Hope
"I don’t know what to say to you," Mom said, her voice little more than a whisper. "I don't understand this, Hope." Her hands were shaking as she slowly pushed her chair back and stood up. "I love you. I do. I love you more than you'll ever know. But this?" She whispered the words like they were tainted. "What you've been doing is wrong."
"Lee," Dad called out, his voice almost pained as he looked between his wife and his daughter.
"Don’t, Kyle," Mom whispered, physically flinching away from his pleading tone. "Please don’t try to defend this behavior to me."
"Mom!" I barked, and the word came out like a choked sob. "Mom."
She looked down at me with the saddest gray eyed expression, and that's when I saw it.
For the first time in my life, I could see the disappointment in my mother's eyes as she looked at me like she didn’t know me.
Like I was a stranger to her.
And maybe I was.
She didn’t know this version of me.
The real me.
Tears filled her eyes and she gently shook her head. "If you didn’t want to be with Jordan, there were other ways of doing it. If you wanted to be with him, there were other ways of doing it, Hope!"
When she left the room, I looked down at my hands in despair, though I couldn’t make them out through the tears that were blinding me.
"I'll talk to her," I heard my father say.
"Don’t waste your breath," I replied wearily. I walked over to the table and slumped down on a chair. "She'll never understand."
"I do," he surprised me by saying. "I understand."
My head shot up. "You do?"
Dad nodded. "Where you are right now? I've been there. I've been in your shoes, sweetheart, and I know your pain."
"You cheated on Mom?" I exclaimed, horrified. "When?"
Dad cocked his brow at my remark – at the accusatory tone in my voice – and I balked.
"Sorry. Pot kettle black, huh?"
"No, Hope," he finally replied. "I did not cheat on your mother." Pausing, he added, "I did something far worse."
"What?"
"It's complicated."
"I want to know." When he didn’t respond, I added, "Please, Dad. I need to know."
"Let me tell you a story," he finally said. "About a guy I used to know. This guy was backed into a corner, saddled down with more responsibilities than he knew what to do with. This guy was screwed up, Angel. A fucking mess. He had the weight of the world on his shoulders and the guilt that came with a life of terrible choices. There was this girl," he added before running a hand through his hair. "And the guy, he was so fucking starved for love that he believed the girl when she told him she loved him. What he felt was lust, but he didn’t understand that at the time."
I watched my father as he shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
"Turned out she was a bad fucking woman," he continued to say. "And when the guy found out, he did something that would haunt him for the rest of his life."
"What?" I asked.
"He got in a car wreck with the girl. She was pregnant at the time, or so he thought, and she lost everything that night – her chance at having a future family, everything. And so did he. Because he blamed himself for what happened to her, for not being able to protect her."
"Jesus," I muttered.
"She was a broken girl now and he felt it was his fault," Dad added. "He took her pain and promised her he'd stay. He promised her he'd never leave her. But then something happened –" He paused and smiled almost reverently. "A different girl walked into his life, into his house and threw everything off kilter. And that new girl made him reevaluate everything in his life. The guy didn’t expect her, he didn’t want her there, wrecking everything he had built." His voice broke off and he exhaled heavily before adding, "But she stayed. And without even realizing it, the new girl brought the boy back to life, showed him a different way of living. She was like a breath of fresh air in his lungs." He smiled as he spoke. "They became friends, best friends, but he couldn’t stay away from her. He wanted more and he took it every chance he got. He felt trapped and torn between the right thing to do and the right thing for him."
"What did he do?"
"Nothing," Dad whispered. "And because he did nothing, he ended up breaking that girl just like he had broken the other girl."
"What did he do?"
"By then he was in so deep, he was drowning," he replied. "But then he decided which one he wanted to go down with, and he worked harder than he had for anything else in his life. The end."
"The end?" I cocked a brow. "What the hell kind of bullshit ending is that?"
"The real-life kind." Dad laughed. "You're the storyteller in the family, Hope. I'm just a man reminiscing about three people I used to know."
"What happened to the women in the story?"
Dad sighed before saying, "The first woman ended up where bad fucking women end up."
"And the second?"
Then he smiled. "The second one is upstairs in this house, Hope. Your mother."
"So you chose mom?"
"Not exactly," he replied. "Once I opened my eyes and my mind, and forgot about all of the bullshit and judgment, I realized there had never been a choice to make at all."
"You know? I think that's the first time in my life I've heard you talk about this."
"I prefer actions over talking," he shot back with a smirk. "I'm working on making her happy. I made a promise to myself a long time ago that I'd never stop working for her, fighting for her. I'd never take my foot off the gas when it came to making that woman fall in love with me."
"Dad, I think you're pretty safe. She married you and had like a half dozen of your babies."
"Taking her for granted is something I won't ever do, Hope. It's a feeling only a man who has come to the brink of losing his lifeline can understand. When it's real love, it hurts and it's hard, sweetheart. It's an uphill struggle, filled with hard decisions, second guessing yourself, and if you're lucky, moments of pure fucking heaven. Doing what's right and what's right for you are two entirely different things. Remember that."
Silence fell over us as I thought about everything my father had just told me.
"Dad?" I finally said, breaking the silence.
"Yeah?"
"Don't push too hard with Cameron."
My father's brows shot up in surprise. "Cam?"
"Yeah." I nodded, thinking back to the earlier episode. "I've seen them together, and it's intense…" Pausing, I shrugged before adding, "Reminds me a lot of you and Mom."
Dad's brows furrowed at my words. "How'd you figure that?"
"She's broken, and he's hell bent on putting her pieces back together," I explained with a small smile. "He's all in with that girl, Dad. If you force his hand, he will walk away from us."
"Would you?" Dad asked. "Would you walk away from your family for Luck?"
My automatic reaction was to say no, because I knew that's what he wanted me to say, and I wanted to please him, but I stopped myself. I was trying this new thing where I was honest. "I wouldn’t want to," I said carefully. "But I absolutely would – if it came down to it."
Dad stared hard at me for the longest time before smiling. "That's how you know you've made the right choice for you."
"Dad?" I asked after another long pause of silence.
"Yeah?"
"There's something I need to do," I confessed. "Something I have to tell him… something bad."
"Lucky?"
I nodded and swallowed down a huge swell of fear. "And I'm terrified of what will happen when I do."
I couldn’t keep it from him any longer.
He needed to know about the pregnancy.
But I was so scared.
I was petrified of what would happen when I told him I didn’t know if the baby belonged to him or Jordan.
Would he believe me when I told him I said no?
Would he think I was lying to save my butt?
God, the thought of him not believing me was devastating.
"What do I do, Dad?"
"You tell him, Hope." Exhaling a heavy sigh, my father leaned back in his chair, blue eyes locked on my face. "That man loves you. Whatever it is, you'll figure it out together."
"Are you sure?"
"He's a tough guy, Angel," Dad replied. "Whatever it is, Luck will handle it."
My father was right about Hunter being a tough man.
He was crazy strong, both mentally and physically.
The only problem was, handling it was exactly what I was afraid of him doing.