Page 114 of Beneath the Hood

His voice is cutting and I feel every slice as he knifes lacerations into my chest.

“Dad, I—”

“How long, Blakely?”

“Look, it’s not—”

“I askedhow long?” His hand smacks the counter.

Swallowing thickly, my fists curl into themselves, my eyes glancing down. “Not that long,” I murmur.

“Before or after I asked him to watch out for you?”

My heart clenches. “After.”

His eyes flare. “Did he force you?”

“What?” I gasp. “No, Dad, it isn’t like that. I love him.”

He laughs, running a hand through his dark locks. “You love him. Of course you do. Well, I hope you can love him from afar because after I’m through with him, he’ll never step foot in California again.”

My breath stutters, his words reaching in and clamping down on my soul, a different type of panic rising up inside of me.No.

“Dad, no. This has nothing to do with you.”

“It haseverythingto do with me,” he snaps. “I’m your father. I trusted him, and he disrespected me by going behind my back and taking advantage of a child.”

Scoffing, resentment billows in my gut. “Oh, please,” I bite out. “I’m not a child anymore. But you’re gone so often, I’m not surprised that you haven’t noticed.”

He stiffens. “That’s not fair.”

“That your favorite phrase?” My eyebrow rises. “You’re unbelievable, you know? You jet around to your fancy business meetings and stay gone forweeksat a time doing God knows what, avoiding this house and everything in it. Includingme. And now, suddenly I’m a child? Suddenly, I need protecting?”

He opens his mouth, but I slash my hand through the air, continuing. “I am sosickof everyone thinking they get to determine the outcome of my life. None of you have spent a single second trying to understand what it’s like to live in my shoes.”

“Blakely.”

“Did you know that I have panic attacks?”

His mouth parts, shock flickering through his eyes. “What?”

I bite my lip, my nostrils flaring. Maybe I shouldn’t have blurted it out that way, shouldn’t use my troubles as a weapon to prove a point. But if my father has the audacity to walk in here and act like he has any right to judge Jackson and my relationship, then he can sit and listen to everything else he hasn’t taken the time to see over the years.

“Yeah.” I lift a shoulder. “Terrible ones actually. So debilitating that I struggle to do anything that’s not scheduled in advance. So intense when they hit that sometimes they make me feel like I’m physically going to die.”

Tears spring to my eyes and I swallow, ignoring the painful squeezing of my lungs. “And everyone around me watches it happen, calling it “an episode” and brushing it to the side. Calling me melodramatic. A perfectionist. Do youknowwhat that’s like? To have your mind collapse in front of everyone and have them ignore the fall?”

“Blakely, honey, I didn’t know. We can—”

“Jackson,” I interrupt again. “Is the only person who has ever given a damn. He’s theonlyone who saw through the bullshit.” I pull at my designer workout clothes. “He saw the real me. The one I forgot existed. He held me when I was drowning,every time, and he loved me through every fall.” My voice catches, regret for how things went last night swarming like a thousand bees, the sting radiating through my body.

Something flashes in my dad’s eyes, and for just a moment, I think what I’ve said has gotten through. But then he stands and closes his laptop. “That doesn’t change the fact that he’s twenty-eight. And my employee. I can’t just give him a pass.”

Fear clamps down on my shoulders, its icy fingers trailing along my neck. “Are you saying you’re going to fire him?”

“I’m saying he’s never going to set foot on a Hollywood set again, Blakely. And neither will his cars. He’s lucky that’s all I’m going to do.” His phone rings, buzzing across the counter, and I watch in frozen disbelief as he picks it up and answers.

“Tom, just a moment.” He presses a button and looks toward me. “Stick around for a bit, okay? I want to talk more about what you just told me. About the… attacks. But I’m not going to change my mind on Jax. And you need to stay away from him.”

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