Page 190 of Somebody's Watching Me
Not knowing what else to do, Jamison hugged her. “Have I told you how amazing you are? You went to a party. A real party, with lots of people.”
Returning the hug, Annabeth sucked in her sniffles. “And I freaking rocked it.”
“Even better, you went all bad bitch afterward and made Rowan put on a wolf mask and rail you in the shop.” Jamison sighed, resting her chin on Annabeth’s shoulder. “All in the same night.”
“I should have never told you about the mask.”
Jamison pulled back to look at her. “Probably not, but can Liam and I borrow it sometime?”
“Don’t be gross.”
“Knock, knock.” Jamison rapped her knuckles on the door of the media room’s office. “Can I talk to you?”
Her father had his feet propped on the desk and quickly lowered them. “Shit, I thought you were Simone.”
“Yeah, she would have your ass if she caught you in here with your feet on the desk.”
“And she doesn’t even come in here.” He shuffled some papers aside. “Abe and I are the only ones who use this space.”
Her nerves hitched in her stomach, and she sat on the small couch against the wall. “There’s something I want to talk about.”
“Liam is fine.” He joined her, stretching his long legs outward. “I know it’s hard, but Will spoke to him an hour ago and they should be back tonight.”
She nodded and swallowed the lump in her throat, telling herself that if she could get through the story with Liam, she could do it again withher father. Everyone would eventually know, but she wanted him to hear it first.
“I have something to say,” she said carefully. “Because we don’t keep things from each other.”
“What’s going on?”
Staying strong, she walked him through her one-sided fight with Liam, and her fears about him not wanting to have a family.
“But you realize now how stressed Liam was at the time,” he surmised. “I knew you guys would work it out, and honestly, I didn’t think the separation would last longer than the weekend.”
“I thought the same thing.” The first real burst of fear hit, and she sucked in her bottom lip. “But something happened. Something really bad.”
And she told him.
He cried with her. This big man who ruled his corner of the world cried with his daughter, listening intently as she babbled on about little pink dresses and tiny plaid shorts hidden in her closet.
“Look at me,” he demanded gruffly.
She lifted her head, and he wiped the tears on her cheeks with his thumb. “We made a deal. Me, you, Samuel, and Selah. We made a deal to not hide from the hard stuff.”
The deal. The one struck on their last trip together. An open-door policy to be maintained for life. They weren’t allowed to hide the hard stuff from each other.
“Technically, Samuel broke the deal first with Evie.”
“True,” her father acknowledged just as Simone appeared in the doorway; her mothering senses triggered.
“Explain,” she demanded, seeing their tears. “Now.”
Simone was next on her list, but Jamison couldn’t relive it again so soon. “Dad?”
“I’ll tell her.”
Getting up, Jamison paused in front of Simone as she left. “I’ll be waiting in my room for you to come ask me three million questions.”
Upstairs, she dug one of Liam’s shirts out of his bag and slipped it on to wear to bed, needing him around her. An hour later, Simone slipped in and stretched on the bed next to her.
