Page 31 of Hers to Kiss
Exactly.Maybe if he didn’t have a family. If it were just him doing it all over again, he’d make a different choice about that too.
Pete’s gaze fell away from his father’s guilty one, and he scuffed his toe on the floorboard.
“If I could do it all again,” Titus began in a calmer tone, “I’d make the choice you seem so keen on throwing away. I thought I raised you better than that.”
Pete’s eyes snapped up. Titus looked at him with both fury and disappointment.
“I thought you were actually smarter than that. And now I know I was wrong. Well, you see here, Peter”—he pointed a thick finger at Pete’s chest—“you’re not going to make the same mistake I did. You’re going to go to that meeting, because if you don’t—and when whatever you think you’ve got going on with your phone and your stupid games falls through—what else are you going to have? What else have you done with your life? You spend all day playing video games instead of being a man and going to work. You don’t know what it’s like to really have to grind day in and day out to live. You don’t know a thing about suffering, and that’s my fault.”
Titus took a breath while Pete stood still as stone. He’d never expected this reaction from his father, and he hadn’t even told the whole story.
“I shouldn’t have let your mother baby you,” Titus continued. “It’s made you weak, and that’s not the kind of man I want for a son. I should’ve forced you to do more. Learn more. It’s through struggle that you grow.” Titus’s gaze ran up and down Pete’s form. “What have you become? The only thing saving you is your brain.” His gaze became as menacing as the low tone of his voice. “Now, I don’t want to hear anything else about anything that doesn’t have to do with Cornell. You understand me?”
Before Pete could respond, Titus turned on his heels and stomped out the back of the office.
Pete’s phone buzzed, making him jump. He inhaled deeply several times, his lungs burning. He hadn’t breathed for probably the whole time his father had spoken. Feeling began to return to his fingers that had been balled into fists. He stretched out his toes, unaware that he had scrunched them up in his tennis shoes.
Pete raked his hands through his hair and began to pace the small office. He couldn’t tell his father about his potential app deal now. Even if it came with a fat check, education was clearly everything to his father, who never went to college.
Did he think Pete ungrateful for working to provide for his family? Because he wasn’t. He appreciated having a roof over his head and dinner every night. He just didn’t appreciate being guilt-tripped into a life he’d never want.
His father knew something about living a life he didn’t want. Why push his own son into one?
Pete remembered his phone and pulled it out of his back pocket. A message from Warp Entertainment.
The meeting was scheduled for the same day and hour as the interview with the dean.
Pete groaned. Of course it was.
