Page 100 of Reckless

I nod. “Yeah, I know.” I can’t keep the sadness from my voice. I have a lot of questions I need answers to, but there’s only one I want the answer to tonight. “What did you say to my dad?”

He takes a deep breath, sighing heavily before saying, “He was angry because I told him he couldn’t see you till he calmed down, and as I’m sure you can imagine, he wasn’t impressed, so I told him about my mum.” He pauses, and now it’s my turn to reach out to him, entwining our fingers together. “She killed herself just after my eighteenth birthday. I didn’t understand at the time why she hadn’t done it before that. My dad isn’t a good guy, Jamie. He wasn’t a good husband, and he certainly wasn’t a good father. When they read her will, the solicitor told me my mum had opened a trust fund in my name, and that my dad wasn’t allowed to touch it. It was iron-clad, she’d made sure of that.

“Then I understood why she’d waited. I could never leave before because I wasn’t an adult and had no means to support myself if Dad cut me off, so she’d waited and hidden the trust fund from him too. I know what it’s like to feel guilt over losing a parent who did it to protect you, so I told your dad he needed to calm down and be the father you believed him to be. I’m pretty sure if Rick, or I, had let him see you before that he would have poured his own guilt onto you, and there was no way I was letting that happen. Aside from the fact that what happened wasn’t your fault, your dad’s own guilt would have destroyed him and you. Trust me, I know.”

“Is that what happened with your dad?”

“Not exactly. Me and my dad never really got on, and when mum died, he blamed me. All the while, his own guilt was eating away at him.”

“I’m sorry about your mum, Seb. It sounds like she was an amazing woman.”

“Yeah, she was. Too good for my old man, that’s for sure. It’s just a shame she never got to experience what real love felt like,” he says with a shrug.

I shuffle closer to him, running my free hand up his chest. “She had your love, and I think that’s kind of special. She would be very proud of who you are, Seb.” I lean forward, and my lips meet his in, what should have been, a tender kiss, but I can’t help deepening it and hoping he can feel my love for him.

Breaking away, I spin in his arms, and he pulls me back against him. I relax, and although I’m mentally and physically exhausted, I struggle to sleep.

I think about my mum and what she went through because of Marcus. I can’t believe she kept it all to herself. And how long had she believed that I was Marcus’ daughter? God, so many questions.

I try to shove them all aside, and eventually, after a couple of hours, I finally drift off.

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