“You can’t stay on your own,” I said as softly as I could. “Not right now.”
“Who are you to tell me what I can and can’t do? I’m the parent!” he roared.
I wanted to scream back. I wanted to tell him to start acting like it for the first time in nearly a decade and a half. I wanted to remind him of all the things he’d left me in charge of while he’d been out driving the country.
The horrible moment when I’d had to call and say Mom had passed in her sleep flashed before me, ripping through my heart and soul. I’d had to make the arrangements for her body to be picked up while he’d been hundreds of miles away. Kurt had done more for me in those few hours and days than my own father.
Therapy had helped me try to forgive, but I’d never forget, and I’d never be rid of the scars those moments left behind.
“You know what,” I said, inhaling. “You’re right. You’re the parent. You’re an adult. You can do whatever you want.”
I brushed past Beckett and stormed out of the house. My body was trembling. Years of anger and frustration and sorrow jumbled together, vying for release, trying to burst through the surface.
Outside, I looked back at the house and hesitated for a few seconds. He wasn’t himself. The doctors said the temporary dementia would make him volatile while his body healed.
I needed to have patience.
Then, the paper cut on my hand from where the box hit me throbbed, and my heart tore a bit more. I stalked over to my truck and slammed the door behind me. When I turned the engine over, it coughed pitifully, and dread held me in its grip for two seconds before the motor finally kicked in.I sent a thank you to the universe and then drove away, heading for my studio apartment and the few things I had left to do there.
I’d barely pulled into the apartment’s parking lot before I started kicking myself.
Dad was losing everything. He couldn’t remember what had happened the day of the fire and was terrified of what came next. Finding Mom’s jewelry box gone on top of everything else was probably just the last straw. He’d lashed out, and I’d been the body in the wake. It hadn’t been personal, but it had felt that way.
I mean, how could he think I’d steal from him?
I hadn’t even realized I was crying until a tear hit my hand. I brushed my fingers over damp cheeks and hurried up to my apartment.
As I walked into the tiny studio I’d barely afforded on my own, sorrow filled me. I’d really loved having my own space for the first time in my life. I’d loved decorating it without having to ask for permission or wonder if my roommate would be okay with it. It had been a little oasis for me at the end of my shifts.
Dad wasn’t the only one losing things.
More tears came, and I let them fall over the next hour while I worked. I dismantled the high-top dining table for two, dragged the mattress and box spring off the bed, and set my power tools to the stubborn screws on the wrought iron bed frame. I was hot and sweaty, but the tears had worked themselves out and left a numbness behind.
I couldn’t do much else without help. It would take at least two people to navigate the queen mattress down the stairs, and it would take a body with way more muscles, or at least two of me, to haul my boxes of books down to the truck.
The books were my only splurge I’d allowed myself while putting aside for a new car and saving to buy back Titan. Being able to lose myself in the joy of those happily ever afters whenever my reality got to be too much was worth it.
A knock on my door brought me out of the bathroom with the last bit of toiletries I was throwing inside a basket. I looked through the peephole to find Beckett on the landing. I swung the door open and then left him standing there to head back to the bathroom.
“Don’t say anything,” I said over my shoulder. “I know I shouldn’t have lost my cool.”
“You actually think I’m here to call you out for that? If anything, I wish you’d lost your cool with your dad ages ago.”
Why did that hurt so much? Why should Ihaveto lose my cool with my father? Why couldn’t we just have a relationship where loving eachother was enough?
In the bathroom, I threw my flat iron and makeup bag into the basket. Beckett followed me, grabbing the doorframe with both hands as he took me in. He scanned every inch of me, lingering on my face, which was a mess from the tears I’d shed, just like my hair and clothes were a mess from disassembling the furniture.
I returned his stare, taking in his tall length and the way his biceps flexed as he gripped the frame. His SRFD T-shirt rode up at his waist, exposing a slim line of tan skin and the waistband of his boxer briefs above his jeans. The silence that landed between us felt heavy and loaded. Full of want and desire—things I’d always felt but that I’d suddenly seen in Beckett’s eyes this week too. A return flame that would do me in if I dwelled on it too long.
Doubt slammed into me. How was I going to live with him for months when just this, just him standing two feet away from me, looking at me in just that way, made my heart race and my thighs tremble?
I inhaled, counted to four, and then let it out.
No. I could do this. I’d done way harder things than spend a few weeks in Beckett’s home.
I absolutely could help Dad and Beckett without losing myself.
Beckett cleared his throat, looking away. “I told your Dad it was against fire code for him to live in the house at the moment. I said he could be fined, and as a firefighter, I’d have to report it.”