Chapter 28

Cassie

After a couple weeks of avoiding my father, I realized I couldn’t ignore him anymore. He had called me the day before and asked if I would have dinner with him. I knew he had noticed I hadn’t been around and had received my texts that I was at Whitney’s house, but he wasn’t stupid; there was obviously something wrong. I sat at the table and looked down at my plate, pushing my food around with my fork. I still couldn’t understand why they would name it “morning sickness” when you felt like complete shit all day every day. They should just call it hell. That would get the point across well enough. I couldn’t wait until I got to my second trimester and all the gross feelings and surging hormones made their way out of my body. I wanted to feel normal again, not like a raging, puking crazy person.

“I picked this restaurant because I thought it was your favorite,” my father said, looking over at me. “You have barely touched your food. Why aren’t you eating?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m not feeling too well.”

“We could have postponed,” he said.

“No. It’s okay,” I said. “I’ll have them box it up and take it home for later.”

“The site is coming along well,” he said. “Of course, you would know that if you had been showing up recently. Bill says you kind of disappeared and haven’t called or anything. I have to say, your disappearance at work and at home have me a little worried about you.”

“I’m fine, Dad,” I said. “I needed to sit down and do some thinking, really understand who I am and what I want out of life.”

“Ah,” he said, shaking his head. “The old early-twenties soul searching. And what have you come up with?”

“Well, I think I have decided that I want to take a year off school,” I blurted out. “I want the opportunity to think about what I want out of life, where I want to go, what I want to do, and how I am going to get there. I think it’s important I have those goals locked down before spending any more money on an education.”

“But you have a path,” he said, putting down his fork. “You were going to become an engineer for the company, then gradually step up as I got closer to retirement. Your mother and I have talked to you about this for years.”

“You have,” I said. “Mother is never around.”

“Well, you know she has her own mind now that you are older,” he said, ignoring the fact that she hadn’t been home, or called, in nearly six months.

“Regardless,” I said, “construction is not for me. It just isn’t. I’m sorry, Daddy, but that was your dream, your company, and I really tried to give it my all, to get excited, but it makes me miserable most of the time.”

“That is why they call it work, dear,” he said, not taking me seriously. “There are few people in this world who get to do what they love, Cassie, and even those people have days where they hate their jobs. This is the family business.”

“Dad, you aren’t taking me seriously,” I said. “I mean it. I want to take a year off from school. I want to decide, on my terms, what it is that I want to do with my life. If it ends up being the company, great. But if not, I need to know that.”

“All right,” he said, looking at me. “What do you need from me?”

“Financial security,” I said point blank. “I don’t have enough experience to do anything worthwhile, and I was hoping you would be willing to continue to support me financially for that time period.”

He chuckled. “It always comes down to the dollar. I would never put you out on the street, Cassie, but eventually, if you are going to go your own way, you will have to learn how to support yourself.”

“I know, Daddy,” I said, laying it on thick. “I just need this time. It’s important.”

He sighed reluctantly. “All right. We will sit down next week and go over the allotment I will give you.”

I smiled. “Thank you.”

“A smile.” He chuckled. “That’s new these days. You have been sheltered away from me and the world for most of the summer. Are you sure there isn’t anything else going on with you?”

“No. Nothing,” I lied. “I have had my head in other places and needed the time and space to work it all out. I didn’t want to jump to conclusions or make a rash decision, so I took the time to think it through.”

“Well, at least I know something I taught you has stuck,” he said. “Now, for the matter of your internship, I am going to sign off on it anyway. That way if you decide to return to the engineering program, regardless of what field you decide to go into, you will have it completed.”

“Thanks, Dad,” I said with a nod.

Instantly, I felt terrible for not being truthful with him, especially since he was taking my change of heart with such class and dignity. I just didn’t have the nerve to tell him the truth. I knew he wouldn’t react in the same manner he did over the change in career. I wanted to revel in the finite moments where we weren’t butting heads and he was acting like a dad and not a warden. That, and I was terrified of what he would say.

Just knowing how he had reacted when he found out Scott and I were sleeping together made me think he would lose his mind if he knew I was pregnant with Scott’s child. He would kill him, literally kill him, and that was the last thing I needed. His judgments were harsh enough, but the punishment for the crime of doing something outside his order of things was not something I wanted to experience, not yet at least. I wanted to be secure in myself before I took on that emotional roller coaster.

When dinner was over, I thanked my father and gave him a hug, just glad to have survived the evening. I grabbed an Uber and headed over to Whitney’s house. She was waiting on me to finish up with my dad, thinking that I was going to tell him about the baby, but I had chickened out. As the car drove along, I stared out the window at the mountains in the Colorado skyline. I rarely took time anymore to just be there, to be present in my own surroundings. My mind was always blasting through at a million miles a minute, and there was always so much drama going on in my life. It was nice to be still for a moment, to take in the silence in the car. Of course, that silence only lasted until I walked into Whitney’s house.

“So, how did it go?” she asked.

“I didn’t tell him,” I said. “I chickened out and told him I wanted a year off from school instead. He took it pretty well, so I figured that was enough to spring on him in one night.”

“You okay?”

“No,” I said. “I miss Scott, plain and simple. I miss that man every second of the day. I think about him when I wake up, all day long, and when I go to bed at night. I’m tired of the drama, of the fighting, of the forcing myself to stay away from him when he is standing there begging me to take him back.”

“You need to tell your dad you are pregnant,” Whitney said. “When he knows that it’s Scott’s baby, then the secret is out, and he has no real way of preventing you and him from being together.”

I scoffed. “You don’t know my father.”

“But at least then you could be free to make your own choices,” she said. “You can take the time to think about what you want and make it happen, and not on your father’s watch. He is the one thing standing in the way of you being completely at peace with this child, Cassie. Until he knows, you won’t ever feel comfortable with any of this.”

“Telling my father scares me even more than opening up to Scott,” I said. “At least with Scott, I know what I could possibly expect, but my father is going to lose it.”

“At first,” Whitney said. “But we talked about this. Eventually he will come around. He will want to be in that baby’s life. What about your mom?”

“You mean the woman who had maids and nannies raise me and then went jet-setting all over the world when I went to college? Yeah, she doesn’t care,” I said. “And she has no pull with my father. She never has. His word is stone. I’m terrified. After what he did when he found out about Scott and me in the first place, what he will do to him with this information? On top of that, my father, brute and mean as he is, is still the only true parent I have. I am terrified that this is going to completely break our relationship. I don’t want to lose my father in all of this. He is a damn stubborn man, and he will be until his last breath.”

“You have some serious issues with conversation,” Whitney said. “I’m pretty sure I am the only person in the world you feel comfortable telling anything to.”

“Pretty much,” I said.

“So, even if your dad disappears off the map, life will still go on,” she said. “You will still have a child to raise, a career to find, and a life to live—one that should be what you want, not what everyone else wants. If you want a family with Scott, a happily ever after with him, then you have to get over this fear of conversation. Otherwise, you will be torn apart because you can’t have an earnest talk with the father of your child. At that point, it is no longer his fault; it is yours. He is willing to talk, to do pretty much anything you need to be okay with being together, but you keep running in the opposite direction.”

“God,” I said, groaning as I plopped down on the couch. “I know. I know you’re right about this. I know my fear of talking things out has sprung from my father, and it’s now affecting everything else in my life. But I just don’t know how to handle it. After the other night, I don’t know if Scott will even want to talk to me now. I pretty much told him it was too late for a relationship. I mean, how many times can I say that before he finally gives up?”

“I don’t know,” Whitney said, sitting down next to me. “But you don’t want to wait to find that out.”

I nodded and leaned back, feeling even more upset and confused than before. If I went to him now with my heart in my hands, there was a good chance he would crush it. If I didn’t, though, I would never know if we could have been the happy family I really did want with him.