My chest inflates with anger again. “Fuck off.”
“I’ll take that exceedingly rude and annoying answer as a yes,” my dad says, sipping his whiskey.
I glare. “No. I had no intention of…” I trail off and glance at Greg.
“Act like her father isn’t in the room,” my dad says.
That’s fucking impossible. He’s four feet away from me. “Look,” I say, “Daisy is gorgeous, but I tried not to think of her like that.”
“Tried? Did you fail?” he asks.
“Why are you prosecuting me like a fucking lawyer, Dad?” I retort.
His eyebrows rise in genuine shock. “So you still consider me your father? That’s funny considering you’ve returned only one of my calls in a year.” Before I tell him to fuck off again, he asks, “Did you masturbate to her image or likeness?”
“No,” I growl. A few times. Once recently. She was eighteen already. A part of me will always feel guilty for it.
“That’s enough, Jonathan,” Greg says. His eyes actually soften on me, noticing how worked up I’m getting. I’ve balled one of my hands into a fist, and a bitter, nasty taste rises in my mouth.
Greg asks, “What’s your longest relationship, Ryke?”
“A few months, maybe four.”
Greg sighs. “Okay, here’s where I stand. I believe that you weren’t with my daughter until Paris, but that doesn’t mean I approve of you with her. You’re still twenty-five, and maybe in ten years the age difference won’t seem as significant, but what you’ve just said makes me think you’ll last three months. You say you’re not in it for the sex, but I’m not that na?ve.” He pauses and adds, “She’s given you her heart, and if you’re going to give her anything less than that, then you need to end this right now. Understand?”
I nod a couple times. I can’t just leave it like this. I dig inside my soul, trying to produce something more. “I hope,” I say, meeting Greg’s gaze, “that one day you’ll be able to see how much I love your daughter.”
“If you stay with her long enough, I just might.”
It’s definitely better than where we started. He reaches out to shake my hand.
It’s a kind offer, one that I won’t fucking reject.
I’m going to build a relationship with her father, even if it means having to get closer to mine. It’s a sacrifice I am willing to make a thousand times over.
I’d fucking call that love.
< 57 >
DAISY CALLOWAY
How I ended up in the back cabin with all the couches, alone with Lo and his father, I have no idea. We have two hours left of the flight, and my mom wanted to go talk to my dad, and everyone kind of shuffled around. I think Rose is announcing her pregnancy to our parents.
Jonathan pours a glass of whiskey and sits back next to Lo while I sprawl out on the other couch, a monogrammed burgundy blanket covering my legs. HALE in black lettering. I braid my hair for the twentieth time, bored and anxious.
I learned that my dad wants to “get to know” Ryke. Jonathan mentioned that, so my dad made him stay up front with everyone else.
I’d join them, but my mom is in there.
So here I remain.
Jonathan looks to his son. “You need to send me your sales report for Halway Comics by next weekend. I need to know if you’re driving the fucking thing into the ground.”
“It’s been slow,” Lo says. “I took a month off for the road trip.”
“That’s your goddamn fault,” he refutes. “You’re running a business now. You can’t afford to take month-long vacations.”
“Connor took the same time off,” Lo defends.
“And he’s running a multi-billion dollar company with a staff of thousands. You don’t even have an assistant. Christ, you don’t even have an annoying assistant, the kind that screws up coffee orders and likes to share personal life stories that you don’t give a fuck about.”
This is why Lo doesn’t come to Sunday family luncheons with Lily. He gets berated and my sister either gets ignored or scolded. I don’t blame them for skipping.
“It’s called initiative,” Jonathan says after he takes a pretty giant swig of whiskey, without grimacing. And then his eyes fix on me, realizing that I’ve been watching. He stands. “Daisy—I think you and I should have a talk.” He sits on the couch next to me. “Loren, can you give us a minute?”