Page 11 of My Favorite Sin

“Ally is on her own path. At least she is making sensible, adult decisions that don’t publicly humiliate and disgrace this family and all the good we are trying to do in this world.”

Fuck this. I push my chair out, the legs scraping loudly against the ground, and stand from the table with my car keys. It’s always about the Blackwood name and his goddamn Forever Families, but where the fuck has he been for the majority of my life?

Ally stands too, clutching my wrist. “Dan, don’t leave like this. Please.”

“Ally, I’d like you to stay out of this,” my father says,then directs his anger at me. “I didn’t want to say anything during this dinner, but you’ve pushed my buttons too far. Five hundred thousand dollars? Where is your brain, because it’s certainly not in your head.”

Shit. So,thatnews hit the media at some point since I checked my phone in the last few hours. “I’ve explained this to you before. The money I gamble with is all money I’ve won from poker. I never go into debt. Why does it matter what I do with it?”

“Dan,” Amabella interjects with a calm voice of reason. “It doesn’t matter where the money comes from. It’s about the image the gambling presents to the public.”

“Exactly,” Dad agrees, yet with none of the patience. “Money is money, and you make Amabella and me look like frauds and scammers when we are running a non-profit organization. How do you think your actions look in the public eye when we’re trying to raise money for a good cause, yet our son is throwing money down the toilet?”

“I’m leaving.”

I head for the door. Before I make it off the veranda, Dad raises his voice again. “And how dare you bring Ally into your mess.”

“What are you talking about?” Ally’s voice is timid. I hate hearing her like that.

Instead of responding to Ally’s question, Dad directs the answer at me. “Ally’s name is in the media too. Underage at a strip club. Entering a private room filled with several men. I don’t know what’s going on but that is not in line with Ally’s behavior. She would have only been placed in such a compromising situation because of you.”

Ally’s cheeks turn red and her shoulders rise, clenching into her neck. “It wasn’t a strip club. And the room I entered was to watch a poker game.”

“Honey, you don’t need to explain yourself to me,” Dad says. “I understand. None of this is about you.”

For fuck’s sake. I head back inside, making an exit before the man has a chance to finish speaking.

“Daniel, do not walk out of this conversation.”

I don’t look behind me but I take a guess that the footsteps running after me don’t belong to my dad or Amabella.

She grabs my hand but I slip out of her grasp and continue through the house, out the front door and down the front steps to my car.

“Dan, wait,” Ally begs.

“Ally, don’t. There’s nothing you can say or do.”

She catches up to me and steps in front of the driver’s side door, barricading it with her body. “Don’t leave. Not like this. Please.”

“Why? So I can argue with both you and my father more?”

“No. I’m sorry. I hate it when we fight. I know you were just trying to help me. I planned to tell you about my new job and living in The Hamptons. It just hadn’t come up in conversation yet. Please don’t drive when you’re angry. Just… stay until you’ve calmed down.”

“There’s no chance of calming down when I’m anywhere near my father. This is why I have no relationship with him. It was a mistake agreeing to this dinner.”

I try to move around Ally to open the car door, but she grabs my wrist. “Stay for me, because I’m asking you to.”

“Ally…”

“Stay because… you’re my person.”

The history behind those words hits me hard in the chest. The way I spoke them to her for the first time right after my seventeenth birthday, begging for her forgiveness. I’d gotten drunk on my birthday—an annual habit—toforget how my mere existence in this world was the cause of my mother’s death, and how it feels like my father blames me for her death. I wanted to stop feeling guilt over how I’m the reason my brothers lost their mother.

It was the first year I’d known Ally and had asked for privacy on that day. I didn’t even want her to acknowledge my birthday. Of course, she didn’t listen, gifting me a deck of cards. The present was small and understated. Perfect, really. She said she cared too much about me to completely ignore my birthday. We got into a fight about it, and I later realized I’d been a complete dick. She wouldn’t talk to me, so I surprised her after school the next day, waiting at the gates with a bouquet of red roses.

“I’m sorry.”It was the fourth time I’d said the words that day, begging for her forgiveness.“You have to forgive me because you’re my person and I don’t know what I’ll do if you stay angry at me.”

“Your person?”

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