Page 71 of Avenged

“A safe word?” I couldn’t help the small smile. Only Travis would think I needed a safe word.

His own lips quirked. “Yep.”

“We’re not in one of Mandy’s dark romance books.”

His eyebrows lifted and fell, and I smiled again. He wanted me to smile; he was trying to ease my nervousness with laughter. It was one of the things I admired most about him. “Get your mind out of the gutter, Travis.”

He chuckled. “You’ve clearly never been male. You don’t understand our minds live there pretty much twenty-four seven.”

The door on the other side opened, and my dad was led into the room by a guard. I took in the man I hadn’t seen in five years. He wore a bright-orange jumpsuit and looked older and grayer with more wrinkles. But he was also fit in a way he hadn’t been when he’d been a drunk, drinking a bottle of Jack a day. His hair was pretty much shaved off, and his gray eyes took in Travis rather than me.

The guard left the room, and still none of us said anything for what felt like minutes. He was the first to break the silence.

“I’m glad I have a chance to see you before the parole board hearing.” His voice went down my spine like ice cubes. It was the cold voice that had become his after Mom died. None of the warmth was left. It was as if she’d taken his soul with her when we’d buried her.

I couldn’t speak. I was back to being eighteen and trying to be invisible when he spoke. Trying to just do whatever it was he needed me to do so he’d go down the hall and slam the bedroom door before the hand came out to hit me. Trying to do everything perfect and silent. Trying not to disturb him from his bedroom, because that was when the worst happened.

“You came all this way to not speak?” he asked, his tone harsh.

Travis squeezed my hand under the table, and I finally breathed again. In and out. Big breaths. Holding them and counting like they wanted me to do in physical therapy. “Hi, Dad.”

“Wow. All this way for hi. Why are you really here, and why did you bring him?” He thrust his chin in Travis’s direction. “Where’s Violet? Why isn’t she here?”

“I didn’t tell Violet I was coming.”

He crossed his arms over his chest, which was way more muscled than it had ever been when I’d grown up with him. He looked like one of those Breaking Bad felons. He was a felon, but was his heart still black and battered? My gut was already twisting a response I didn’t want to acknowledge yet. I ached to have my father back. The one I’d lost long before the accident and the manslaughter charge. The one I’d lost at fourteen.

“So, this isn’t a visit I’m going to be happy with, is that it? You came to tell me something I won’t like to hear, and you didn’t want Violet exposed to it. Protecting her as always.”

“Not always,” I said, and the guilt tore through me as if it were a new thing and not ancient and old.

He saw it, but it didn’t take away his snarl. In fact, it seemed to increase it. “Not always,” he said bitterly as if I might as well have been the one driving the car that crashed into Ana Perez and killed her.

I felt Travis’s body go rigid next to mine, and I had to say something before he did.

“I need to know…” I swallowed hard and continued. “I need to know, after all these years, do you regret it? Do you regret getting in the car that morning?”

His stance seemed to expand even though he hadn’t stood or moved. It felt like his whole body stretched out and made itself wider at my words. At my daring to question his thoughts and emotions. “Do I regret it? I regret so many things. Having a second child and putting stress on your mother’s body when she didn’t need it. Having any children. Having her gone. Having her tell me she was fine when we both knew she wasn’t. But do I regret getting in the car to save your ass? That’s what you really want to know?”

Each word hit me in the chest harder and harder. He’d loved her so much. More than anything. More than us. More than his daughters. I’d known that for so many years, but I’d wanted to deny it. I wanted to think he loved us in a different but equal way.

Before I could respond, Travis did. “I won’t let you talk to my wife that way.” There was a rumble of warning in his words, but the words he chose were all wrong, because my dad focused on the words rather than the warning.

“Wife?” Dad looked between us and started laughing. “Oh, that’s really rich. You married her? Jesus Christ, and I thought life in here was fucked up.”

I was done. I’d gotten the answer I’d needed. It wasn’t the one I wanted. It wasn’t hope being sparked into a huge flame of love and forgiveness. It was despair and anger and hurt. It was the need to leave and make sure he never got close enough to Violet and me again to spill his own desolation and anger and nastiness on us.

I stood, and Travis stood with me.

“Where are you going?” Dad asked, as if he thought I’d stay and have a whole conversation after that.

I was at the door. I was knocking on it. I needed to get out of the room. The room that was closing in on me. I couldn’t breathe. I needed air.

I heard Dad say behind me, “We need to talk about what you’re going to say to the parole board.”

Travis laughed, and it sounded as cold and hard as Dad sounded, which broke my heart. Hearing him use a tone that was so not him. So foreign to him. But it had once been foreign to my father as well.

“Neither Jersey nor Violet will be testifying on your behalf. In fact, I’ll be writing a letter to the board, indicating I don’t think you’re fit to resume life on the outside. That you have no remorse for any of the lives you’ve ruined.” Travis’s response to my father was correct. He hadn’t asked me my thoughts, but he’d still known. He’d just known.

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