Page 154 of Catch Me
Three years ago, I didn’t have a therapist to help me work through what I was feeling. Nor did I rely on my two best friends the way I should’ve.
I damn sure didn’t have a man who shows me how much he loves me in big and small ways.
I shake my head, finally feeling like I’m coming out of a daze.
Ms. Shelby meows and leaps off my lap as I rise to my feet. I pull the door open, and the voices on the other side grow louder.
One in particular sends a cold chill down my spine.
“No! Hell no.” Andreas’ barely restrained anger booms throughout the apartment.
“Excuse me?”
Oh shit,I silently curse upon hearing my mother’s response.
“Young man, do not speak to my wife that way.”
My heart sinks hearing my father’s words.
What are they doing here?
It doesn’t take much to answer my own question.
They know. Somehow, they know what happened the night of the premiere and they’re here to remind me how much of a failure I am.
“I’m not only speaking to your wife,” Andreas counters, shocking me.
He must surprise my parents as well because they both remain silent.
“Ivy is not your punching bag,” he tells them.
“We’ve never treated her?—”
“Oh no?” he cuts her off. “What do you think it is when you rip a child’s dream right out of her hands and force her to burn it in the family fireplace?”
A collective gasp from my parents. My grip on theEbonymagazine tightens.
“Or when she tells you what she wants to study but you scoff at her dreams and call her an embarrassment to the family? And she forces herself to work her ass off to getthreefucking degrees at once just so she can appease you while trying to cut out a slice of happiness for herself?
“That’s not treating her like a goddamn punching bag?”
“I don’t know what Ivy’s told you about us?—”
“Enough,” Andreas tells my father. “I’ve heard enough. I heard about the time after she had a terrible panic attack, the two people who should’ve held her and let her know she was safe and that everything was okay, scolded her and made her believe she was defective instead.
“So no, you’re not going to see her. Not now, and if I have it my way, never again would she have to set eyes on either one of you for the rest of her life.”
“We raised her,” my father insists.
“And you did a terrible job at it.” Andreas doesn’t even hesitate as he says this. “Despite your horrible, controlling, and borderline narcissistic parenting Ivy grew up to be one of the most endearing, ambitious, and devoted people I know. I won’t allow either one of you to sabotage her anymore.”
“Sabotage?” My mother sounds incredulous.
“After all we’ve done for that?—”
“That what?” Andreas growls.
“For a child that wasn’t even ours. That’s who,” my mother responds haughtily.
