Twisted Love (Twisted, #1)(52)
Because “heart stopped” was just a euphemism for “died,” and “took too many pills” was just a euphemism for “committed suicide.”
My lower lip trembled. I dug my nails into my thigh until crescent grooves etched into my flesh. “Why would she do that?”
Why would she leave me and Josh? Didn’t she love us? Weren’t we enough?
Parents were supposed to be there for their children, but she took the easy way out and left.
I knew that was unfair, because I had no idea what she’d been going through, but that only angered me more. Not only did I not have my mother, but I also didn’t even have memories of her. That wasn’t her fault, but I blamed her anyway.
If she were here, we could’ve made new memories, and the absence of the old ones wouldn’t matter as much.
My father rubbed a hand over his face. “She didn’t leave a letter.” Of course she didn’t, I thought bitterly. “But I imagine she felt…guilty.”
“About what?”
He flinched.
“About what, Dad?” My voice rose. My pulse was roaring now, so loud I almost didn’t hear his answer.
Almost.
But I did, and when I registered his words, tasted the poison of their truth, my chest collapsed on itself.
“About what happened at the lake when you were five. How you almost drowned. How she pushed you in.”
I gulped in a deep breath, my lungs greedy for the oxygen.
My dad shattered my world that day in my bedroom. That was why I’d been so happy when I left for college. I hated the memory of that conversation and the way his words had soaked into the walls. They whispered to me every time I walked down the halls, taunting me, twisting my past into new truths.
Your own mother didn’t love you. Your own mother tried to kill you.
I blinked back sudden tears and pasted a smile on my face. The smiles had gotten me through tough times. I’d read online that the physical act of smiling—even if you were unhappy—could improve your mood by tricking your brain into releasing happiness-inducing hormones. So I’d smiled all the time as a teenager, and people probably thought I was crazy, but it was better than sinking into a darkness so deep I might’ve never clawed my way out.
And when smiling on my own became too hard, I looked for other reasons to be “happy” like the beauty of a rainbow after a storm, the sweet taste of a perfectly baked cookie, or gorgeous photographs of glittering cities and epic landscapes around the world. It had worked…for the most part.
“…of the cake?”
My father’s voice shook me out of my trip down memory lane.
I blinked. “I’m sorry, what?”
He hitched an eyebrow. “Do you want a piece of the cake?” he repeated.
“Oh, uh, sure.”
He picked up the cake box, and we walked silently to the kitchen, where he silently cut us slices and we silently chewed.
Awkward with a capital A.
I wondered where it had gone wrong with us. My father never had issues talking and laughing with Josh. Why did he act so weird around me? And why did I act so weird around him? He was my dad, yet I’d never been able to open up to him fully.
He paid my bills and fed and sheltered me until I went to college, but Josh had been my real sounding board over the years, the one I went to whenever I wanted to talk about my day or had problems—with school, friends, or much to his disgust, boys.
It was more than the fact that my dad was an authority figure and Josh was closer to my age. I had no trouble connecting with professors and my friends’ parents.
It was something else. Something I couldn’t name.
But perhaps that’s just the nature of Asian parents of a certain age. It’s not in our culture to show affection openly. We didn’t say I love you or hug all the time like Stella’s family. Chinese parents show their love through actions, not words—working hard to provide for their children, cooking food, taking care of their kids when they’re sick.
I grew up not wanting for any material goods, and my father paid my full tuition at Thayer, which wasn’t cheap. Sure, he disapproved of my photography career, and I had to fund all my equipment myself. And yeah, he played favorites with Josh, probably because he retained a deep-seated cultural preference for sons over daughters. But in the grand scheme of things, I’d lucked out. I should be grateful.
Still, it would be great if I could hold a normal conversation with my own father without it devolving into awkward silence.
I stabbed at my cake, wondering whether any early birthday surprise had ever been as pathetic as this one, when my skin tingled.
I looked up, and the tingles morphed into chills.
There.
Maybe that was why I’d never opened up to my dad, because sometimes I caught him staring at me like that.
Like he didn’t know me.
Like he hated me.
Like he feared me.
26
Ava
“It’s not safe.”
Bridget drew herself up to her full five feet, nine inches and leveled an icy glare at the dark-haired man glowering right back at her. Ballsy, considering she was the princess and he was the bodyguard, but Rhys Larsen wasn’t Booth. That much was clear in the week since he’d arrived in Hazelburg to take over Booth’s protection duties.