Page 142 of Merry Me
Good.
Easton stepped in then, his hand brushing my back like a tether. “Let’s go.”
But I wasn’t quite finished. I turned to Brittany.
“And you?” I said, my voice slicing clean. “You let him use you like that?”
Her lips parted like she might gasp or speak or pretend she hadn’t just stood there letting herself be offered like a party favor with a pulse.
But nothing came out.
“No,” I snapped. “You don’t get to be speechless now. You don’t get to play innocent when yousmiledwhile he bartered you like a fucking accessory.”
Color flushed her cheeks, but I didn’t care.
“He may have forgotten what being a father means,” I said, my words low and cutting. “But you don’t have to let him keep treating you like you’re a pawn in some cheap, rigged game. Grow a spine, Brittany. Or at the very least, grow up.”
Then I turned back to the man I used to wish would come home.
The man who once lived in my daydreams, always stepping through the door with apologies and promises and the miracle of being different this time.
“You never deserved me,” I said, voice like frost, sharp and final. “And you never will.”
I turned and walked away, Easton close behind.
And I didn’t cry.
I didn’t even look back.
Because this time, I wasn’t the girl anymore. The one waiting for her father…hoping that he would change.
I was the woman walking away from him.
Forever.
CHAPTER 27
NATALIE
We didn’t speak until we were outside.
The cold slapped my cheeks the second the door swung shut behind us, sharp and unrelenting…the kind of cold that made your breath visible and your feelings harder to hide. Snow was falling again, slow and delicate, like the sky had the audacity to be gentle when everything inside me was loud and frayed andraw.
Easton didn’t speak.
He just walked beside me, close enough that his hand brushed the small of my back. Not a guide. Not a claim. Just there. Like a punctuation mark. Like he knew I was unraveling and was quietly volunteering to be the thread that held me together.
We stepped through a second door that led to the covered wraparound patio, strung with soft white lights that glowed like sleepy stars overhead. A few empty chairs faced the mountains, now just jagged shadows against a bruised horizon of snow and pine.
I sank into one of the chairs with the weight of someone who wasn’t sure if she’d ever stand up again. The wood creaked beneath me, and the cold from the seat bled through my dress, but I didn’t care.
My breath came in short, shallow bursts—tight and high, like my ribs hadn’t caught up to the rest of me. Like part of me was stillback there, frozen in that hallway. Staring at the man who’d once made me believe I wasn’t enough. Who’d almost made me believe it again.
Easton sat beside me, knees wide, elbows on them as I stared out at the snow. Watched it fall like tiny ghosts. “He didn’t even flinch when I punched him.”
Easton was quiet for a moment, his breath clouding in front of him.
“Maybe he’s used to being hit,” he said finally.
