“I need to know, Brandon.” Her voice was strained. She’d started to hug herself as she waited for him to answer.
“Why?” His own voice was cracking. How was he supposed to answer her if he couldn’t make words?
She laughed, but it came out half sob. “I didn’t need to know at first. I had a life. I’d accomplished a lot of things for myself. I was living out on my own and had a good head start on my career. I had enough established for myself that when you came back, there was this life I had and you could be part of it again. But all of it is gone now, and I’ve got literally nothing but the clothes we brought with us and the cat you helped me adopt. With so little left, I’ve got a whole lot more to lose if you decide to disappear out of my life again.”
And she needed a reason to believe him. Damn it.
“I didn’t plan to leave.” It sounded like he was making excuses, and he didn’t want to. He could take accountability for what he’d done. “I thought it was the best thing to do.”
“I don’t understand.” She wanted to, though. The yearning was there in her tone and her eyes when he glanced over to look into her face.
“After you asked me to take you to prom, I knew what your father’s rules were.”
“P-prom?” She was bewildered, and he didn’t blame her.
“That was when I decided.” He struggled to figure out how best to explain it to her. This was the beginning, but it hadn’t been her father’s fault. It’d just been the trigger for everything. “Because I didn’t want you to have to fight your father to go to prom, so I went to him, and I asked him for permission to take you. Those were his rules, and even if you asked me, the least I could do was ask him.”
Sophie had been a headstrong teenager. She’d defined the term. But she’d also been a caring and considerate daughter, had grown into the same kind of woman. So she’d lived by her family’s rules and traditions and carefully chosen when she would do her own thing.
He hadn’t wanted to be the reason she’d go against her father.
“Your father didn’t want you to be with me, and he was so right.” The last, he added hurriedly because it hadn’t been her father’s fault. Not any of it. “I wasn’t good enough for you in any way. I was a pain in the ass and had this attitude of entitlement. The world owed me everything.”
“No.” So much conviction in her voice. “You’ve always been the best kind of person.”
“You gave me the benefit of the doubt.” He had to correct her. “Being around you brought out great things in me. I was a nicer person because you believed I would be. I did better in school because you thought I was smart. I worked hard on things because you asked me for my help. Left to my own devices, I was a lazy brat.”
And her father had seen it all. Her father had told him she deserved better.
“You weren’t.” She still believed in the person he’d been even if he’d grown into somebody else.
“I was. There’s no sense in pretending different.” He was driving them in a big loop. No sign of anyone following them. Traffic was sparse on these back roads in the middle of the week, this late in the afternoon when it was still just a little too early for people to be heading home from work. “Your father wanted better for you, and he was right. You did deserve a whole lot better. But you wouldn’t look to anyone else while I was still around.”
And he hadn’t known how to change yet. He’d only been angry and frustrated. He hadn’t known he’d be capable of becoming anyone worthwhile.
“None of the nice Korean boys turned out to be worth anyone’s time.” Her words were bitter. “They could say all the right things and smile nice to my parents, but they were all fake. Half of them still live at home off their parents’ paychecks, expecting their mothers to wait on them hand and foot until some girl is stupid enough to make a home for them.”
“Your father didn’t want that for you.” Okay, maybe Forte was growling at the thought. But he figured it was justified.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her shake her head. “No. Once he figured it out, saw them come out of college and not do anything with themselves, he didn’t like any of them. It doesn’t stop him and my mother from looking for someone, though. Every year, every birthday, they get nervous about my getting older.”
They’d wanted so much for her. They’d worked hard to give her opportunities. Forte had understood at least that much.
“They wanted you to be happy.” He thought she’d understood.
“Yeah.” She sighed. “But you can’t make someone happy with what you think they should want. It’s not the way the heart works.”
True. And his ached hearing her. He wanted, hoped, to be the thing that could make her happy.