Until You (Fall Away Series)(17)

I couldn’t tear my eyes away from his face. Nothing had changed. Other than being clean shaven now and his skin tone a little healthier—from not being on drugs, I would assume—he looked the same. There was still a little gray in his hair, and his once average build was now on the lighter side. I doubted inmates got the chance to get fat in prison.

But the part that got my palms sweaty was the way he looked at me. Unfortunately, that hadn’t changed, either. His eyes were cold and distant, with a hint of something else, too. Amusement, maybe?

It was like he knew something he wasn’t supposed to know.

He knew everything, I reminded myself.

And all of a sudden I was back in his kitchen again, my wrists burning from the rope and paralyzed from despair.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out the one thing I knew I would need. Tate’s fossil necklace.

I balled it up in my fist, already feeling a little stronger.

It was technically her mother’s, but I’d taken it when she left it on her grave one day. At first, I told myself that I was keeping it safe. Making sure it survived. Then it turned into another piece of her that I could claim.

Now, it was like a talisman. And I was no longer keeping it safe, but it was keeping me from harm.

Narrowing my eyes for good measure, I stalked over to him, not slow enough to look timid and not fast enough to appear obedient. On my own time, because he didn’t call the shots anymore.

“So what did you do?” he asked before I even sat down, and I hesitated for a moment before parking my ass in the seat.

Oh, yeah. He was going to talk to me. I’d forgotten about that part.

It didn’t mean I had to talk back, though.

I hadn’t decided how I was going to handle these visits, but he could go to hell. Fifty-two little get-togethers in the next year, and I may decide to speak to him at some point, but I wasn’t starting until I was goddamn good and ready.

“Come on,” he taunted. “May as well pass the time.”

A little part of me thought that, without drugs and alcohol, my father would—oh, I don’t know—behave like he had a heart. But he was still a dick.

“Did you steal?” he asked, but then continued as if talking to himself and tapping his fingers on the steel table. “No, you’re not greedy. Assault, maybe?” He shook his head at me. “But you never liked to pick battles that you could lose. With someone weaker, perhaps. You were always a little coward that way.”

I balled my other hand into a fist and concentrated on breathing.

Sitting there, forced to listen to his internal musings that he was so gracious to let me hear, I wondered if he just pulled this shit out of his ass or if he really was that perceptive.

Was I greedy? No, I didn’t think so. Did I pick battles with weaker opponents? It took me a minute to consider, but yes, I did.

But that was only because everyone was weaker than me.

Everyone.

“So it must be drugs, then.” He slapped his hand down on the table, startling me, and I looked down, away from his eyes, out of reflex. “I’d believe that. With your mother and me, it’s in the blood.”

Everyone. I reminded myself.

“You don’t know me,” I said, my voice low and even.

“Yeah, keep telling yourself that.”

No. He left me—and thank God for that—when I was two. He spent a few weeks with me one summer.

He did not know me.

Clenching Tate’s necklace, I stared at him hard. It was time to shut him up.

“How long are you in for? Six more years?” I asked. “What does it feel like to know that you’ll have gray hair before you get laid again? Or drive a car? Or get to stay up past eleven on a school night?” I raised my eyebrows, hoping my condescending questions would push him back in place. “You don’t know me, and you never did.”

He blinked, and I held his gaze, daring him to come at me again. It looked like he was studying me, and I felt like I had a sniper scope on me, zoning in.

“What is that?” He gestured to the necklace in my hand.

I looked down, not realizing that I had threaded my fingers through the light green ribbon. It was obvious I had something in my fist, and all of a sudden my heart started thundering away.

I wanted to leave.

Thinking about Tate and my father in the same thought, and having my father see something of hers, disgusted me.

You know the flowers a magician pulls out of their hand? At that moment, I wanted to be the flowers and go back into hiding. I just wanted to sink into the chair and be out from under his dirty eyes, taking the necklace with me where it would be safe.