Before I could respond, even though I wasn’t really sure how to, she continued.
“I’ve wanted to meet you forever, don’t get me wrong. My whole life I’ve known about you, Dad talked about you all the time, and I knew as soon as I got the chance I would find you, but to find out that you’re actually dating Riot Bentley, I mean, this is kind of amazing.”
Riot suddenly started to stand. “Perhaps I should just leave you all—”
“No!” Rachel and I said simultaneously.
“You’re not leaving me here alone,” I said, jerking his arm down, forcing him to sit again. I knew he was only trying to make it easier for me to talk with Rachel and Kevin, but I wasn’t prepared to be left alone with them yet. “Please don’t go,” I whispered, as soon as he was sitting again.
His thumb and forefinger came to gently grip my chin and he smiled at me. “I’ll stay. Promise.” Then he gave me the tiniest of kisses. Then I heard a swoony sigh from across the table. And I couldn’t help but laugh. Riot was totally swoon-worthy. In that moment, I could be nothing but grateful for my newly-discovered sister and her fangirl crush on my boyfriend. Everything was one thousand times less uncomfortable and stressful than I thought it would be, only because she was there to break the tension. I loved her already.
“So, you’re an actor?” Kevin’s voice had suddenly taken on a remarkably different tone. It was skeptical and protective. He was trying to give Riot the fatherly third degree. My hackles immediately went up. I was feeling a lot less anxious than I had expected, thanks to Rachel, but nothing had really changed. Kevin was still the man who’d abandoned me and, as far as I was concerned, he didn’t have a leg to stand on when it came to suddenly acting like my father.
“We’re not here to talk about Riot’s career,” I stated calmly. “I love him and don’t care what your opinion of his profession is. If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t be here meeting you today. He’s here today to support me, not to answer to you. You’re the one who should be answering questions.”
Kevin held his hands up immediately. “You’re right. I apologize, to both of you. I’ll answer any question you have with complete honesty.”
“Why did you leave?” The question had been on my mind for twenty goddamned years, yet I was still surprised when I spoke the words. I never thought I would get an answer; thought I would go to the grave wondering why my dad didn’t think I was good enough to stick around for. The weight of that unanswered question was heavier than anything, and it dragged me down in a way I’d never be able to explain to anyone; it was a heaviness no one could understand but me.
He took in a long deep breath, preparing himself for battle it seemed, but I didn’t feel sorry for him. He had to have known I wasn’t going to open my arms to him and forget he’d damaged me in an irreparable way.
“When I met your mother, we were really young. Teenagers. And when she became pregnant, it was not the best situation. Neither of us had a decent job, our parents weren’t in a position to help, so we had to grow up really fast. I loved her, but I loved her the way a seventeen-year-old boy loves a girl. It was immature and childish. And when you were born, I loved you the best way I could. But I was young, Kalli. So young. I knew I wasn’t doing enough. I didn’t have a good enough education to properly provide for you, I couldn’t give you or your mom the kind of life I’d imagined giving my child and the mother of my child, and that put a dark cloud over me. For years I worked to try and build a life, but we could never seem to get out of that state of just barely making it.” He ran his hands through his hair and I watched as the strands stuck up, not immediately returning back to the previous kept state. He looked frazzled. He looked worried. He looked guilty.
“I was twenty-four the day I walked out on you and your mother. Twenty-four-years old and I’d spent seven years thinking I wasn’t good enough to even give you a decent start in life. That weighed me down, Kalli. I felt trapped. I felt bound. It was stifling. And at some point I just broke. I convinced myself that you were both better off without me, that if your mother didn’t have me in the picture, her parents would take pity on her and help her more, do more good for her than I could being in the picture.” He shook his head. “I convinced myself of a lot of things that, as I grew older and gained more wisdom from life, I learned were the most disastrous mistakes I’d ever make.”
He stopped speaking, his hands flat on the table in front of me, and he looked at me, pleading with his eyes for me to, I didn’t know, say something back? Forgive him? Tell him he hadn’t scarred me for life? I couldn’t respond.