Chapter 17

Scott

It felt wonderful to have Cassie in my arms—it always did—but as my mouth moved over hers, something not quite right shifted in my stomach. I appreciated that she wanted to be with me no matter what her father had to say about it; I really did. But what about my side of things? What about the fact that all of this would ultimately come down on my head? Or the fact that he was the boss and he could do and say whatever he pleased with his own company regardless of his daughter’s wishes? I felt like she wasn’t thinking about anything but what she wanted. But did she really want a man who was fired from his job, unable to support himself, and stuck in the endless drudge of construction work? She didn’t want that, but that was not where her thoughts were.

Cassie, in all regards, was still the little rich girl who grew up with a silver spoon in her mouth. I knew she meant well, but she wasn’t looking at the full picture. She was only looking at what seemed right to her and her life. She didn’t understand what it had taken to get where I was, or how hard it was for me to build toward a better future. She was handed those things when she was born, and if she lost something, it was given right back to her, good as new or better. Maybe she wasn’t a bad person, but she was being incredibly selfish at the moment, and that didn’t sit right with me at all. It was supposed to be about the two of us working through things together, facing the same things together. But there was no way she could face what I was facing; she didn’t have it to lose.

I pulled back from her again and looked into her eyes, trying to find the right words. I knew this wasn’t going to go well, but I was starting to feel angry that she was only thinking about how this would affect her. For her, it was simple to say “fuck it” and move forward, but for me it meant giving up a whole hell of a lot, and she never even thought to ask if that was okay. That was the biggest problem. She didn’t think about me or my side of things. I pulled her off my lap and stood up, walking over to the window and looking out at the rain.

“What’s wrong?” she said from behind me. “Scott?”

I wasn’t even sure how to start the conversation, much less tell her she was being a spoiled, selfish woman. That wasn’t something you could put lightly to someone. I put my hands on the sink and looked down at the dirty dishes. In Cassie’s world, she probably never had to wash a single dish. She probably never felt the sting of working so hard and having it snatched away from her. I wasn’t saying I wouldn’t give up things for her, but I had a hard time swallowing it when my life wasn’t even considered. She was living in a dream world, looking for her happy ending, but life wasn’t that simple. It was dark and cold and never played fair.

“Cassie, you are okay with your father finding out because you are tired of living under his thumb,” I said, turning toward her. “I understand that, and I can only imagine how frustrating it is for you to have to live a life that isn’t your own. Actually, I don’t have to imagine it because I have lived that way since I was sixteen. But in this scenario, all you are thinking about is what you will gain.”

“What are you talking about? You will gain the same thing,” she said.

“No, I won’t,” I said. “I already have you. I already have the freedom to be with whoever I want. While you have everything to gain and nothing to lose, I have everything to lose. It’s not as easy for me to think about letting your father know when I am the one who will be punished for it in the end.”

“But we will be together,” she said.

“We are together now,” I replied. “You are jumping into a decision without giving it even the slightest bit of thought. You want your freedom, and you want it now, no matter what it does to me, the man you are supposedly doing all this for.”

“You think I don’t think about you in this?”

“It certainly doesn’t seem like you are,” I said, crossing my arms. “It seems like all you are thinking about is lifting a load from your shoulders. Well, guess where that load will land: right on mine.”

“If you don’t want to be with me, then just say it,” she said, putting her hands on her hips.

“It’s not about whether I want to be with you,” I said. “I think I have shown that I want to be with you. The entire time I did what you asked to make things easier on you, and when that was no longer needed, you threw caution to the wind, ready to assert your freedom from your father. Meanwhile, I am back here thinking about what I will do once he finds out. You will get scolded, a firm talking to. Your father will never take the company from you. It is his legacy. But me, I will lose my job. I will lose every piece of headway I was making toward the future. My dreams will be lost because you couldn’t wait to tell your father how grown up you are.”

“That is fucking ridiculous,” she yelled. “I have thought about you this whole time.”

“Really? What do you think your father will say when he finds out I am screwing his daughter? Do you really think you can talk sense into the man you had to hide a high school relationship from? Do you think he will open his arms and invite me right into the family?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “But I can talk to him, reason with him, not allow him to ruin your life.”

“Not allow him? Since when did your father ever start letting people tell him what he can and can’t do?” I yelled. “He will see me, and he will squash me like the bug he thinks I am. If you are so sure that you can talk him down, then why don’t you face him yourself? Why don’t you stand from the rooftops and shout out to the world that you and I are together and let the chips fall where they may?”

“I can’t tell everyone,” she said. “It’s against the company rules. We are not supposed to be dating whether my father is a part of it or not.”

I laughed. “Because you are such a stickler for company policy. Face it, Cassie, you are the little rich girl from the other side of the tracks who came down here and slummed it for a summer by falling for a roughneck. It’s a cute little story you will be able to tell your future rich husband, and everyone will have a good laugh.”

“That’s not fair,” she said with tears in her eyes. “I never said that or anything like it. I never thought I was slumming. I never thought this wouldn’t last or that I would one day tell anyone about it. You are angry, and you are saying hurtful things to me.”

“No, Cassie,” I said, shaking my head. “I am telling you the truth—a truth you don’t want to see because it’s painful. You have been shielded from everything painful your entire life, and now you don’t want to see the truth.”

“What truth?” she yelled. “You are making this all up in your head.”

“No,” I said. “I am telling you the dirty, unfiltered truth about us. You don’t want people to know you fell in love with an employee, a low man on the totem pole, a construction worker from the wrong side of the country club line. You don’t want people to know that I possibly built their house before going back to my one-room home in the slums.”

“That is such bullshit,” she said. “If you want to feel sorry for yourself, then go right ahead, but I am not the one making you feel bad for any of that. You are making yourself feel bad. I have never once put you down for who you are or how you live. In fact, until this moment, I haven’t even thought about it. You are the one putting this on yourself, and I won’t allow you to push it back on me.”

“You won’t allow me? You won’t allow me to show the cold hard truth of the matter? You are too fragile for this lifestyle, Cassie,” I said. “You are too ignorant to the ways of the world to understand that not everything is made of marble and gold.”

“That is not fair. I cannot help who I was born to or how I was raised,” she said.

“You know what?” I said. “You’re right. You can’t help who you were raised by or what you were given. I wish like hell I grew up in a life where my biggest problem with my father was that he was too controlling. I wish I had a father to be too controlling.”

“I’m sorry your dad isn’t here anymore,” she said, “but that is not my fault, and it is not my fault that I have a father who won’t allow me to live my life. And I never said anything about how you live.”

“Tell me then, Cassie, tell me if you think I am good enough for you,” I said, walking up to her. “Look me in the goddamn eyes and tell me that you haven’t thought about the fact that I don’t live up to the standards you are accustomed to or that you think you deserve.”

“This is ridiculous,” she said.

“Answer me,” I said, looking into her eyes. “Do you think I am good enough for you?”

She stood there with tears in her eyes, her fists clenched, looking me in the face. She didn’t say a word or move a muscle, and I couldn’t believe what it had come to. She really didn’t think I was good enough for her. Somewhere inside, she knew her father was right to keep us apart. My heart broke in half right there, right in the center of my kitchen.

“That’s what I thought,” I said, grabbing her raincoat and handing it to her. “Just go home, Cassie. Go home and leave me alone.”

A tear fell down her cheek, and I turned around, looking out at the rain. I stood there until I heard the front door slam behind her. Slowly, I lowered my head and stared into the sink, shaking my head. Everything I had gone through, everything we had done was all a lie, not anything more than a game to her. She may have thought she was in love with me, but she was in love with the idea of me, with the restless love story of two people from different worlds finding love and making it through the storm. As I watched the water pour down outside, I realized this was one storm we could have never weathered. Maybe she was right. Maybe I wasn’t good enough for her, but there was no changing who I was. There was no changing the fact that I was the boy from the wrong side of the tracks.