Page 104 of Bossy Hero

Self-righteous bastards. Very God-fearing of them, isn’t it? Hypocrites.

My jaw clicks from the strain of my grinding. It’s getting hard as hell to listen to this shit. I drag my palm over my face, grumbling quietly.

It’s either that or fucking scream.

The betrayal is coming at me from not only the present but the past, gutting me where I sit.

So many times before, I thought I’d suffered enough penance for what I did to my brother. Turns out, I still haven’t atoned for those sins.

After a long pause, Tomer finally gets to the part of the tale I initially expected to hear—how he ended up lying to my face for this damn long.

“When I first found out about her, I did more digging to help prepare you. She seemed to have loving guardians. Nice home. Friends. Popular in school. All that. She seemed like she was in a good spot. And as for you? You were just...”

Sparing himself from having to insult me, I toss, “I know how stressed I was back then. I was a miserable bastard.”

“Yeah. So I waited.”

He goes on to rationalize his betrayal in perfect Tomer fashion—by removing the humanity from the equation and focusing only on the logic.

What he fails to realize is that some things aren’t logical.

Even if it made sense for him to wait until I was emotionally prepared to hear the news, it doesn’t make his decision any better.

Abby didn’t have the opportunity to wait until life was a fucking peach pie before finding out she was pregnant. Why do I get that grace?

Tomer won’t ever understand that.

His voice grows increasingly shaky as he rambles through his excuses and justifications. “It was never a good time. Month after month and year after year, I kept telling myself...”

Poor fucking kid chokes on his words. My heart aches for him, but I’m still so damn enraged.

Argh.

“I thought if only I worked harder or was better, I could take the weight off your shoulders. Then I would tell you. All I wanted to do was help prepare you. Considering the type of man you are, there was no way you were going to find out you had a daughter and not either go to her or bring her here. And then what? And what if you didn’t come back? What would happen to all of us? So I worked harder. Took on more. I tried, and I fucking tried, but it was never enough. I failed you.”

A battle rages in my chest. One side furious with him over this deceit. And for so long. The other side aches for the pain I hear in his voice and see in his expression.

Yet he’s still missing the entire fucking point.

It wasn’t on him to ready me for this.

She wasmydaughter. I deserved to know she existed, ready or fucking not.

Admirable as it was for him to try to prepare me and ease my transition tofatherhood, that wasn’t his cross to bear.

I get why he’d think it was, though. In his fucked-up way, he was trying to earn his place in my life. Earn my love. Never realizing he already had it.

Because he doesn’t know what love is.

Maddie’s face slices through my mind. She didn’t know unconditional love either.

How did I get through to her and not Tomer?

Hmm. Wait.

Considering her insistence on keeping me a secret, I failed to accomplish it with her as well.

Fuck this damn day. Absolutely fuck it.

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