Page 59 of Sweet Oblivion

With a curse, I pulled on my clothes and headed out her bedroom door.

I slammed through my front door, annoyance and fear jockeying for dominance after the sheer number of texts my father had sent me. I felt keyed up and restless until the moment I found my father face down in his own vomit in the marble-tiled atrium. Then everything in me went still.

“Dad!”

My knees slammed to the ground, and I gritted my teeth against the pain as I rolled him to his side. He let out a low moan.

He isn’t dead. I couldn’t lose someone else.

He met my gaze, and tears filled his bloodshot eyes.

“She’s leaving me,” he murmured. His voice cracked. “Carolina…she’s really leaving me.”

He screamed the last so loudly that I fell on my ass, right in a puddle of my father’s sick.

He curled up in a fetal position and sobbed. “I loved her,” he rasped, his voice shredded. Then he sprung up and gripped my shirt, his eyes wild, tears streaming down his face. “You gotta believe me. I loved her so much. I never wanted this—I never wanted her to leave me.”

I stared, unsure what to do, how to manage this crazed version of my father.

Then Steve hauled me off the floor.

“What’s happening?” I asked. Confusion pummeled me, but Steve was a steadying presence. Yet even as I was grateful for him, my mother’s long-held insistence on discretion and privacy told me Steve shouldn’t witness this. Still, I clutched his sleeve as I stared at my father’s huddled form.

“He’s not supposed to be here.”

“What?”

With a look of disgust, Steve said, “He’s clearly having some kind of a breakdown.”

“Is my mom…?” I felt like a little boy again, begging for attention. Please, please let her just be hurt. We could survive hurt.

Steve shook his head. “Your mom’s fine. She’s still in Paris. Brad here just received his divorce papers.”

“As in today?”

Steve nodded. “Why don’t you go on upstairs and get in the shower? I’ll do my best to get him cleaned up.” His lip curled in disgust as he bent down to haul my dad off the floor. “And get him out of here.”

“No,” I said. I licked my lower lip. “I need to talk to him.”

Steve narrowed his eyes. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Nash.”

I straightened my spine and met my bodyguard’s gaze. “I didn’t ask.”

Steve’s jaw ticked, but he dipped his head once. I hoped that meant he agreed.

I made it into my shower on autopilot and stood there, hot water pounding against my skin and “Carry on My Wayward Son” pounding through my brain.

My dad was a disaster.

But nothing about this situation made sense. He had to know Mom would eventually reach her breaking point. How could he not know that?

I scrubbed my face. I wished I hadn’t come home. If only I’d stayed in Aya’s bed. We’d been happy. My chest ached. No, we hadn’t. I’d hurt her. I’d need to figure out how to fix that, too.

After a good, long soak that did very little to make me feel any cleaner, I dressed and tried to pull myself together in my room. Still, I hesitated before heading back downstairs. I considered calling Pop Syad, but I wasn’t sure he was in good enough health to help me. And what would I ask him to do from Paris, anyway?

But there was something about finding my dad tonight, how unhinged he’d become… Fear crept up the back of my neck, and I struggled against the need to run.

I needed to man up and deal with my father, so I strode down the stairs toward the master suite, my heart pounding so hard against my ribs that it drowned out any possibility of music in my head.

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