Page 103 of Filthy Rich

I stand and pull him upright. “Dad, sit down. You did just fine. I’m safe, believe me.”

He doesn’t meet my eye, but he does sit. “From the moment you started singing, as early as three years old, it was clear you were special. I wanted to put you in piano and voice lessons. You loved it too, but your mom got angry. She wanted them for herself instead, and she said she’d always been denied as a kid. She was angry her child would have what she never got.”

She really is a pretty lousy mother, but that doesn’t mean her life wasn’t hard.

“Like a petulant child, she cried and complained until I gave in. I’d come home from work early so I could watch you while she got the lessons I wanted for you.”

“Dad, I don’t care.” I touch his wrist. “I really don’t.”

“It gets worse,” he says. “Just listen for a minute.”

I think about how hard it was for Jake to tell his parents things they already knew, and I nod and wait.

“As you got older, it got worse. You’d go to auditions and they’d turn her down, but they’d ask about you when you hadn’t even tried out. You were such a beautiful child and so gifted. The more it happened, the more she resented you for living her dream.”

I knew that part, too, maybe better than my dad did.

“I think she was relieved when you got burned.”

“Dad.” I shake my head. “That’s too harsh. She was there at the hospital.” Off and on. “I remember her distress. She didn’t fake that.”

“You didn’t hear her at home,” he mutters. “But regardless, you know we did surgeries at the start, but do you remember when we went back? It was a few years after the initial attempts, when your doc said they had a new technique.”

I remembered meeting with someone. “But they said I wasn’t a candidate. I was a little disappointed, but I didn’t have high hopes to begin with, and the idea of more painful surgery wasn’t ever a good one.”

“That’s the thing, though. You were a candidate, a perfect candidate, and we meant to tell you as your sixteenth birthday. . .” Dad squishes his hat into a very small ball, and I worry the brim won’t ever recover.

Distracted by the hat, it takes a few seconds for his words to register. “What? You never told me that.”

“Because your mom put the money we had in savings down on that three month acting camp in California when she realized we’d need it all for your surgeries. That was the last straw for me. Her selfish decision caused our divorce. I’d been looking the other way with her affairs for years. They never lasted long, but her selfishness never changed. She wanted your party to be perfect because she’d stolen your surgery money for herself. Again.”

My parents hid their dysfunction way better than I realized. “But that means I really did break you up.”

He shakes his head. “Not at all. I was staying with her for you. I’d have left her way earlier if you hadn’t been born. The only reason I’m telling you now is to warn you. As you find happiness, expect her to become uglier to you. She’s not someone who can overcome her jealousy. She’ll never be the mother you deserve.”

I tell him about how Jake cut her off and threatened her. Dad actually starts to bawl, and he says, “I’m glad you’ve found someone who can be the man I wasn’t able to be for you.”

It takes me half an hour to compose myself after all that, but when Jake shows up, I’m as ready as I’ll be. I’m wearing a strappy black sheath dress that really hugs my figure.

I honored Bea’s one request: no sleeves. The burn on my arm’s bare.

Other than the album photoshoot, I’ve never gone out in public like this. I expect Jake to comment on it, but he doesn’t even seem to notice.

“You’re not wearing the dress.” Jake frowns.

I can’t help rolling my eyes. “I told you, that’s not a dress you wear on someone else’s wedding day.”

“But no matter what day it is, when you’re with me, it’s your day.”

I slap him playfully but he uses it as an excuse to grab my hand. Then he lowers his face to my level. “I mean that,” he says softly.

He really does seem to. Every single day he shows up, and he never looks at me with anything but adoration, even today with my bare shoulder exposed.

“Yes, well, that can be true every day but today,” I say. “I love Bea, and nothing’s going to happen today that’s going to take the attention off her.”

“Shoot, but what about Easton?” he asks.

“Huh?”

---