this affect our relationship? Pull us apart?
Even by the time he parked the car in front of my apartment, his expression hadn’t changed. His lips were in a tight line and his hands were locked around the wheel so tightly his knuckles were white.
I’d never had to comfort him in his anger. Only in his sadness. And something told me that pulling him out of this mood would be harder. By trying to comfort him, I was worried I’d somehow insult his masculinity.
Instead of speaking, I touched his shoulder carefully.
Wesley sighed at my touch. Relief.
I caressed his tense muscles. “I’m so sorry.”
He didn’t speak.
