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Dean walked over to the table and grabbed his jacket, shoving his wallet and keys into his pockets. He smoothed down his hair and stood there silently for a moment. I knew I should say something, anything, but I had no idea how to handle this situation. This was definitely one of the worst ways he could possibly find out about everything. He turned back toward me, his face a mix of emotions.
“Stay out of my life,” he said pointedly. “And leave my daughter alone. She’s young, and she doesn’t need you messing with her head. She deserves someone so much better than you.”
With those words, he walked to the door
and left, slamming it behind him. I sat there for a few minutes, feeling the pain of his fist surging through my face. Everything was a complete and total disaster. I grabbed my phone, knowing that Ava had no idea any of this was going on. I didn’t want to tell her. I didn’t want to start her Sunday the same way she started her Saturday but she needed to know. I dialed her number and held my breath.
“Hello?” She sounded tired but awake.
“Ava,” I said, shaking my head. “Your father knows.”
“What?”
“He looked at my phone last night after hearing our drunken conversation,” I replied. “He put two and two together. He’s mad, real mad. I told him about you working for me. I had no choice. He wanted to know how the hell we ended up together, so I told him.”
“This isn’t good,” she sighed. “This is worse than that. This is terrible. He is never going to forgive me for what I’ve done.”
“He loves you,” I whispered. “Of course, he will forgive you.”
“I have to go,” she said, hanging up before I had a chance to apologize.
I dropped the phone on the couch next to me and groaned, pulling my hands through my hair. Everything was a damn mess, and I was at the center of all of it. I should have listened to my gut and just left Ava alone, no matter how much I wanted her in my life. I should have been the adult in that situation and pushed her away like I did every other woman in my life. But no, I had to give in to these intense emotions and act on them, sending Ava’s life down the drain. Sure, it affected me, but not in the same way that it was going to affect Ava. She had to deal with her family, her career, and everything else in between. To make matters worse, it all took place right after she found out her mother was cheating on her father. I couldn’t even imagine how she was feeling at that moment, but I knew how I felt, completely powerless to do anything to fix the mistakes I had made. I cared for Ava more than I wanted to admit, but I had this very good suspicion that the events that just took place were going to ruin my chances forever.
Chapter 20: Ava
I slammed my phone down on the bed next to me, tears beginning to fill my eyes. What had I done? I knew last night I shouldn’t have called Tanner, but between the alcohol and the stress of the day, he was the only one I wanted to talk to. However, from that one act of not thinking things through, I had outed myself to my father. Who was I kidding? That wasn’t the only act. It had started long before that phone call ever took place. I knew from day one that what I was doing was wrong. I took a job for a man who my father hated, and I knew it, but still, I walked right into that office like I knew what I was doing. I lied to the one man who had always been there for me. Then, to make matters worse, I started sleeping with Tanner, a betrayal I didn’t know if my father would ever get over. He was a proud man, and though his anger stemmed from the fact that he loved me, he was going through so much, and this was possibly the piece of hay that would break the camel’s back.
I picked up my phone and dialed my father’s number, listening to it ring a few times before he sent it straight to message. He wasn’t going to answer my phone calls. He didn’t want anything to do with me. I wanted to be livid with Tanner, scream at him even, but it took two to make this mess, and it wasn’t his job to babysit me. He tried to hold back early on, the same way I had, but the magnetism between us was too much for either of us to bear. The fault didn’t lie in the moment I slept with him, it started the moment I decided it was a good idea to take the job at MJ. I tried calling my father three more times, but he sent my call to voicemail every single time. It was almost frustrating, and I knew I needed to talk to him.
I took some clothes quietly out of Brianna’s closet and pulled them on, not wanting to track my father down in a dress I had been wearing for two days. I wrote Brianna a quick note letting her know what was going on and grabbed my stuff, heading out to get a cab. I had the cab take me to my place where I jumped in my own car and decided to head over to my parent’s house, hoping I would find my father there. They lived outside of the city, so the drive took a little bit of time, but I was okay with that, needing a moment to clear my head before I faced my father. It was time I started telling the truth, no matter how painful that was for me and him. No more lies could come from any of this. I had made a very poor decision, and now, I had to be the one who paid for that.
When I pulled into the driveway, I put the key code in the gate and slowly pulled down the way. The gardeners were in the yard, raking the leaves and preparing for the fall decorations my mother always like to put up. This was all so messed up. We should be angry with my mother, not focused on the fact that I had done something incredibly stupid. Now my father was sure to feel completely alienated from his life. He had a lying daughter and a cheating wife, and after all the sacrifices he had made for our family, this was how we paid him back.
I pulled the car up out front and hopped out, walking to the back of the house to make sure he wasn’t sitting in the garden like he liked to do when he wanted to reflect on something. The only thing back there were a few of the staff from the house and the decorations they were getting ready to put up. I walked back around the house and walked in through the front door, turning toward his study and walking quietly inside. It was dark and empty, and my father was nowhere in sight. I searched the entire house looking for him, but once I got to the garage and saw that his favorite car was gone, I knew he wasn’t there. I needed to find him, but I had no idea where to even start. My father spent all his free time at home and never really went anywhere.
As I walked back toward the front door, I heard someone walk up behind me. I froze as I got to the front door, hearing my mother clear her throat. She was the last person I wanted to talk to right then.
“Ava,” she said softly.
“Mother,” I replied angrily, turning toward her. “I came to find Dad.”
“He’s not here,” she said, looking down. “Did he tell you what happened?”
“Yep,” I said. “But I don’t have time for that. I need to find him.”
“Ava, I’m sorry,” she pleaded.
“Not now, Mother,” I replied, shaking my hand. “Do you know where Dad is?”
“No,” she said with a sigh. “He left yesterday morning and hasn’t been back.”
“Great,” I said angrily.
“Ava, I’m sorry, really.” She stepped forward as if to touch my arm.
“Mom, I don’t have time for this. I told you that,” I said with irritation. “There are other things going on. We can talk about this later or something.”
I wasn’t even sure that my father knew that I knew about mom, but she was the least of my worries at that point. I couldn’t help fix the situation she had gotten herself into when I was knee-deep in my own pile of shit. I wasn’t going to tell her what happened. It would only make her feel like maybe she could get off the hook for sleeping with the pool boy. My mother did not deserve to be off the hook any more than I did. Everything was so completely messed up in my life, and I had let that trickle over to the point where it completely destroyed my father. He didn’t deserve any of this, not one bit of it. Not Tanner betraying him, not me lying to him for weeks, not my mother cheating on him, none of it. But there we were, two lying women standing in one room together.
