Page 115 of Rebel Summer

Dax nodded toward the bed of questionable sheets. “You first.”

When I visibly wavered, he pushed one more button. “I’m guessing that it was your daddy issues that got us here, so it seems fitting to talk about.”

“We’re here because I wanted to finish my hours. How nice of you to figure out a way for me to?—”

“Ivy.”

He was waiting for me to speak. I could feel my body slowly shutting down slowly as the excitement from the night began fading.

I waited a moment before I spoke, doing my best to sort through twenty-eight years of complicated emotions into something I could tell Dax.

“It was hard growing up with my dad. You know how he is. Nothing I ever did was good enough for him, so I always knew I had to be something great for him to love me. Or do something great.”

“How did you know that?”

“Know what?”

“That you had to earn his love?”

“What do you mean?”

He shrugged. “Even after everything with my parents, I never doubted they loved me. Why did you?”

A memory from long ago bubbled up to the surface. It wasn’t a moment I’d forgotten. It was the opposite of that. I couldn’t have forgotten it if I tried. And I had tried. It had been repressed, pushed down, and even denied on occasion. But never forgotten.

“I think I was nine. My parents were fighting in the kitchen, and I was hiding in my room under the covers. I remember hearing my mom walking down the hall, probably to go cry in her room, but my dad followed her. He probably forgot I was even home, or maybe he thought I was asleep, but I overheard him tell my mom that getting her pregnant with me was the biggest mistake of his life.”

Dax didn’t move, his body tense except for the smallest tick in his jaw.

“They had been about to break up, but then they found out they were pregnant with me, so they got married instead,” I said, a humorless laugh billowing out of me. “I’ve unpacked a lot of that in therapy already, but it’s easy to see how my entire childhood was spent proving my worth to a man who would never see it.”

He moved his hand across his mouth as he watched me. I grew self-conscious at his sympathetic gaze, turning me into a water spout that refused to turn off.

“I was doing really well in Tennessee—or so I thought. But since coming to the island, I’ve realized I only thought that because I wasn’t around him. Anyway, I know he doesn’t have the capacity to feel love in that way. I know this. My mom knows this. Angela will figure it out eventually. So I can’t figure out why it still hurts so much?”

“Because he’s your dad,” Dax stated softly.

I took a breath, fighting for control of my emotions, before adding, “It’s kind of funny… After all my therapy, I can diagnose everything he says and does. I know all the narcissistic behaviors. I know he won’t change. I can name all the emotions I’m feeling whenever I’m around him, but I can’t seem to ever fully overcome them, and it sucks. So, when you ask me if I want to go to Tennessee? I have no idea. I’m so lost in not knowing if I want to go because it’s really something I love, or if it’s something I think I love because it’s what he wants for me.”

I sunk down on the floor, curling on my side, my head resting on my arm. I had run a marathon tonight, between the adrenaline, the kiss, getting caught, and now sitting in a cell. I wanted to sleep, but my brain whirled too much to settle just yet.

And then Dax spoke.

“It’s interesting how people move in and out of our lives...how they kind of…shape us. There’s a lot of potential havoc to be had just from being close to someone.”

Though his voice was light I could feel the pain behind his words.

“Do you think you’d be different if Mason hadn’t left?” I asked softly.

After a moment, he cleared his throat, bending one leg at the knee to rest his arm on it. “I wonder if I would have turned out more like Trent.”

“A doctor? I don’t know… I’ve seen your handiwork with a scalpel. I wasn’t that impressed.” I sent him a teasing smile, sensing that we needed a moment to regroup.

He shook his head, a reluctant smile forming on his lips. “After all my work in biology, it’s ironic that you’re the one with the doctor tag on your name.”

I laughed. “So you think you might have been different if Mason was still here?”

“I don’t know. I was on track to be like Trent before Mason left. I wasn’t as hard core with the books, but I was a pretty good student. Never caused much trouble. But when he left, everything changed. Keith saved me in a lot of ways because he taught me how to be good at something. And I loved it. I love taking things apart and fixing them with my hands. The mechanics of how things are built just make sense to me. So maybe I would have been exactly the same either way.”

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