Fuck. That was a bad move, Trent.

I knew what I was doing, even as I did it. But somehow, watching Jessi trying to pick herself up after she’d just given me a look like she was horrified was something I’d wanted to walk away from. There were better ways I could have done it—less harsh ways.

Why had I even said that? As if ignoring her wasn’t bad enough! I’d wanted to bang my head against the nearest wall because I knew there was no way she wouldn’t have heard me. And I’d hurt her deliberately.

But I couldn’t stop myself. Old habits die hard and all that bullshit.

I could remember what our teen years were like. Even though I hadn't thought of her in a long while, the memories came to me with such clarity. I could even remember the last time I’d talked to her. I remembered down to the last detail of what she’d been wearing and how she’d done up her hair.

And afterward, her broken-hearted expression after I’d left her.

Fuck, but I’d been an asshole back then. I haven’t changed much from that, have I?

I’d wanted to turn back as soon as I’d said those harsh words, but I’d forced myself to keep walking. Because I wasn’t sure what I would have told her anyway.

Plus, there was the fact she’d changed. And not just a little bit, but a lot! That she was suddenly so breath-taking didn’t help, and I wasn’t sure I could talk to her without staring at her body, and that would be inappropriate. She’d offered me her heart on a platter, and I’d tossed it back in her face. There was no need to confuse the poor girl by suddenly acting all interested.

Besides, she was beautiful now; so what? I’d had my pick of the most beautiful women in the world, there was no reason why Jessi of all people should have my mind all muddled just from one look at her. I didn’t need a pastry chef to fulfill my sexual needs. And the only reason I even knew her current occupation was because Dad had brought her name up a couple of times and mentioned it. I wasn’t sure when it happened but for some reason, it had stuck with me.

Or maybe it was just because this was Jessie. Besides Dad and the older servants who’d stayed at the mansion forever, she was the only other person who remembered my mother had existed. My step-mom and half-siblings… I wasn’t sure if they’d ever seen her in pictures. Dad hadn't got rid of them, but he’d moved all of the pictures of Mom we had hanging around, insisting instead that they be locked up somewhere he wouldn’t have to see them unless he went looking for them.

I would visit that room sometime during my stay. I’d taken some pictures of Mom when I’d left but I didn’t have nearly enough.

I planned to put Jessi out of my mind very quickly. Even though when I first saw her after so long, I’d felt a twinge of desire, unlike anything I’d ever felt before with any other woman.

Maybe it had been too long since I’d been with someone, I rationalized to myself. I’d been working for months on end now, using my hand for relief. After the whole deal with Dad was done, I promised myself I’d go looking for someone. It wouldn’t take me long to find the companionship I needed.

Besides all that, I needed to focus on the current problem I found myself in. Because for all I knew, my dad could be dying somewhere, and my nitwit of a sister wasn't very forthcoming with information. I wanted to know which hospital he’d been taken to. There were quite a few within the area, but I could always go to the nearest and start asking from there. I would ask the staff, but if Emily was keeping quiet on it, they probably didn’t know.

I suddenly just wanted to get out of the house. I didn’t want another chance encounter with Jessi.

I might as well unpack. I went back for the suitcase I’d left in the trunk of my car. Ted, who was still waiting at the door, held his hand out in silent offering to carry my bag for me. I just shook my head and walked past him. Like I’d let an old man carry my luggage for me when I could do it just fine.

I wasn’t sure which room I was supposed to take, but my feet moved on their own. I went up the stairs to the second floor and strode down the hallway until I stopped at a specific door. I stared at it for a moment, before reaching out and pushing it open. It was unlocked. When I looked inside, nothing had changed.

Seriously.

There was no thick smell of dust in the room, so someone must have at least cleaned it. But they could have made some changes. The room looked exactly as I’d left it when I went off to college. Shit, that was more than a decade ago.

Was this supposed to make me feel guilty?

I walked into the room feeling suspicious. I set my suitcase down, then walked around the room just a little. It should be impossible that no one had touched or moved anything in there. My memory wasn’t so impeccable that I would remember every detail, but as far as I could tell, nothing had moved. It was bringing back some memories for me that I would have rather remained buried.

After the quick tour around my room, I dragged the suitcase over to the bed. At least the bed was made, something I didn’t remember from when I’d left the room for the last time. This was worse, though, as if whoever left it like this had been waiting for me to come home.

I opened my suitcase and started pulling out clothes an item at a time. It was a pretty big suitcase with quite a few outfits, but for an impromptu trip of an unknown length of time, I’d packed lightly.

Once I had everything arranged on the bed I started moving them over to the closet, trying not to wrinkle anything. I hurried and was done in a matter of minutes. It was calming for my mind as well, and I didn’t feel quite so unsettled afterward.

I left my room, feeling like I could go start looking for my dad now. I wasn’t sure yet if I was going to go to the closer hospitals in the area or just track their numbers down before leaving. There was impatience growing in my chest because I still didn’t know the state my father was in. A large part of me was still greatly worried.

I was headed for my car the moment I got outside but I never made it. Instead, I heard a car approaching and looked up in surprise.

What the hell…?

It was a private ambulance coming up the drive. There was only one reason I could think of for it to be here. Either it was coming to take my father or bringing him back. Whichever one, I didn’t know why the vehicle had to be there. If Dad was feeling unwell, he should have been at the hospital already, and if he was there then he should stay there, not come back home.

I was holding my car door open when the ambulance stopped several feet away, closer to the door. I walked over, my fists clenching at my sides.

Damn it, Dad! Why aren’t you in the hospital?

The back of the ambulance opened up, and I went over to greet my dad. A couple of people in white hospital outfits jumped out, and I could feel my fingers clench a little tighter. No one had told me what exactly had happened to him anyway, and my mind was to the point of making things up on its own.

It had to be bad, right? Or someone would have just told me. I slowed to a stop beside the ambulance. I wanted to move closer and assess the situation, but I also didn’t want to get too close. I didn’t want to see Dad lying down looking helpless if that was the extent of it. I wasn’t sure what I would do if I saw him like that. I thought of all the times I could have come home and refused his invitations.

As much as I didn’t want to be back here, or be part of the new family he’d made, he was still my dad. He was still my family. I might resent his choices, but that wasn’t a good enough excuse to not see my old man when he’d requested it of me. Even if it was more of a demand than a request.

But I couldn’t picture Matthew Thompson lying down looking all helpless, and I didn’t think I could remove the picture from my mind if I did see it.

I didn’t get to because as the two paramedics exited the ambulance, my step-mother, Alice came after them. I was surprised to see her there, though why should I? She was the man’s wife. My nose scrunched up as I stepped back.

She was the one person I didn’t want to see the most. I’d been avoiding thinking about her at all, but with her now in front of me, I couldn’t help myself going on the defensive. My back straightened and I forced my face to be expressionless. If there were one person I would never willingly show any emotion to, it was this woman, because if I did it would be intense dislike.

That would just be rude, wouldn’t it?

“Hello, Trent,” she said, smiling at me. “I’m surprised to see you here. Emily said you were coming back home, but…”

I just stood there, trying very hard not to scowl down at her. She was a small woman, and with my six-foot-five height, I pretty much dwarfed her.

“How’ve you been?” she asked, and I wondered why she was even trying to strike up a conversation.

She and I had barely talked in all the years we’d lived in the same house. When I couldn’t avoid her, she’d start talking to me, and I would either stare at her until she stopped, or I would walk away. There was nothing I had to say to her, anyway. Well, besides one thing.

You stole everything from me.

They were words I’d thought about her since the moment she came into our family. I was sad after my mom’s death, but eventually, I would have been fine. Maybe not got over it, but got used to the heartbreak enough that it didn’t hurt quite as badly every day.

But then my dad met this woman, and she took his love away from me. The day she walked into the mansion, Dad was all smiles while I was still grieving, and afterward, he spent even less time with me than he had before Mom had died. I’d seen him sitting alone in his office a few times, staring off into nothing, so I thought he was grieving the same as me. I didn’t mind that he didn’t make time for me because he was hurting as well.

Alice showing up out of nowhere was like a slap in the face.

He didn’t wait all that long for her to give him offspring. More distractions away from me. To the point he probably had no idea what was going on with me by the time I hit my teens. So I’d just neglected to tell him I was leaving when it came to college. I just packed my things one day and left, only for him to call me a month later wondering where the hell I’d gone.

A fucking month. That was how long it took my dad to remember I still existed after I left the mansion, and even then, only because my brothers were asking for me.

Just how long would he have ignored my absence, too busy with his new family to notice his eldest son had left the nest?

I had distanced myself from my family, from my dad. But it wasn’t like I’d done it all on my own. He didn’t reach out to me much, either. He’d forced me to tell him the day of my graduation, only for him to not be there, for both the end of high school and university. Then he’d told me to let him know when I started working so he could help me, only to call again several months later wondering why I didn’t ask for his help.

He didn’t get it was because I didn’t want it. I’d wanted to build things up on my own, and I did. Having his support would have been enough for me. If only the old bastard had had some faith in me instead of trying to run things behind the scenes.

Even though I’d been young when changes started to happen to him, I was always a smart kid, and I understood. His attention turned to the first baby, then the second, then the third, and there was no room for me. It looked like they didn’t need me anymore, so why would I have gone back anyway?

My father had changed, and I attributed all of it to this woman in front of me.

“I just wanted to check on Dad,” I said, forcing my voice to be polite. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know you would be here. I’ll just come back later…”

I tried to look over her shoulder as the paramedics pulled someone out of the ambulance, but she stood firmly in my way. I tried to go around her, only for her to move with me. I felt like I was about to snap, and I glared at the small woman in front of me.

“What are you doing?” I asked. “I need to get into the house too, you know. Unless you want to kick me out now?”

A delicate frown appeared on her forehead. “Trent, I would never try to kick you out of your home.”

I snorted, disbelieving. You did it anyway, didn’t you? Don’t pretend now, step-mother.

“Fine then. Emily wouldn’t tell me anything but you must have been with him. Can you tell me what Dad’s situation is?”

She didn’t speak immediately, her hands coming up to resettle the scarf she had around her neck. She looked uneasy, and it reminded me so much of Emily from before.

I scowled. “What can't you tell me? I’ve already had Emily dancing around the subject. Don’t mess with me, Alice. Tell me what’s happening with my father.”

She winced as I called her by first name, and I scoffed internally, wondering if she expected me to call her mom or something. So what if she’d known me since I was five? I didn’t consider her a replacement for my mother. If anything, I’d always thought of her as an intruder, and even after more than twenty years since we’d met, I wouldn’t think any differently.

“Trent,” she said hesitantly, looking up to meet my eyes. “I’m afraid that… your father doesn’t want to see you.”

I blinked down at her, tilting my head slightly to the side. I must have heard her wrong.

“What did you just say?” I asked. “Please repeat it because I think I must have heard you wrong.”

“You didn’t. Your father refuses to see you, Trent. I’m sorry.”

No, I wanted to say. There was no reason why Dad would refuse to see me. He was the one always badgering me to come back, and now that I had he didn’t want to see me?

My heart clenched as I thought maybe he was in a really bad state. My father had his pride, after all, and it was even greater than my own. If I didn’t want to see my dad lying down all helpless, he wouldn’t want his children seeing him that way.

But then, I narrowed my eyes at Alice. “Did you say something to him?”

She looked offended, but I couldn’t put it past her.

“Of course not! I swear, Trent, I tried to get him to agree to see you since you finally came home, but he just kept saying no. I’m sorry.”

I snorted at her apology. I didn’t need one from her for any reason.

“This isn’t my home,” I told her bluntly, then went to walk around her. She didn’t stop me now that Dad must have been taken out of sight. “This hasn’t been home for me for a long time.”

I ignored how my heart ached as I stomped back into the house.

Just why the fuck did I come back here? I wondered to myself.

My father couldn’t be bothered to see me, so why did Emily call me and tell me to come back? I was so fucking annoyed, enough that I could have just gone back to my room, packed my suitcase, and gone back into my car. I was so tempted to drive back to my own life, where everything wasn’t so complicated or annoying.

Work was stressful, but compared to dealing with my family it was a walk in the park.

But even if he didn’t want to see me there was still work to be done. And besides, I’d left things unfinished at my office. I could use some time to finish things up instead of wasting more time on this trip. I’d arrived barely an hour ago, and even with all the stops I’d made, I felt exhausted.

I just wouldn’t let it show.

I made my way to my father’s office and phoned my PA to let her know I would be working remotely for a while until things settled enough that me being out of the office wouldn’t bring things crashing down. I needed to protect the life I’d built, make sure it was still there when I went back to it.

Because of course, I would be going back. I wasn’t wanted around here, I never had been. The moment I got any news about Dad I’d pack up and leave again, likely for the last time.