Page 92 of Hold on Tight

“But—you—carefor Jake?”

It was a funny, old-fashioned turn of phrase, but something about it snuck past her vigilance and made tears come to the surface. Because—exactly. She cared, so much, for Jake. About what he’d suffered, about who he was. About the fun she and Sam had had with him in Seattle, the burn of his kisses, the sweetness of being awake with him after Sam went to bed. And she cared, so much,toomuch, that he’d walked away. She couldn’t stop caring, even though she wanted to switch it off. “It doesn’t matter how I feel. Jake and I aren’t going to be a couple.”

This time the silence dragged out so long, she thought their connection had broken, and she said, “Hello? You there?”

“You have to remember,” he said, very quietly, “that I know what it feels like. To love someone who can’t love you back.”

In all these years, somehow, she’d never once thought of it that way. Her father, her mother. A man who loved a woman who could walk away from her family. A man who’d been left behind, who’d seen his daughter left behind.

A man who would do anything to keep his daughter from suffering that same pain. To keep her from making the same mistakes.

So much made sense about her father right then. How much he worried, how angry he’d been at Jake eight years ago, how hard he’d been on her about making good decisions and not leaving herself vulnerable—to heartbreak, to other people’s poor judgment, toanything. He’d wanted to armor her so she could never be hurt the way he’d been hurt.

“I never knew—I didn’t know—”that you loved her that much. “—that she hurt you so badly.”

For a long moment, she thought he was going to clam up. Then he said, softly, “I think I always knew deep down she wasn’t the kind of woman who loved back. There was something missing in her that way. That’s what I worry about for you. That Jake’s like that. That he can’t—he can’t give you what you deserve.”

“What do I deserve?”

“To be loved. Also, the world, handed to you on a silver platter. That’s—that’s all I ever wanted to give you.”

There was so much pressure in her throat, her chest, behind her eyes, that she almost couldn’t speak. “I know, Dad. But I never wanted the world on a silver platter.”

Her father laughed. “I know,” he said. “If anyone knows that, it’s me. All those times I tried to make things easier for you and you fought me tooth and nail …”

She started to get angry with him, old habits dying hard, but then she stopped. Because she’d just realized something important about the nature of their battles. That they weren’t about her—not at all, not in the ways that mattered most.

The thing was, her father was never going to change, not much. He’d never stop worrying about her. He’d never stop worrying that she would make mistakes in who she loved, that she would love too much or not enough, that she would get left again the way she’d been left by her mother. By Jake at the lake. The wayher fatherhad been left.

Her father was never going to be less opinionated, less controlling, less—well,difficult. He was always going to think what he thought about the way she ran her life.

Her father wouldn’t change. Butshecould change. She could see his overbearing love for what it was—hisfear. The consequence of the losses he carried with him, to this day.

She didn’t have to make him stop. She didn’t have to get away from him. She had only to stop reacting as if it mattered, and it would stop mattering.

Because she had nothing to prove. She’d had a baby at eighteen and raised him to be possibly the best seven-year-old boy on the face of the earth. She’d stayed when she needed to stay and left when she needed to leave. She’d moved them across the country without anyone’s help, gotten herself a job, and held it even when events had conspired against her. She’d run smack into the thing she feared and longed for most—Jake’s reentry into their lives—and faced it down, and here they were, she and Sam, still lurching along and figuring things out like everyone else on earth.

She looked around the living room, at the fleece throw nestled in the corner of the couch, at Sam’s games spread out on the floor, at the thick stripes on the curtains she’d bought for the big front window. It felt cozy, like home. Her and Sam’s place. She’d done a good job.

She’d done a damn good job, and that—thatwas what mattered.

“I’ve so got this,” she said, to no one in particular.

“What?”

“Nothing,” she said. And then, “I love you, Daddy.”

She hadn’t called him that since the night she told him she was pregnant. Because it had felt like too much, being someone’s mother and someone’s baby. But now it felt just right, like scales in perfect balance.

“I love you, too, sweetheart.”

“Do you want to come visit me and Sam sometime soon?”

His voice, when it came over the line, was thick with emotion. “I would love that.”

Chapter 30

Sam was acting weird. Squirrelly. He was making her nervous.

---