Page 14 of Beautiful Ruins
I wasn’t ready for whatever he was about to say.
Jasmine had been at Rowan’s house the night before, hereyes drilling holes into me, full of everything she couldn’t say. I’d hurt her, abandoned her. I knew that. Still, there was no anger in the way she had looked at me—just pure, raw sadness. The kind that sticks with you no matter how hard you try to fight it off.
“Is she okay?” I folded my arms over my chest, a dull ache setting up in my ribs in pure protest of the movement.
Didn’t help that I had to lug Rowan’s drunk-arse home in the early hours that morning. Still, I held the pain inside just as I always did.
Dad nodded slowly, crossing his legs, his boot knocking against the table leg with a hollow thud. “She came asking about you, actually. Wanted to know how you were doing.” He picked up his mug, took a long sip of coffee like he needed to make sure it was cold enough to match the conversation, then set it back down again.
“And what did you tell her?”
Knowing my father, he’d probably given her the entire rundown of my shit-show of a life. Typical. It didn’t even matter if I’d been right to stab my arsehole of an ex-boyfriend in the chest.
He tilted his head, the slightest bit, a muscle under his left eye twitching. “I told her she should speak with you.”
My eyes burned in the corners. “Great. Thanks.” I tried to hide the attitude in the words, tried to shake it off along with the sleeplessness still clinging from the previous night.
It felt like betrayal. Dad had dropped me in the middle of the shit pile and expected me to clean it up. Although, itwasmy shit pile, so I suppose it was only fair. But how could I face her? Jasmine would see me for what I was—a coward running from a mess I’d made and too damn afraid to pick up the pieces.
Dad’s gaze lingered on the bruise. Maybe he thought if hestared long enough, he’d be able to see through the skin, into all the wreckage I was trying to hide. I shifted under the weight of it, but he didn’t blink. Just shut it down—Chief, not Dad, back in charge.
“So,” he said, picking up the newspaper, and flipping the page for show. “What’s on your agenda?”
My agenda? Who the hell did he think he was talking to? Definitely not his daughter. But if he had to know . . . disappear again.
“For today?” I muttered. “Or for the rest of my life?”
I’d only managed to figure out the first.
Dad glanced over the top of the paper once again, his brown eyes finding mine. I’d missed those eyes, or at least what they once held in them when he had looked at me. But my brand of sadness didn’t let me miss anything without punishing me for it.
“How about we start with today,” he said, his gaze dropping to the paper once again.
“I thought maybe I’d clean out my room.” I didn’t mention I’d like to disinfect the entire house. Set fire to it and watch it burn like the rest of my sorry life.
Dad nodded, but all I saw was the top of his head, his attention buried in the paper again like the ink had more answers than I ever could. “Sounds like a plan. Maybe when you’re finished, there’s a bunch of your mother’s things in boxes in the shed. Keep what you want, but I doubt there’s anything useful in them now.”
“Got it.” I shook my head, resentment bubbling hot in my chest.
What the hell would I want with Mum’s stuff?
We had never been close, Mum and me. Not by regular mother-daughter standards, not the way Jasmine had been with hers. But it wasn’t all bad. I suppose, there was somethingbetween us—a bond I didn’t have with anyone else. I had cherished it as much as I could, though I’m not sure she felt the same way.
Mum had lived for her job, and I had been only a scribbled note in her case files. Another unsolved mystery tossed aside for bigger things. Even in death, she’d left an empty outline behind. And when she was gone, a man wearing Dad’s skin had stepped in to fill the space—the same man still ignoring me.
Eventually Dad got up, leaving his coffee mug on the table. “I’ll see you later.” He headed for the door. “Bloody bikers and their bloody bikes,” he muttered, slamming the front door hard enough to rattle the windows.
I stomped up the stairs like the brat I swore I’d outgrown. I knew Dad was doing the best he could with what he had left. But all I wanted was for him, the man who gave me life, to look at me like I wasn’t the biggest mistake ofhis.
Was that so much to ask for?
At this stage of my life, I was the epitome of a woman with ‘Daddy issues.’
I stood in the open doorway to my bedroom. It really was like stepping back in time. Same posters—now faded—pinned to the walls, same untidy stack of textbooks on the small desk in the corner. Maybe even the same dust coating the surface of every memory that had ever been born there.
But there were no photos. I tore those down the night Logan had died, ripped them from the walls and shredded them into a thousand pieces that could never be put back together. It was hard enough knowing he was no longer sleeping in the house next door, in the bedroom opposite mine. I couldn’t stand to look at his smiling face like he didn’t just up and leave me.
I rubbed against the sting in my eyes and walked over to the wardrobe, sliding the door open too hard. It slammed againstthe frame, rattling the glass. I flipped through the same old clothing still hanging, silent reminders of who I used to be.
