Page 137 of Merry Me
“I understand,” he said.
I hated how calm he sounded. Hated how polite he was. Like he’d turned into a ghost with manners. A man who had spent years disappearing only to reappear with soft words and softened edges and nothing close to an apology.
I could feel Easton beside me, his presence warm and grounding and still watching me with something that looked a lot like permission. Like I didn’t owe anyone anything. Like I could say no and walk away and still be whole.
But something—some stupid thing—inside me cracked.
Something small. Some old, splintered part of me that still remembered the sound of his shoes on the kitchen floor. The way he used to whistle under his breath when he thought no one was listening. The way he’d once let me stand on his feet like it meant something.
Maybe it was the hope I thought I saw in his eyes. The fragile, breakable hope of a man who didn’t deserve it but carried it anyway.
Maybe it was just the weight of too many years of not saying anything at all.
Or maybe it was that this moment, awkward and aching as it was, felt like something I’d been holding underwater for years—and suddenly, I was too tired to keep it from surfacing.
“Just one,” I said, my voice quiet, brittle as ice and just as likely to crack. “One dance.”
My father nodded. He didn’t push. Didn’t speak. Just took the single step forward that closed the space between us and reached for my hand like he thought I might vanish if he touched me too hard. Like I was still small, still five years old with socked feet on top of his dress shoes, not this grown woman in satin and stubbornness who’d learned to stop waiting.
Easton’s touch slipped away.
His fingertips grazed mine for half a second, and then he was gone—his warmth retreating like the tide. But I could feel hisgaze, hot and steady on my back. I didn’t have to turn around to know what it held.
Not judgment. Not pressure.
Just…presence. Unflinching. Safe.
I stepped into the slow rhythm of the music like I was walking across thin ice—careful, breath tight, every movement deliberate. My father’s palm hovered at my waist, hesitant, like he wasn’t sure he had the right to touch his daughter. Like he expected me to pull away. And honestly? Part of me wanted to.
We moved awkwardly at first, like strangers in a scene we’d never rehearsed.
He smelled like aftershave and something faintly medicinal. Different from how I remembered.
“You grew up,” he said finally. His voice was soft. Not shaky. Just worn around the edges, like an old shirt that had seen too many wash cycles.
“People do that.” My reply was flat. Smooth. The kind of response that sounded casual but hit with the precision of a scalpel.
His throat worked, and he tried again. “You look like your mom.”
I stared over his shoulder. Focused on a flickering candle in the far corner of the room. “She looked tired a lot.”
That silenced him.
The music played on, too romantic for the moment, some instrumental version of a song that probably played at weddings all the time. I heard the steady swell of strings, the way they held the silence between us like it mattered.
His hand didn’t grip mine fully. His fingers rested there, unsure. They didn’t know how to hold me anymore, and I didn’t offer a map.
He kept trying to look at me.
And I kept looking past him.
It was a whole thing.
He cleared his throat. “I’m not asking you to forgive me.”
“Good.” My voice stayed steady this time, firm like a fence post in hard earth. “Because I’m not ready.”
He nodded again, like he’d been expecting that. Maybe he had.
