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It’s in that moment that my panic kicks up, my chest going tight and my brain fogging with each detail I notice of the man I have loved my entire life. The way his dark hair is tousled like he ran his busted hands through it too many times to keep the waves brushed back. The uncharacteristic bow to his overly large shoulders. The fact that the sun is up and my dad isn’t in his shop doing the thing he loves almost as much as he did my mother.
“What did you do to Fin?” It’s a growl, something I learned from watching the very man I question, whose knuckles are bloodied. The one who loved with a passion and fought with soul. “Please tell me you didn’t.”
“Cedar.” It comes like a plea when his head finally raises and his piercing eyes meet mine with a look that slices right to my heart. “Why didn’t you—“ But his words cut off as he shakes his head. “Sit down and talk to me, princess.”
“What?” I throw my hands up as the emotional roller coaster rails me with an upside down turn I’m in no way prepared for.
“The coffee is fresh. Sit and talk.”
Blinking at the man that refuses to look at me now, I run my own hands through my hair and search for the mug on the coffee table like it might have the answers.
Where. Is. Fin?
I scoff and stomp over to flop into the seat I was asleep in merely minutes ago and snag the steaming ceramic by the chipped handle. “Okay, I’m sitting and I’m fucking talking.” I pause for a sip that burns all the way down and pin my father with a glare. “Now where the fuck is Fin?”
“He’s fine,” my dad grumbles and runs his callous hands over his face. “Headed back to his brothers or something.”
Immediately, the tension in my chest eases, and I suck in a desperate breath. “Okay, you didn’t kill him. That’s all I was asking.”
“Cedar,” my dad breathes as he leans back with a straightened spine and a clenching jaw. “Why didn’t you tell me about Jeremy?”
My stomach drops and my jaw goes slack at the intensity staring back at me. The anger radiating from across the living room lands square in my chest and all that weight I was able to forget for just a moment comes crashing right back on me again.
“No.” Shaking my head, I hop to my feet and drop the mug to the table with a clash I didn’t entirely intend that has solid brown liquid bounding over the sides. “No way.”
“Sit,” Dad demands in that fatherly tone that grates on my nerves and has my own jaw ticking.
“I’m not having this discussion.” Scoffing, I plant my hands on my hips and growl at my father. “I don’t know what Fin told you, but he doesn’t knowshit.”
My dad follows my lead and jumps to his feet to face off with flaring nostrils and a growl of his own. “He knew e-fucking-nough.”
“Nah.” I shake my head with a humorless smile because I know that no one knows the truth about Jeremy except the therapist I really need to call. “He’s made assumptions.”
“So he’s wrong?” It’s my dad’s turn to scoff and shake his head as he spins away from me and talks to the ceiling. “So you’re telling me the man decked me, on my own property, for nofuckingreason?”As each word leaves my dad’s lips, it gets louder, more intense, along with the look I catch from his profile shining in his eyes. “And I didn’tdeserve it?”
Wait …
“He hit you?”
The tense jaw and flared nostrils are enough of an answer when all my father does is spin back and stare at me with an odd mix of anger and desperation clouding his eyes.
Blue eyes that look just like mine.
Blue eyes that stare at me with an admiration, and a level of disappointment, that have my chest tightening and my own sight misting over.
“Why didn’t you tell me, Cedar?” His voice is thick, raw with the emotions as his hands flex and the man I’ve looked up to as strong and defiant of all things bad stares at me through a watering gaze. “I mean, I knew he wasn’t good for you. But why didn’t you tell me how fucking bad he really was?”
Yearsof built-up pressure and emotions, years of compartmentalizing all the bad things, years of taking the trauma and stuffing it so far down I thought I’d never have to feel it again, comes rushing in and knocks the breath right from my lungs.
“I could have made it better,” my dad chokes out.
Panic fills me and my throat closes up as I swing my wild gaze around the room in search of something—any fucking thing—that will get me out of this.
“Princess,” my dad says, his voice sounding far off and garbled through the heart rate that races in my ears and threatens to pound out through my skull. “Cedar, come sit down, please.”
“I ca—“ My lungs heave, desperate for a fresh fill of oxygen the emotions are denying me.
“Fuck.” The curse comes only seconds before warmth surrounds me and my knees decide to quit holding me up.
