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“Thank you,” I said, hissing as my finger brushed up against his. “It’s whatever.”
Letting the cool water remove the heat from my lips and cool down my body, I watched Mario run his hand over his blond beard. “I know this might not make things easier, but we can’t let the fate of the company and our character hang on your father’s words,” he said.
Gulping down some water, my throat scratched when I asked, “What do you mean?”
Jared perched on his desk, fixing his tie pin and clasping his hand in his lap. “We’re suing your parents,” he said.
The way my stomach took a plunge was unexpected. Of course, my parents said some awful things about me, about them… this was reasonably the next course of action. But they were my parents. I was a Levine.
And according to my mother, ‘was’ was the operative word. But suing my parents could possibly mean that there would be no chance to fix things between us and until this moment, I didn’t realize that I wanted to.
My lips trembled. “Look, I know what they said, but I’m sure we can find another way to fix this…” I started.
“There is no other way,” Anthony responded. “I know you don’t like this, sugar, but these things happen in dysfunctional families.” He shrugged.
“Dysfunctional? My family isn’t… dysfunctional.” My words trailed off as it hit me that we were.
The Levines lived the cookie-cutter lifestyle. We were the standard nuclear family. Our parents were that power couple who worked together and stayed together. They were rich, owned an incredibly successful law firm, were important enough to be talked about in the news, practically lived in a mansion, and had two successful children. In the eyes of the public, we were the type of family people should aspire to.
But our mother was cold, our father didn’t speak up for himself or for his children and before now, their son was the black sheep of the family. Until my scandal. Something completely innocent turned into something dark and depraved.
My family was dysfunctional.
“And we completely understand if you want to support your family. I’d do the same,” Jared said. “But if that’s the case, it would be best if we stopped seeing each other.” Jared’s jaw clenched so hard, I could see his muscles doing their best work to keep his face from falling.
That felt like they had just ripped my heart out and was holding it over a cliff like that scene from theLion King. Tears welled up in my eyes.
“Is that what you want?” I asked.
Mario answered first, choked up. “No, it’s not.”
“Are you sure?” I asked, getting defensive and trying to distract myself from the decision that had to be made. “Because it seems like all of this week, you’ve been avoiding me for some reason. Was it because you wanted to break up and didn’t know how?”
Jared hissed, and Anthony gripped his hair. Mario’s lips were a straight line. “That’s not why,” he grumbled before turning intense eyes, wet and red from emotion, on me. “It’s been torture resisting you, Tiffany,” he growled. “But it’s all been a mess and now with this being tossed on us, based on all lies, it’s just been a lot,” he said.
He was right. It had been a lot. For all of us. And watching him try his hardest to hold himself together made me want to wrap him into my arms and hold him tight as he fell apart. I crossed the room but didn’t touch him. Because this wasn’t the time.
“We didn’t choose this, Tiffany,” Jared said. “It chose us.”
“And now, you’ve got to make a choice. You know the truth. You know what happened between us. What we all shared… still share.” Anthony’s voice cracked. “Will you just stand with your parents because they’re your family, or will you stand with the truth? Will you stand with us?” he asked.
If I thought in any way there would have been a chance to smooth things over with my parents and help them see reason, I would take that chance, but I knew what mattered the most to my parents was their reputation. Now that they had put a statement out to the public, they would stand by it, and there was nothing I could do to stop them.
So, my decision was clear. I had only one choice. To stand with the truth.
“I choose you guys,” I said, letting that sink in.
As easy as it was for the words to leave my mouth, the reality ran into me at full speed. This would be a battle that was about to get emotional and ugly really quick. And it didn’t matter whether I was ready or not.
Chapter 7
Tiffany
Behindthecurtainfelta lot safer. Outside, there was a nightmare, even if there were no more than ten people seated in the room.
A warm hand on my shoulder had me pulling my eyes from the break in the curtain. “Are you sure you’re okay? You don’t have to do this. We can do this on our own. You can try making things up with your family. We’ll be okay.”
Anthony’s breath rustled the hair on the back of my neck, causing me to shiver from the warmth in my spine. I swallowed and turned around to face him. His gray eyes seemed distant as he stared past me.
