Page 90 of Wicked Surrender

“I’m sorry, Laura,” he repeated. “And I will beg for your forgiveness every day of my life. It is all I can do when I love?—”

“What the hell is he doing here?” My father demanded it with the loudest, maddest voice I’d ever heard him use. He stood next to us, looming large and ruining this significant moment. I watched as he tried to ram too close, shoving at Jason’s shoulder, to either make him fall or to stand and go.

Jason didn’t spring up and attack. Holding my hands, his warm fingers so warm and rough wrapped around mine, he turned only enough to address my father.

“I came here to apologize to your daughter who never deserved any of the hell I put her through.”

Oh, Jason.

Dad turned to sneer at me for a brief second, as if regretting that I was tied to him at all. That I was okay with this man touching me and holding my hands. “What? What is he talking about?”

I opened and closed my mouth, looking back at Jason.

“Why didn’t you ever tell him?” he asked.

I shook my head. “Because he wouldn’t have cared.”

Jason narrowed his eyes some more, glaring at my father.

“What the hell is going on, Laura?” Dad demanded. His face darkened with anger, his voice almost thunderous. “What kind of a stupid stunt is this? This is Mai’s party. This is her moment to enjoy. And you have to be so selfish as to ruin it. All your life, you’ve been so hell-bent on competing with your sister and trying to ruin all her happiness. You?—”

Mai was there, a troubled expression of unease as she watched on. “Dad? Maybe you can…”

I ignored what seemed like a feeble attempt to slow my dad down from exploding at me any further. She’d never defended me. She’d never stood up for me, but this wasn’t the moment I’d welcome it or care.

“That’s why I couldn’t have been collateral damage,” I explained to Jason, keeping my gaze on him as he still held my hands and watched me. “You have to hit him where it hurts, and that’s not with me.”

“What?” Dad puffed up his chest, standing as tall as he could while he wedged closer to stand between us. “What the hell is going on? I demand you to answer for yourself!”

“What’s going on,” Jason said firmly but icily, “is that I want to make things right with how I mistreated your daughter. I want to make things right again. Unlikeyou, who will never care that you ruined my brother’s life.”

Dad furrowed his brow, glowering and not bending on this. I’d seen him mad before, and I’d spent my whole life facing his stern expressions and worrying what would happen when he was defied. Something about hearing someone else standing up to him lit me with a burst of courage that I hadn’t realized I’d been needing to move forward out of this rut that was my life.

Dad cringed, fully enraged. “I didn’t do anything?—”

Jason lunged forward now, gritting his teeth and looking like he wanted to raise his hand and strike my father, but he didn’t. Keeping hold of my hand, he lifted his arm to rake his free fingers through his hair. His nostrils flared as he seethed. “You expelled him. You kicked out my brother William. Without any chance of a proper investigation. Without any hearing or looking into the matter at all, you kicked him out like a heartless ruler high on a power trip.”

“I’m not discussing that,” my father said, chin tipped up high.

“Tough shit,” Jason snarled. “I am. I’m confronting you like I’ve always wanted to. I will never like you and I will never forgive you for kicking him out the way you did. You started the end of his life. You robbed him of his future.”

“I said I’m not discussing?—”

“You ruined him!” Jason yelled, stabbing his finger forward in a point at him. “You ruined my brother’s life, and there is no going back on that. You showed your true colors, how shitty of a person you are. And I hate that I let all my anger at you control me for so long.” He caught his breath, staring him down. “I hate that I wanted to try to hurt you by hurting your daughter, because she is too good for me, too good for this. Too good for you.”

Holy fuck!

Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d hear someone be in my corner like this. That someone could shout in my father’s face and so sternly tell him thathewasn’t worthy ofme. That I was too good forhim.

Because I was.

You are, Laura. You’ve always been good enough.

I just never had the courage to own up to how my family wasn’t good enough for me, that they would never be worthy of my big heart and love because they insisted on labeling me as deficient and second-best.

But most of all, I wanted to cry and embrace this rough man because that wasn’t true for us.

I was good enough for him, and he would always be the best thing to happen to me.

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