Page 52 of Hired Help

I lay behind her, now worried that any move to touch her will make matters a thousand times worse, but I don’t have another plan. My arms go around her, hugging her as tightly as her awkward positioning will allow.

And just as I’m about to apologise, to ask her what’s wrong, she bursts out with, “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to hurt you. All I wanted was to make Harrison as angry and upset as he made me.”

I scoop her closer to me, one arm around her shoulders to hold her steady while the other strokes her gorgeous hair like I’m petting an exotic animal.

The force of her tears makes me feel like a monster. She might be an adult, but she doesn’t have a lot of experience at it. The moment she turned up, I should have rung for a taxi and forced her into it, not engaged her in conversation, not kicked her out, leaving her at the mercy of the night.

“Harrison looked absolutely livid, so I guess congratulations are in order.”

She snorts out a laugh through her tears, smiling though it looks like it pains her.

“I should’ve sent you home. This is on me.” Brooke settles, her misery as quick to depart as it was to arrive. “Why don’t you wash your face? I’ll get the car out and drop you back.”

She stiffens against me, her hands clutching at my chest. “Could I stay? Just for tonight. I can sleep on the sofa, just… I really don’t want to go back to school right now.”

And I remember again that I can’t drive, not with the amount I’ve had to drink. “You’re boarding, right?”

She nods and I shuffle back on the bed so I can rest against the headboard, taking a firmer hold on Brooke, brushing the hair back from her face so I can read her more clearly.

“Is Harrison boarding, too?”

Her palm flattens against my chest, and she closes her eyes, a faint frown pinching her forehead. “You don’t know?”

“No. I don’t… We’re not in contact and the story his mother fed me is quite different.”

“Why aren’t you in touch?”

The list of reasons is so long I don’t even know where to begin. “I got into trouble a few years back and Gwyn thought it better I stay away.”

“What kind of trouble?”

My hand strokes her hair again, teasing out the tangles from the long strands, closing my eyes to lose myself in the sensation. It’s been ages since I had a girlfriend with long hair; I hadn’t realised how much I missed it.

“There was a family wedding, and I aired grievances that weren’t meant for polite company. Everything turned into a big fight and the last thing I remember is trying to punch the police officer who’d been sent to keep the peace.”

Brooke ducks her head, and it’s only a faint shake of her shoulders that tells me she’s laughing.

“Didn’t realise my rock bottom would be so amusing.”

“Sorry,” she mutters, her palms flattening against my chest. “Just thinking how sad it is that tonight isn’t even the worst father-son event you’ve attended.”

A surprised chuckle bursts from me and I love she can jolt me into laughter where Gwyn would have brought me to tears of rage.

I rest my cheek against the top of her head, pulling her shoulder closer, loving the smoothness of her skin under my hand, her breath warming my collarbone. I have enough experience to know tonight’s emotional rollercoaster is far from over, but I’m grateful that this is part of the aftermath.

Whatever else happens, I’m glad I’m not on my own.

“I tried to keep in touch, but he never answered my calls, barely ever responded to texts, and he blocked me everywhere online. The few times I flew up to see him, he’d be out, and I couldn’t afford to keep flying up there.”

The explanation is inadequate, but it’s hard to go into more detail without going intoeverythingand then we’ll be here for hours with me talking.

In the end, the truth is Gwyn didn’t want me to be his father and the longer she pretended I wasn’t and put roadblocks in front of me, the less I felt like his dad.

Even before the disastrous wedding, on the few occasions I saw him, we’d have gone months without catching up and would basically have to start from scratch. Any time I felt too estranged and panicked, making plans, texting with arrangements, he’d withdraw.

I didn’t know how to keep him close. I didn’t know how to sift Gwyn’s lies from the truth.

Six months after the disastrous wedding, he asked me to stop texting, and I was so hurt by the request, I did.

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