Page 84 of Forbidden Dark Vows

“I could say the same to you.” He straightens his spine stiffly. “Got nowhere to sleep for the night?”

“No… I…” I stand up and grab my carry-on, grateful to find it still there by my feet. One thing is for certain, I’ll never make a private investigator. “I was waiting for you.”

Realization crosses his face. “Let’s walk. I could do with some fresh air.”

His strides are wide and strong; he doesn’t glance over his shoulder to see if I’m following him. He knows I will.

“Were you here to see Graham?” The nap hasn’t done much to clear my head, and I’m thinking on my feet, trying to figure out how best to approach this conversation.

Karl Weiss has never been the kind of father who will sit down and discuss important matters, he’d rather bottle it up, wait for a solution to present itself, and move on. He’s from an era when people believed that personal issues were supposed to stay that way—personal—and pushing him will only make him angry. When that happens, it’s game over.

“What do you think?”

After the sauna-heat inside the hospital, the cold night air is like a slap in the face. I don’t ask where we’re going. “Ruby then?”

I match his stride, glancing at his profile, but he doesn’t look at me, barely acknowledges my presence. To an outsider, he would appear to be a man minding his own business while I harass him for money to buy a coffee.

He stops at traffic signal and waits for the lights to change color. “Out with it, son. I didn’t raise you to be a fucking coward.”

I bristle, shoulders instinctively hunching up around my neck. I don’t know why I expected anything less.

My father views kindness as weakness, an opening to allow someone to shoot an arrow straight through the heart and leave you broken. Things might’ve been different if he’d allowed himself time to grieve my mom, but instead, he donned his suitand went straight back to work, staying in the office until late, and making sure he was the first one there in the mornings.

Maybe that’s why he doesn’t want me to marry Ruby—he doesn’t want to see me broken too. But I am nothing like him.

“You’re right, Dad. You didn’t. And you know what, I don’t care what you and Celia are plotting together, because it isn’t going to work. I’m not afraid of getting my heart broken. I love?—”

I don’t finish because he shoves me back across the sidewalk, my spine hitting the wall of the bank on the corner of the street. I drop my carry-on. His hand closes around my throat, the steam of his breath mingling with mine. He isn’t strangling me. It’s a warning: don’t cross the line or else.

“You don’t have a fucking clue about love.” His spit hits me in the face as he hisses the words. “What would you do for her, huh?”

“I-what?”

“I want to know. What would you do for Ruby Jackson, this woman you claim to love so much?”

A young man, leather jacket, faded jeans, walks past, hesitates, and takes a couple of steps back. “What’s going on here? You alright, buddy?” He aims this at me.

“It’s cool.” I widen my eyes at him, hoping that he’ll move on. “Family stuff.” I hear the snort of air leaving my dad’s nostrils and ignore it. He deserves to be embarrassed.

The guy nods and keeps walking.

“I’d do anything for her.”

My dad’s eyes are slits in the yellow glow of the streetlamp above our heads. “Would you wait for her?”

“Of course I would.”

“So, what’s the fucking rush? Scared she won’t feel the same way about you?”

“She does feel the same way.” I don’t understand what point he’s trying to prove. “Love doesn’t have to be a test. I don’t need Ruby to pass some kind of initiation ceremony for me to believe that she loves me too.”

He grabs my coat collar, pushes me against the wall one last time, and then releases me. I exhale deeply, unaware that I’d been holding it in my lungs, my knees trembling.

“How long would you wait for her?” he asks.

“What? I don’t know, as long as it takes, I guess. But it’s a moot point because we’ve already set the date.”

“Cancel it. Tell her you’ve changed your mind. You want to wait a while, do it properly instead of rushing into it. Every woman dreams of a big white wedding. Tell her you’ll make it worth the wait.”

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