Page 24 of Single Dad Christmas

She grunted.

“Listen, Tay,” he said, gripping the steering wheel until his knuckles glowed white, trying to get a grip on his temper. Don’t react when you’re angry, he reminded himself. It was a cardinal rule. Just let it go.

“What?”

“I get that you’re pissed with me?—,”

She snorted.

“But I would like to know how long I can expect this to last?”

“Oh, gee, I don’t know. How’s forever?”

His fingers tightened on the steering wheel. Tell her about Amy. Tell her about the booze. The pills. Tell her how unsafe it had been for her.

And wreck her relationship with her mother?

No way.

Even when he was furious, he wouldn’t go down that path.

“Okay, fine,” he shrugged, as though he didn’t care. “We’ll play it your way.”

She whipped her head around to his, perhaps because she’d expected to argue, and then crossed her arms abruptly over her chest. “Whatever.”

He pulled up at the netball courts and the car had barely slowed to a stop when she pushed open her door.

“Jesus, Taylor. Can you wait just a second?”

She glared at him again and then stalked away, but he could have sworn he saw a tear running down her cheek as she turned the corner.

His heart sunk and he felt, in this one aspect of his life, like an utter and complete failure.

“She hates me.”His voice was blanked of emotion with apparent care, but his eyes showed the depths of his pain. “I don’t mean that like she’s going through a phase. She actively hates me. She seethes with rage. And I keep looking at her, and trying to work out where my little girl went? When did this happen? And why can’t I fix it?”

“Start at the beginning,” she said, reusing his turn of phrase from the night before. Louisa sat cross-legged on the floor, across from Noah, in the comfort of her lounge room. The day had been warm, and even though the sun had gone down more than an hour earlier, it was still warm in her apartment, but not overbearingly so.

He curled his hands around the mug of coffee and cradled it thoughtfully before taking a sip.

“She was the most beautiful kid,” he said with a shake of his head. “Beautiful despite her home life,” he added with a look of shame. “Amy and I were not that happy, most of the time. We fought in front of her. I mean, Amy had a temper, but I didn’t de-escalate it like I should have. I was angry. I felt trapped if I’m honest.”

Louisa’s brows shot up. She remembered saying exactly that to Ares, though she’d been referring to the paparazzi, and the features of his royal life. But the sentiment had been similar, so too her desperation.

“I had never planned to have children at that age, nor to get married, but one thing followed the other, and there we were. I tried to make the best of it, but Amy and I were never really well-suited. It should have just been a stupid summer romance. A fling, at best.”

She nodded sympathetically, encouraging him silently to continue.

“I don’t know when things went off the rails for her.” He drank his coffee. “She always liked to party. We both did, at that age. But Taylor sobered me up. I grew up. Suddenly, we had this perfect, fragile baby, and I would have done anything for her. Given up anything.”

“But Amy didn’t?”

He frowned. “I thought she just liked to party, but I think she’s probably always been an addict. Her behaviour got more and more reckless. Stupid. She made a lot of dumb mistakes.”

Louisa leaned forward unconsciously.

“She doted on Tay, though. That was all that mattered. I knew we weren’t that happy, as a couple, but so long as we both loved Tay, I thought it would be okay. Honestly, I don’t know how we made it work for as long as we did.”

Noah placed his coffee cup on the tray between them.

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