It made me understand my father a little better.
He reached for his glass but didn’t take a drink. “Did I tell you how I met your mother?”
I nodded. “In a coffee shop.”
“True. But the reason we met was because our families asked us to. It wasn’t an arranged marriage, but it was pretty close. I was a young man and enjoyed all the perks of being a wealthy bachelor. She was a beautiful woman who could have any man she wanted. Neither one of us was interested in settling down at the time. She was in her early twenties…very young. But when we met…we just knew. Our families were ecstatic that we tied the knot, and we lived a happy life together.”
“I never knew that…”
“She didn’t like to tell people that story. Made it seem less romantic.”
Now I found it more romantic.
“When I think about how she died…” He took a deep breath, and his nostrils flared. His eyes drifted down to the table, his thoughts a million miles away. “It still haunts me. She’s at peace, and I know she forgives me…but it still haunts me.”
“It haunts me too…”
“Experiencing something traumatic like that breaks you. What would you have done if Kamikaze took Arwen away and did unspeakable things to her? Would you have gone home and returned to work like nothing ever happened?”
I would have lost my mind too. “You were the one who told Kamikaze my marriage was a sham…so that almost did happen.” He’d stabbed me in the back and took the coward’s way out. It was despicable. The memory got me worked up all over again.
“Yes…I suppose.”
“So you wanted him to do your dirty work because you were too much of a coward to do it yourself.” Our conversation had been going somewhere for once, but my rage caused a bump in the road.
He raised his gaze and stared at me. “Your wife caught me off guard when she cornered me. I didn’t appreciate that.”
“Yes, she’s smarter than you. Didn’t realize you would take that so personally.”
He took a drink. “If it weren’t for me, she would still be living in that piece-of-shit apartment bedding pretty boys. I kept her legs closed and returned her to where she belonged.”
My eyes narrowed as my body tensed. “Don’t talk about her like that.” She had bedded other men, but that was only because I’d bedded other women. It was a retaliation, not an impulse. “She left because I fucked up. I don’t blame her for leaving.”
“What did you do?”
I was surprised Arwen didn’t tell him. “That’s between us.”
“Well, you wouldn’t have gotten her back if it weren’t for me. Don’t forget that.”
“I won’t,” I said. “Just like I won’t forget when you encouraged Kamikaze to kidnap my wife and rape her.” I should take the glass in front of me and smash it over his thick skull.
His eyes turned down once more. “I shouldn’t have done that… It was impulsive.”
“Cowardly. That’s the word you’re looking for.”
“It worked out in the end.”
I cocked my eyebrow. “I almost died. I had to point a gun to my head and pull the trigger over and over again. My brains almost exploded across that restaurant as my body thudded to the floor and created a huge pool of blood.” I remembered exactly how Kamikaze looked when that bullet took him out of existence. It was messy and disgusting. It could have been me. “I called you before I left, and you didn’t give a damn—about your own son.” I’d come all the way here on Christmas Day when I should have been home with my wife. This man didn’t deserve my time. He wasn’t on his knees begging for forgiveness, so I was talking to a brick wall. Maybe he did lose his mind when he lost my mother—but that was no justification. I was hurt, still tender like a recent wound. It killed me to feel this kind of indifference from my own father, the man who raised me.
I came here in the hope of resolution, but now I was only reminded how worthless he was. My anger rose to rage, and when I hit my critical level, there was no chance of calming down. My hands pushed against the table as I shoved myself out of my seat. The chair flew back, and I prepared to storm out. “This was a waste of time. Goodbye, Caspian.” I would never call him my father again because the title simply wasn’t fitting anymore. I wasn’t sure what he was. A stranger.
“Maverick.”
Any other time, I would have stopped at his command like an obedient dog. Even when I was enraged, I could never ignore my father. It was disrespectful and strange. But those days were over—and I kept walking. It was time to walk out of that house and never come back. It was time to be with my real family.