“I expected you back hours ago. Where the hell are your priorities?”
My jaw locks, trying to stay calm. I know better to pick a fight with him when he’s drinking. “I’d already finished up my site visits for the day—”
“Save it. I don’t want your excuses.” He rises to his feet. Despite his age, he still cuts an intimidating figure at six-foot-two. When I was a kid, I thought his hands were the size of hams. Truth be told, they don’t look all that much smaller now. “I needed you back in the office. What if one of our clients required urgent assistance, and you weren’t here?”
“You could’ve called me. I had my phone.”
“That’s not the point. The point is, if there’s an emergency, I need you to handle it immediately — not in the hour it takes to get back from whatever joyride you were on.”
“Was there an emergency?”
His teeth grit. “No.”
“Well, I can’t solve problems you don’t have. I’m not all-knowing or all-powerful.”
His fists clench — a warning. “You watch your fucking mouth.”
I lift my hands defensively. “Sorry.”
“Sorrywhat?”
“Sorry, sir,” I grit out, biting down a less flattering name I’d like to call him.
His eyes are glazed, a bit unfocused on mine as he comes around the desk. His lumbering gait tells me that’s not his first glass of scotch tonight.
I refuse to shrink back from him, even when he gets right up in my face. He may be built like a truck, but I’m taller than him now. And even without that inch, I stopped letting him use brute force to intimate me when I was fourteen.
“When are you going to stop messing around with music and start giving a damn about the things that matter?”
“Music matters,” I retort before I can stop myself. “Maybe not to you, but it matters.”
“This company is all that matters. It’s your future.”
“No. It’s not my future.”
“What the hell does that mean?” he growls.
“It means, I’ve got a real shot at a record deal.” My voice is emotionless. My heart feels like stone inside my chest. “I’m flying out to LA on Saturday to finalize things.”
“So that’s it.” His chest puffs up as rage swells inside him. “This is the thanks I get after everything I’ve done for you. Paying for college, giving you a seat at the company table, grooming you for success—”
“That’s the thing, Dad. Staying here, taking over this place—” I gesture around, desperate to make him understand. “That’syourversion of success. Not mine. And I know you’ll never understand it. I know you’ll never understand me. But my dreams are still my dreams, even if they disappoint you. Even if you don’t support them.”
“You ungrateful little shit.” His jaw is ticking with fury. “You think you’re going to last out in LA? You won’t. You don’t have the the stomach for it. The truth is, your mother coddled you. You’resoft. And when you slink back here with your tail between your legs after the real world kicks you in the nuts, don’t expect this job to be waiting for you. As far as I’m concerned, you and I have nothing else to say to each other. Ever.”
I rock back at the blow straight to my heart. “Dad—”
“Don’t call me that.” He’s never been a warm man, but right now he looks colder than I’ve ever seen. “You walk out that door, you’re no longer my son.”
The air crystalizes. Time slows to a crawl.
His red-rimmed eyes narrow. “And don’t bother calling your mother, appealing your case to her. We’re a united front on this. You leave, you lose us both.”
Frozen, I stare at the man who raised me, eye-to-eye, feeling my heart pound against my ribcage. There’s so much I want to say. I want to scream until he hears me. To make him understand that this is something I need to do. That it has nothing to do with him, or his company, or the way he raised me.
But I can see in his empty eyes that nothing I do is going to make a damn bit of difference.
Reaching into my back pocket, I pull out the keys to the van and set them down on his desk with a soft clink. I clear my throat, just once.