“Your brother’s weird, babe.” Cole laughed, shaking his head. He was weird, but he was the best brother ever.
Cole pushed me down on the bed, taking me by surprise, and started peppering little kisses across my cheek and along my jaw. I wrapped my arms around his back.
After Cole left, Dad knocked on my half-open door. I nodded for him to come in, not that he wouldn’t anyway. I pushed myself up and pressed my back against the wall as he sat down on my bed.
I bit down my lip.
“How are you, sweetheart? Okay?”
I nodded, wondering where this was going. He never just popped in for a chat. “Good.” He turned his body, so he was facing me more. Over the past year, he had aged so much. Grey hairs dominated the previously light brown ones at the side of his head. The lines around his eyes had multiplied and deepened. Every day he looked more and more like a middle-aged man. I wondered if he felt that too. That he was losing his good looks and possibly his charm with it.
“I’ve been thinking about us taking another little trip.”
My blood ran cold and drained from my face. I clenched my hands into fists to stop them shaking. No, not this. Not again. Tears sprang to my eyes, welling up and making my vision blurry.
He held his hands up.
“No, sweetheart. I want us to go. To reconnect. Just us, I promise.”
My heart rate slowed slightly, but I still couldn’t relax. I didn’t want to go anywhere with him.
“Do you remember when you were younger, and you would ride around on my back, laughing as I bucked you off onto the sofa? Or when I would come home from work, and you would run out of the front door to greet me?”
Yes, I remember, but that was in a different life. Nodding my head slowly, I forced myself to take deep, even breaths. Thoughts of Frank and his overbearing frame looming over me filled my head. I could still smell his whisky tainted breath and feel his rough stubble scratching against my skin. My lungs burned as I tried unsuccessfully to get enough air.
“I know things have been hard, but I want to change that.”
Hard? Hard didn’t even begin to cover it. No word was big enough to describe what he had done. How badly he had let me down and betrayed me. I’d trusted him. He was my hero. I looked up to him and loved him so much. He ruined that. He ripped apart my faith in him and ended my childhood.
“Oakley, I want that relationship back. I want us to do things together, watch a movie, or go to for a bike ride. I want us to do normal father–daughter things. Most of all, I want my little girl back.”
I swallowed a sob and wrapped my arms around myself. Don’t trust him, a voice niggled in my head. But I wanted to. I wanted all those things. I wanted to be one of the girls I used to see dragging their dads around shops. I wanted him to be that dad too. I didn’t want my dad to just be a monster.
Could he change though? I wanted him to so bad it hurt. Give him a chance, another voice reasoned. Peering up into his eyes I saw how broken he looked. Real emotion or fake? I could usually tell, but I wasn’t sure this time. He looked genuine, but maybe I just wanted him to be so much that I was missing the trap.
“Oakley, my business isn’t doing well at the minute. I’m afraid it will fail. I don’t want to fail at another thing in my life. I don’t want to look at us as a failure anymore. Let me make it up to you. Let’s draw a line in the sand, put the past behind us, and be a proper family. You, me, your mother and Jasper. I want us to be a happy family again.”
I wanted that too.
“Please give this a chance. Let us get to know each other again.”
Searching his muddy green eyes for any hint of a lie, I sagged. My heart jumped in my chest and hope filled my system. A normal happy family.
Gulping, I nodded my head, and he smiled.
“Thank you,” he whispered. “Get some sleep, sweetheart, it’s late.”
As he walked out of my room and closed the door, I ducked under my covers. Confused by my own conflicting feelings for my dad, I fell into a restless sleep.
Chapter Nineteen
Cole
I reluctantly went back to my house. I hated that part of the night, the part where I had to leave her. Max and Sarah had said that I couldn’t stay with her until she was eighteen. I knew they would say that when they found out about us, but it didn’t make me hate the rules any less.
Mum and Dad had gone out, and Mia was probably with Chris-the-dick, so the house was dark and deserted when I got in. I liked the peace though and couldn’t wait for Uni when I could really have my own space.