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She jumped back. “No, I’m not okay yet,” she said brokenly. “And I’m not trying to be petty or selfish or unforgiving—I swear to you, I’m not. I realize it’s been a long time. Years. It’s just really hard to trust in this after everything I’ve been through.”
“I understand. Everything about this is hard.” Tears blurred my vision as I pressed my hands together like a prayer, a desperate petition. “But easy love is overrated. Hard love means you have to fight, and when you’re fighting, it means you have something worth fighting for. And that’s beautiful. That’s everything.” I ran my tongue along my top teeth. “I want you to fight. For me. For us. For our relationship that I miss so damn much.”
“I don’t know how to just accept this,” she confessed. “I thought it was over. When she left, I thought you’d start dating again—start over with someone else. Someone your own age. At the time, I truly believed Halley was nothing more than some twisted fantasy you needed to satisfy a disgusting itch.”
Mind-numbing pain trickled through me as my face collapsed. “You know me better than that.”
“I thought I did.” She shrugged, hopelessly. “I think that’s why this hurts so much. You blindsided me. You lied. Snuck around behind my back for two years.”
“Tara, I had no clue how to deal with it. Every day that passed, the harder I fell for her. And the harder I fell, the more I buried myself deeper. Betraying you was the last thing I ever wanted.”
“But you did it anyway.” A tear trickled from the corner of her eye, drawing a grief-stricken line down her cheek. “And then you allowed me to believe you were a monster. A creep. It took months of long talks with Mom—of legitimate therapy—to understand why you did that.”
My own tears burned, drowning me in heartache.
But nothing sucker-punched me more than her next words.
“You were choosing her.”
I choked on my breath.
Stared at my daughter with devastation carved across my face.
I’d made a knee-jerk decision in that moment, and I’d chosen to protect Halley’s heart over my daughter’s, believing so entirely that Tara would understand one day. Forgive me. Use the tools and wisdom she’d acquired from a privileged, love-drenched life to heal her wounds. Halley had never had that. She’d come from nothing, and my own selfish decisions had left her with nothing but packed bags and a daunting, unknown future.
But I hadn’t known the weight of Tara’s trauma.
Her own burdens that haunted her.
Her pain.
In hindsight, I could have done something differently. Tried to find the balance in disorder. Thought harder, fought harder. Maybe I could have saved them both from the damaging repercussions of my actions.
But in the game of forbidden love, someone always lost.
I just never thought it would be all of us.
Tara looked away off my silence, dropping her chin, her eyes squeezing shut as more tears spilled out. She shook her head. Inhaled a shuddery breath.
I had no more words of solace to give. No more explanations to offer. She already knew that I loved Halley—time had opened her eyes to that truth.
But I feared nothing I could say would ever convince Tara that I loved her just as much.
And that was my fault.
That was my eternal cross to bear.
I rubbed a hand over my face, defeat weakening my bones. “Tell me how to fix this.”
Tara swiped away the remnants of her sorrow and straightened her stance. “I don’t know, Dad. This isn’t my fourth-grade science project. You can’t just run to the store when the glue runs out and save the day.”
“There has to be something.” My words bled with rawness. With pleading. “You’re my little girl.”
“I’ll always be your little girl.” Tara gathered her purse from the couch and breezed past me, muttering a final statement over her shoulder that twisted the blade in my chest, all the way through. “And you’ll always be the man who broke my heart.”
CHAPTER 38
Mom was seated at my tiny kitchen table with a glass of wine when I slipped into the apartment and kicked off my shoes. Her head popped up at my entrance, her eyes glimmering with hope.