Page 63 of Live Like Legends

When neither of us said anything else, I rubbed my palms over the front of my thighs. “How are Daya and Alex?”

“Good, actually. They’re good.”

I nodded, not really knowing what to say next. This felt so off and uncomfortable. I didn’t know how to navigate this broken relationship with my father. I had every instinct to just up and leave but there was something that kept me planted on this couch. I caught him staring at me out of the corner of my eye.

He readjusted his legs, bending one and crossing it over the other. “Ask me whatever you want, Nicholas.”

I ran a hand over my face, feeling some kind of pressure that no one else but myself was instigating. “I want…” My voice sounded smaller than I would have liked. “I want to go back to atime when I didn’t know any of this.” I looked down at the floor, focusing on the rug underneath the coffee table.

“You asked me for the truth and that’s what I told you. I can’t take that back.”

I blinked over to him. “You waitedyearsto tell me the truth. I practically had to back you into a corner for you to say anything.”

He rubbed at his eyes, thinking over his words. “I knew you would never like the answer. The truth would never be something that invoked happy memories.”

“Yes, I know. You made that abundantly clear, how you didn’t want to interrupt my happy life with this kind of information,” I said, my tone harsh. I ran a hand roughly through my hair. “Dad, does Daya know?”

His eyebrows pulled inward.

“About Mom, about all of it.”

My father pressed his lips together, turning his head towards the hallway that led to the stairs. “She does.”

I clucked my tongue, scoffing. “Of course, she does.”

“Nicholas—”

“I get it okay. You needed someone to vent to who wasn’t your son.Your son, who also happens to be the person you were lying to.” I lifted my hands in frustration. “Oh, I’m sorry, I guess you wereomittingthings since you never seemed to give me a clear answer on anything at all. I didn’t ask the right questions since I had no idea where to start and literally all I ever fucking did was just let you keep me in the dark because I don’t know, maybe I thought it was better that way.” I had never been so harsh with Maurice Cassial before, but I was just done with tip toeing around anything.

“You’re right you never pushed with your questions. It was almost as if you inherently wanted to keep your life in order, nooutliers in sight. You wanted to do things your way and so I let you…”

I shot up from the couch, looming over him. “I’m really not in the mood for excuses!”

“You were seven years old, Nicholas!” His brown eyes bore into mine when he matched my stance as he got up from the couch. “For one second please consider that I did not want to look my child in the face and tell him that his mother was…” His words cut off and he let out a low breath.

“You let me believe that she left,” I accused, my voice shaky. “That’s not fair. That’s not fair tome! I didn’t ask questions about her or damn near anything else because something would cast over your eyes anytime she got brought up. I wanted to make you happy, Dad. I didn’t want to cause problems, because well, I thought anything having to do with her was simple. Fuck, it’snotsimple!”

My father took the few steps left to get to me and braced his hands on my biceps. “You’re right, it isn’t fair. I amsorry, Nicholas. I told Daya about a year or so ago because I felt like the time for telling you had passed. I thought she would help me try to bring it up somehow, but then I kept putting it off again. This is my fault, not hers.”

I shrugged my shoulders to get his hands off me for a moment. My eyes stung from trying to hold back the tears I wanted to conceal. I looked up at the ceiling. “There was never going to be a perfect moment, Dad.” I closed my eyes tightly; I felt the tears starting to slip through. “There was never going to be a perfect moment to tell your son that his mother didn’t leave her family, she didn’t abandon us. She didn’t abandonme!”

My father took a step toward me, but I pointed my finger at him causing him to stop and I felt my cheeks getting damp from the slow-moving tears I’d tried to keep at bay. “You told me she…she died loving me, when I have spent my entire life thinkingthat she didn’t care about me. I know you didn’t mean to, but you had me resenting a woman wholovedme. And you can tell me that story a million times, but I will…I w-will…” I stuttered on my words because they didn’t sound right in my head, but I didn’t know how else to put it.

“Tell me what you want to say, Nicholas.” My father looked defeated, but ready for whatever else I had to say to him.

I took a deep breath, wiping my tears away with my fingertips. “I will never know what being loved by her even meant, what it felt like. You are theonlyperson who knows what that’s like. Even fucking Jonah knew what it was like to be around her and love her in his own way. And I get that she asked you to take away my memories and give me a happy life, butfuck, it hurts knowing that everyone had a say in something aboutmylife. You, Mom, Moira, everyone but fucking me!”

I dug the heels of my hands into my eyes. “You get all these memories whether they are good or bad, while I havenothing, Dad! All I have is this power that I have no fucking idea how to handle. It served its purpose when I needed it, so do I just say thank you so much mom for providing me with the power to resurrect my dead girlfriend, but now it will have to go dormant in my mind again. Is this the only thing I’ll have from Mom? A power that I’ll have to keep hidden from angels like Ariel because for some reason she thought I was the most viable option for an outlawed magic skill.

“I went from resenting someone I don’t remember ever knowing to resenting you and I don’t know how to deal with that Dad. Fuck,fuck, I am so angry at you.” I wanted my voice to be louder, but I heard it soften. My body vibrated with anger and hurt, but my voice sounded like it was the opposite. “And what’s worse is that I’m angry at her. I’m angry at a dead woman for making you promise to lie to me. I am angry that you went along with it. I’m a-angry that J-Jonah knew about things andhid it from me. I-I’m a-angry that y-you let me r-resent her f-for fuckingyears.”

He licked his lips, taking a step closer to me, tentatively reaching out to touch me again. When I didn’t flinch away, he reached up and placed his palm on my cheek, letting his thumb remove some of the tears. A rush of déjà vu hit me, remembering his tender touch whenever I would come to him crying when I was younger, hiccuping from my incessant crying. Back then my problems were so small and trivial, yet he always spoke to me like they mattered. “You have deserved to know for a very, very long time. Your mother and I, we had this entire plan for how we wanted you to grow up and the kind of person we wanted you to be. I could see tiny pieces of what we envisioned as you got older and I was…I was selfish.” His voice started to crack. “I wanted to keep you in this bubble where the only bad things that happened were just normal everyday problems, things you knew how to fight against. That’s on me; that is something I will have to live with for the rest of my existence.”

He cupped my face in both his hands, a small twinkle in his eye appearing. “That power she gave you is something big and overwhelming to have, but no Nicholas, that is not the only thing you have of hers. You have her nose, her smile, you both have this laugh that always told me when something was truly funny and,” he placed his hand at my chest, “you have her heart. Despite your feelings towards her, please know that you loved her with every fiber of your being. Every time I tried to tell you I only ever saw her looking back at me and breaking a promise to her was not something I wanted to do, whether she was alive or not.”

I placed my hand over his, whispering, “I deserved to know.”

He nodded solemnly. “You did.”

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