Page 65 of Until I Find You

I clear my throat, looking everywhere in the room but him.

“Jack…”

“Okay, you’ll find this funny,” I say. “I had to make a girlfriend up so she’d see me.”

My father does not find this funny. In fact, he frowns, and his jaw tenses. “What?”

“It was last minute that I was going to be joining my business partner on the trip and–”

“I didn’t know you had a business partner.”

Jesus, does he want the story or not? “Well, she’s an assistant turned business partner. It’s–she’s great, knows her stuff.”

“Uh-huh…”

“Not my girlfriend!” Not yet. Or at least not out in the open. I still want Camilla all to myself. I don’t want to become my father’s son in every way. No turning employees into girlfriends and then into wives.

But maybe turning business partners into girlfriends and then into wives.

I erase the thought from my brain. Getting ahead. Way too ahead.

“Camilla, I mean, Ms. Graff. My business partner. She was kind enough to go along with a fake relationship so that my mother would feel more compelled to see me.” Saying it out loud opens up the shameful wound I had sewn up when we left Hawaii.

I don’t need to relive the wrongdoings of my mother.

“You felt you had to go to all the length just to get her to–”

“It worked, didn’t it?” I shrug and take a sip of whisky.

Dad stares at me, the amber currents in his almost black eyes flashing. “I didn’t know that you two weren’t getting along still.”

“Since when have you asked?”

His brows rise. “Jack–”

“How would you know? We don’t talk about my mother. For both of our sakes. It’s awkward enough to be the middle ground between you two when I know you’d much rather not have me tying you together at all.”

My father opens his mouth and lets out an indefinable sound. Something both affronted and disbelieving. He falls back in his seat. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Look, I’m a grown man. I’m nearly thirty. I understand how it all went down, okay? We don’t need to pretend I wasn’t an accident.”

“But that doesn’t mean we don’t–”

“Let’s not do this. I already had to do the runaround with Mama. I’m tired, and I don’t really feel like explaining–”

“You were all accidents,” my father says, almost smiling. “I mean, what’s different about Nate or Abigail or–”

“The twins are not an accident, Dad.”

He concedes with a flustered huff.

I know the score. He’s over fifty now with a wife in her early thirties. No time to waste. “So, you’re jealous of babies that haven’t even been born?”

I wince. “No. That’s not what I’m getting at.”

“Then tell me why you’re upset withmewhen your mother is the one who wasn’t interested in seeing you unless you were–”

“I’m not upset with anyone. These are just facts I don’t feel like pretending aren’t true anymore.”

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