Page 58 of Ruin Me
Suddenly, the enormity of Ife’s words hit me.Iwas the reason Madison disappeared whenever I visited Ife. I was also the reason she never came home. No wonder her parents fawned over her so much. They didn’t know the next time they would see her after her assignment was over.
And Nikita… The reason she didn’t push harder against our relationship when she still harbored hard feelings against me was most likely because Madison was more likely to stay in Douglas if we were in a relationship.
My little bunny loved every moment she spent with her parents. I’d thought before there was a desperation underlying the visits she made when she wasn’t busy working herself to an early illness. All because I rejected her when her heart was at its most vulnerable, Madison had cut as many ties to Douglas as she could for a clean break.
However, as I looked at my daughter, I realized there was one tie Madison couldn’t sever. She left everything that represented safety and love and protection, yet kept the one connection that would always remind her of her heartache. She endured eight years of painful reminders every time she spoke, visited, and saw Ife. And she did it because her love for my daughter was the only thing keeping her together when she faced everything alone.
I couldn’t let my relationship with Madison be the catalyst for ruining their relationship after the damage I’d already done to Madison. “Sweetheart, I thought Madison was your best friend. What you’re asking isn’t fair to her.”
“Fuc—to hell with fairness. The second she let you stick your dic—your you know what—inside her, all fairness went out the window. God! I’ll never get that image out of my head.” Ife scrubbed her face as if trying to cleanse her memory, but what she saw wasn’t something anyone could forget.
On her next pass in front of me, I snagged Ife’s wrist and halted her manic pacing. She pulled, but my grip was strong and my will stronger. She eventually stopped resisting to glare her fury down at me.
“We need to find a way to work things out.” I loosened my hold.
She yanked herself free and backed away. “There’s only one way to figure things out, Dad. You have to choose. Me or Madison.”
I lurched from my seat and rounded on Ife. “You must be forgetting who the man who raised you is. Who changed your diapers, who read bedtime stories to you, who was there to comfort you when you had nightmares, who scared off all the bogeymen, and who was there at the drop of a dime to support and praise you? I was there for every accomplishment you made and I will be there for all the new ones. You will never not be my daughter, and I’ll never stop loving you. And I will always show up whenever you ask or need me.”
She nodded, her face becoming calm for the first time since she arrived.
“And Madison will be by my side for all your future endeavors.”
CHAPTER 24
Madison
I sank to the floor outside Kent’s study after hearing Ife’s ultimatum, my heart shredded and bloody in the hands I curled against my chest. Not even Kent’s defense of me eased the pain as Ife stormed out of the office without seeing me, screaming, “Don’t expect to talk to me until you get rid of her!”
Memories bombarded me, silencing the questions about how she knew where Kent was or how she got into the penthouse. Those were insignificant compared to our years together. Years of us huddled side by side from childhood to adulthood as we shared secrets turned to ash on my tongue. Years of adventures we had no business going on, trips, coffees, late-night conversations, sleepovers for the hell of it, crying sessions, calm-down sessions where we talked each other off a bridge—mostly I did most of the talking while Ife did the threatening—binge sessions whether it was food or movies, or our favorite K-pop idol, Woo Do Kang, being sighted in the wild.
Ife was my person from the time we entered kindergarten and she saw the light skin patches on my face and said, “I wishwe could be sisters. Since we can’t let’s be best friends and punch the dummies who keep pointing and making weird faces whenever they see you.”
Yeah, Ife was my warrior and my safe space just as much as I was hers. And now I had to contend with destroying that.
Kent walked out of the study and noticed me curled in on myself on the floor. He kneeled beside me and cupped my knee. “Little bunny, she’ll come around. She just needs time.”
I shook my head and opened my mouth, but a sob escaped. One became two, then three until I lost count and poured my heart out because it was breaking.
Kent used his strength to pick me up and carry me to the bedroom where he held me until I passed out from the emotional upheaval.
Hours later, I woke to him holding me in his arms as if he hadn’t moved from the spot for hours. The room was dark, probably three in the morning. I blinked, feeling the pressure to cry building up behind my eyes again as my new reality hit, but no moisture appeared to help my outpouring. I was a dry lakebed about to fossilize the relics abandoned in its depths when it was once full. Emptiness engulfed me as the realization hit again.
I was no longer Ife’s person. She’d relegated me to a ‘her.’ As if I was a stranger, unworthy of being in her vicinity.
“I think, deep down, I knew something like this would happen,” I whispered brokenly to Kent. “That’s why I was so against her finding out about us. Even with all the madness surrounding us, I wanted to hold onto what we were becoming for as long as possible because I haven’t felt happiness like this ever in my life.”
Kent twisted my body until I looked up into his face. His lips were a firm line and I imagined brackets framing his mouth if not for the covering of his beard shielding the telltale sign fromme. Even without that indicator, Kent who always appeared younger than his age, wore his forty-eight years and then some in the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and the ridges in his brow.
“Little bunny, I promise I’ll dedicate my life to making you happy again. I’ll convince Ife what she’s doing is hurting herself as much as she’s hurting you, and I’ll make her come around.”
At his mention of his daughter’s name, I glanced away. The teenage me never thought twice about the consequences of starting a relationship with the man I loved, and the adult me was just as guilty because I avoided thinking about them for my own selfish ends. But now…
Kent pinched my chin and turned my face to look at him again. “I understand how important Ife is to you, and as long as I have breath in my body, I’ll give you everything you want,” he said, repeating his vow from yesterday.
A time when the only thing on my mind was being seen, heard, and appreciated by the man I’d hero worshipped as a child.
“But now’s not the time. She’s not receptive to any overture on our parts.”