The memory is hazy, buried under years of self-destruction and deflection. “I was drunk.”
“Drunk words, sober thoughts, man.” He pauses. “Look, I'm not saying charge in there and confess your undying love or whatever, but you need to show her that you're not just here for Ella. That you're here for them. For the family you never had.”
“That's exactly what she doesn't want to hear.”
“Maybe.” Asher sounds thoughtful. “Or maybe she's scared that if she lets herself believe you're here for both of them, and you leave, it'll destroy her and Ella. She's protecting herself.”
The observation lands with unexpected weight. Of course Tiff would be protecting herself. She's spent four years fighting—fighting my family, fighting to provide for Ella, fighting to survive. Why would she believe I'm any different from the rest of the Nicks empire that tried to erase her?
“So what do I do?” The question comes out more vulnerable than I intend.
“You show up,” Asher says simply. “Every. Single. Day. You prove you're not going anywhere, and then you hope that eventually, she'll believe it.”
“That easy, huh?”
“I didn't say it would be easy. I said it's what you have to do.” He pauses. “Also, get a job. Nothing says 'stable father figure' like unemployment.”
“Working on it.” I glance at the laptop with its depressing job listings.
“Good, and Jamie?”
“Yeah?”
“For what it's worth, I think you're doing the right thing. Your dad's an asshole, and that kid—Ella—she deserves to know you. The real you, not the Nicks puppet.”
I blow out a breath and smile. “Thanks, man.”
“Don't thank me yet. Your dad knows exactly where you are. Whatever he's planning, it won't be pretty.”
“I know. I lived with him for twenty years.”
Once we hang up, I lean back onto the bed and close my eyes.
Tiff’s face is the first thing that comes to my mind.
I want her. Badly, but she’s right. Ella needs stability. She needs someone who shows up, who stays, who doesn’t disappear when things get hard.
I need to be that.
My phone buzzes with a text from an unknown number.
Unknown:Job interview tomorrow, 2pm. Campus bookstore. Manager position. Interested?
I type back without a second thought.
Jamie:Definitely interested, thank you.
Tomorrow things will start to change. I have the apartment viewing and now this job interview.
It's not much. It's barely a start, but it's something.
My father thinks he can plan his way back into control. Thinks he can manipulate and threaten until I fall back in line, but he'snever understood the one thing that matters: I'm not fighting for pride or legacy or some abstract concept of family honor.
I'm fighting for her. For them and for the first time in my life, that makes me stronger than he'll ever be.
I'm halfway across campus the next morning, mentally rehearsing answers to interview questions I've never had to consider before, when I nearly collide with someone rushing in the opposite direction.
“Shit, I’m so sorry—”