Page 95 of Beautiful When He Breaks

I let out a slow breath. “Keep your money,” I tell them. “Keep every dime. Keep the family name if that matters more to you than I do. Keep the fucking approval. I don’t want any of it if this is what it costs.”

My father gives me a look that says he thinks I’m bluffing and opens his mouth. I cut him off before he gets the chance.

“And for the record, I know you can’t touch my trust anyway. If you came here hoping to scare me with that, save the drive next time.”

That one genuinely makes him blanch, because I know he hoped I had forgotten about the trust set up by my grandfather. It’s the one piece of this family’s money not fully chained to obedience because the old bastard—for all his faults—believed in legal insulation from emotional stupidity. My parents can freeze what they directly control. Not that.

I watch my father realize that his leverage is thinner than he thought.

“I’ll figure out the rest,” I say. “With or without you.”

My father’s voice goes cold enough to frost over. “You arrogant boy.”

“No,” I say. “I’m a father.”

The difference sits there between us—vast and impossible to bridge. I think about Mila inside. About Julian taking her from the car without a word because I asked. About the way she reaches for me now, trusting without question that I will hold her. I think about how both of these people in front of me spoke about her as if she were a punishment instead of the best thing that ever happened to me in the middle of the worst.

“I want nothing to do with you,” I say. “After what you said about my daughter, after what you just implied about Brendon, after trying to use money to force me back into line, you are nothing to me. Do you understand that? Nothing.”

“Eli,” my mother whispers, and for the first time there’s real fear in it. Not fear for me. Fear of consequence. Of losing the script where parents can say anything and still expect the child to kneel for reconciliation later.

I do not kneel.

“Leave me and my daughter alone. Do not come back here. Do not call unless you’re prepared to apologize to her first. And if I ever hear you speak about her the way you did on that phone again, I will make sure you never get close enough to say it twice.”

My father’s face is unreadable now in the way men get when fury goes too deep to show cleanly. “You are making a mistake.”

“No,” I say, and the truth of it rings so hard through me I almost feel taller under it. “I already made my mistake—her name was Celeste. I’m done making them.”

My mother whispers, “Eli.”

I look at her one last time—at the woman who raised me, who kissed scraped knees and packed lunches and taught me prayers. That doesn’t erase the fact that she stood in silence when my father would punish me with starvation before I was old enough to know what I did wrong. She stood in silence again when he said the ugliest thing he could think of about my daughter.

I wanted her to choose me; that’s the grief in this. I wanted her to choose me, and she didn’t.

“Leave,” I say.

She starts crying properly then, quiet and broken. My father just stares at me, waiting for me to back down.

I don’t.

His jaw shifts, and my mother grabs his arm, urging retreat now, and for once, he lets himself be pulled. They turn in a way that’s still stiff with pride, still full of the righteous dignity they think matters more than love, and they walk back down the steps toward their car without another word.

I stand there until the engine starts and the car goes down the long drive and out past the gates.

Only then do I realize I’m shaking.

The front door opens behind me before I can even turn around. Julian’s voice comes first, low and careful. “Eli?”

I close my eyes for one second and let the sound of him move through me. Then I turn back toward the house, toward the people inside it, toward my daughter.

And I walk in without looking behind me again.

30

Eli

I don’t realize just how hard I’m shaking until I’m inside and the door shuts behind me.