Part of Your World(99)

I could hear my therapist in my head, breaking it down for me the way she probably would have been doing for weeks if I’d still been going to see her.

My dad was my abuser.

He was no different than Neil.

And my mom was his enabler.

I’d spent my whole life chasing my father’s affection and approval, accepting his hurtful words, letting him get away with it. And I’d always thought Mom was a victim too, that we were in it together—and maybe in a way we were. But for the first time, maybe ever, I saw it differently.

Because she never protected us.

Mom had normalized this abuse. Indulged it. She’d made me a participant, reinforced this behavior by giving my father what he wanted when he acted this way. The most influential woman in my life had modeled this for me from the day I was born and told me to take it. She’d taught me this, primed me for my relationship with Neil. Made me believe that this was what love looked like.

Bri was right. I’d been taught to placate assholes.

I’d been taught by Mom.

My heart started to pound.

It was too much to unpack now, all the layers of dysfunction and the consequences of their existence. I couldn’t think about who I’d be if I’d never been born to this family or if I’d been shown love without conditions or a mother with the strength to enforce the boundaries she never could. I couldn’t go back. I didn’t even want to.

I just wanted out.

I didn’t want to coddle my toxic parents. I didn’t want to die a martyr on the pyre of Royaume Northwestern, no matter how honorable that might be. I didn’t want my eighty-hour-a-week job because even though it should be, it wasn’t filling my well. I didn’t want this house or this life.

All I wanted was Daniel.

Being without Daniel was worse than anything I’d ever experienced. And I couldn’t have known this until I lived it. I couldn’t in my wildest dreams have imagined how utterly unlivable this life would be without him in it, until it actually happened.

But Daniel could.

He knew, weeks ago, months ago, what this would feel like. It was why he’d been willing to leave Wakan for me. He’d known. And I hadn’t.

I had to drown first.

And I was finally, finally ready to save myself.

Something flipped in my brain.

An enormous, stuck gear slowly turned inside of me, and an unmovable building block of my very makeup shifted. Daniel rose to the top, and everything else repositioned with a heavy metallic clank that echoed through my entire existence. For the first time in my life, my parents and Royaume Northwestern took second seat to something else, and the moment they did, a flood of new thinking poured out. Ideas I never would have considered began bubbling up, sloshing around, spilling into my mind. A mental clog disintegrated, and alternate pathways started to form.

And then I knew what to do. I knew it so clearly, I started to laugh.

I got up and darted across the room for my phone.

Bri twisted to watch me. “What are you doing?”

“I’m calling an emergency meeting of the hospital board,” I said, pulling up my email.

She shook her head. “But—it’s a Friday. They’re not going to come talk to you tonight—”

“They will if they still want a Montgomery on staff this time tomorrow.”

I hurriedly typed out the email and hit Send.

It was what Daniel had said last night. When you don’t care, everything’s on your terms. They can take it or leave it. It doesn’t matter to you, so ask for whatever the hell you want.

It’s not that I didn’t care about Royaume. It’s that I didn’t care more about it than Daniel.

So let the negotiations begin…





Chapter 37

Alexis



I’d been calling Daniel since last night. His phone was going right to voicemail, and my texts were unread.

I was exhausted. I’d barely slept. My meeting with the hospital board went until almost midnight, and then I’d spent two hours on a satellite phone call with my brother and his wife. I had to rewrite my speech, get Daniel a ticket to the gala, and put a tux on hold for him at a shop in Minneapolis. Then I left him a message, begging him to come. When he didn’t call me back or return my texts, I called the VFW looking for him. Hannah said he hadn’t been there in weeks, so I called Doug.

Doug told me Daniel said he was moving out of Wakan. That he couldn’t be there anymore. That he was probably already gone.

Because of me.

I’d broken his heart.

I’d thought letting him go was the most humane thing. The most humane thing would have been to let him stay.

Daniel had been ready to give up his whole world for me once. He’d always known what came first. He was willing to trade Wakan, the Grant House, his legacy—all to join me in this shallow, hostile place, because being without me was unacceptable to him.

And I hadn’t felt the same when it mattered.

I had allowed him to think I was embarrassed by him, that he wasn’t worth any sacrifice, no matter how big. That he wasn’t everything to me that I was to him. I’d had one foot out the door since the very beginning, I’d never given him everything, I’d denied him, hid him. And then I abandoned him.

I betrayed him.

So if he never wanted to speak to me again, could I even blame him?