Guilt threatens as I bat it away, having declared it an enemy of self-preservation.
“The truth is,” Dad continues as I keep my gaze fixed on my beer, “more than anything, I still want to hand it over to you when we’re both ready.”
He says my name with a fair amount of authority—in a request for my full attention—and I oblige, lifting my eyes to his. “But not because it’s some birthright. It’s what you’ve been working toward for a large part of your life. That chair is yours, if you still feel like it’s where you belong, Natalie.”
“It’s easier for me to work at Hearst,” I relay, “Speak would be a circus if I came back now.”
“Not necessarily. The traffic has cleared out for the most part. It thinned out a lot when I hired security.”
“Jesus,” I palm my forehead. “I’m sorry you had to do that.”
He waves his hand in dismissal.
“You know as well as I do, Dad, they’ll just come running back to the doors if and when our divorce is final.” I see no satisfaction in his eyes with that admission.
“I don’t give a damn about that…the media part,” he clarifies, knowing the hard line still exists where I refuse to discuss my relationship status with Easton. I’m still protective of my husband, even if I’m shifting from one emotion to another regarding him on the daily.
“You have employees that will care. It’s not fair to them.”
“Already thinking like a chief,” he says with immense pride, “but tough shit if they can’t handle it. It’s our chosen arena, so they can deal with it or find the door.” He pauses, his beer halfway to his mouth, “but that’s not why you won’t come home.”
Pushing up the sleeves of my thick sweater, I turn and face him fully. “I’m still in Chicago because I’ve realized I’ve let the people in my life—especially the men I trusted—have too much sway over me and say in my decisions. A flaw I didn’t realize I desperately needed to correct—if only for my sanity’s sake. I’ve set new boundaries because of it, and I refuse to go back to that.”
“I’m proud of you, and I’m not trying to lure you back with the promise of inheriting a position you’ve already earned. It’s your decision, okay?”
Dipping my chin, I take another long sip of beer. Unable to help myself, I finally speak up.
“How in the hell did you endure it?”
Fiddling with the cocktail napkin, he returns my gaze point-blank. “Sometimes, love, no matter how real it feels and is, isn’t always the right love, and you don’t figure that part out until you’ve lost it and put some time between your feelings and reality. I got that perspective after my split with Stella. In my case, time helped, Natalie, and it’s been a very, very long time.”
I shake my head. “But you still had so much animosity.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not proud of myself,” he says, looking down at the napkin he’s shredding. “But that had far more to do with you. Between finding out the way I did and being in the same room with Reid and his son—knowing your last name was theirs—it was too much at once. Though I’ll forever be sorry for how I behaved that day and the ones after.” His next admission is full of remorse. “I had Brad draw up those papers in my worst hour.”
“I’ll always be sorry, too, especially for the way you found out. I never thought it would go as far as it has.”
Silence lingers until he tilts his head back up to me. “Do you still want to know?”
I dip my chin.
“Okay…the honest to God truth about my relationship with Stella is that I realized in retrospect that I held her back with my own aspirations for the paper and expectations for my own future.” He shifts back on his stool, his eyes glazing over with thoughts of the past. “She tried to talk to me about it more than once, but I was selfish because I was perfectly content with the way things were. At times it felt as if she was waiting for something to happen, for her life to begin, and I couldn’t figure out why. As much as I wanted to be the man for her, I wasn’t right for the future she envisioned for herself and was working so tirelessly for. When I saw how much she wanted her idea of her future and with whom, I broke off our engagement immediately.”
“So, you broke up with her?”
“Yeah, I did,” he sighs. “But she loved me, Natalie, truly. I still believe she loved me enough to go through with marrying me. If I hadn’t broken it off so abruptly, I think she might have because we were good together. But some of that choice would have been made from loyalty, and I fucking hated that. I hated it so much that I kept my distance from her for months after we broke up. That was after being together for almost four years, living together for half of that time. Talk about hell on earth. It was hard.” He sips his beer.