“That’s probably the attraction,” Nate adds sarcastically.
“No doubt,” Dad agrees.
“Fuck this,” I yell, fury taking over. “You two don’t get to assume shit about us. We might be privy to some of your history, but you sure as hell don’t know ours, and this situation right here is why we’ve been seeing each other behind your backs for months. As it is now, you are the ones acting like children.”
“Don’t try to turn this around, Easton. We aren’t at fault here,” Dad fires back.
“The fuck, Dad?!” I shout.
As it seems, on this, he’s siding with Nate, which is the worst imaginable fucking twist of fate. I expected his anger. What I did not expect was for him to take sides with my wife’s father. The two of them seem hell-bent on their own agenda—which is to end us, swiftly. Fed up, I make my stance clear.
“Don’t belittle what we have to justify your attempt to control what you don’t want happening. It happened. It’s still happening. We’re married. We’re staying married.”
“Because you’re too fucking selfish to realize just how over the line you leapt!” Dad belts as Natalie’s soft sobs start to echo throughout the room. Unrelenting, Dad looks her over, “But you know how far over the line you went, don’t you, Natalie?”
“Dad, that’s enough!” I shout before I move to console Natalie as Nate speaks up, his tone barely above a whisper.
“Please, Easton, please don’t touch my daughter.” His eyes redden as he chokes on his next words and turns to Natalie. “I asked myself a thousand times on the plane how I could have fucked up with you so horribly that you could find it in yourself to deceive me this way. To hurt your mother this way.” Natalie crumbles where she stands, her eyes overflowing as Nate turns to my dad, devastation coating his voice. “Is this my fucking life, Reid? Is a Crowne man destined to swoop in and take everything that’s precious to me?”
Dad blows out a harsh breath as his eyes drop.
Nate speaks up again, his voice a plea. “Please…” He cups his jaw, “I’m asking you both, just give me and my daughter the room.”
Dad glances over to me and then to Nate before nodding, giving in way too easily. “Come on,” he says, pulling at my shoulder in an attempt to usher me out with him.
“I’m not going anywhere. We aren’t children,” I snap at Dad before looking to Natalie, whose face is buried in her hands. “Natalie,” I implore with as much tenderness as I can muster. “Baby, look at me. Please look at me.”
Natalie lifts her red-rimmed blue eyes to mine, her expression defeated as Dad continues to usher me toward the door.
“We aren’t wrong,” I tell her. “Baby, we aren’t a mistake.”
“Goddamnit, Easton, now!” Dad barks out as he shoves me out the door.
Easton
Dad slams the villa door before blocking me from it. Fury rolls through me like a tidal wave as I slam my fist into the back of it, because for the first and only time in my life, I’m close to striking my own father.
“What the fuck are you even doing here!?” I roar.
“I’ve been here since last night!”
I look over to Joel. “You fucking told him?”
“You hijacked my fucking plane!” Dad barks in Joel’s defense. “But you have him to thank for keeping me from this door until he calmed me down.”
“Sorry, man. I was forced to make a judgment call when Nate pulled up to the hotel,” Joel confesses.
“Yeah, well. It was the fucking wrong one,” I rip at my hair and shift my animosity to my dad. “As much good as it did to have you here.”
“What did you expect?”
“For you to have my back!”
He gapes at me in disbelief. “Like you had your mother’s and mine?”
“You would never allow this to fucking happen if it was you and Mom!”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” he grits out. He pulls out his cigarettes and lights up. “That’s the problem with not knowing the full fucking story.”
“What in the hell are you talking about?”
“I did let it happen. I made it happen. That situation in there started because of me. Your mother never would’ve been with him if I hadn’t left her, but I couldn’t get myself together enough to be the man she needed, so I walked away for both our sakes. That’s when she fell for him.”
“Well, that’s your fucking cross to bear. I’m not backing down, and I’m not walking away from her.”
“And it’s starting to tear her apart already!” He tosses his hands up. “I let your mother choose, and it was the hardest fucking thing I’ve ever done.”
“We aren’t you. We chose each other. She’s my wife!”
“And his daughter,” he emphasizes, “and as your father, I’m in my own hell right now.”
“Yeah, and what’s so fucking hard for you? You got Mom.”
“Yeah, but I lost pieces of her and years to him in the fucking process, years I’ll never get back. And you’re right, that’s my cross to bear, but yours is going to be too much for you to handle!” He runs a hand through his hair. “Easton, FUCK!” I notice the dark half-moons beneath his eyes as his jaw works back and forth. “I can’t believe you did this knowing full well the shitstorm it would cause.”
“Not to hurt you. It was never about you, Mom, or Nate. I married her because she’s the only woman who will ever fit me and because it’s too fucking painful to be away from her. Sorry, but that alone negated my need to know your whole history. Because it’s history, Dad. Those are your mistakes, and I’m not going to let them cost me my wif—”
“Say you have babies,” Dad interjects, argument ready, “and your mom comes face-to-face with the man she nearly married twenty-six years ago. Do you think we can honestly be comfortable or cordial enough to manage some sort of harmonious fucking relationship?” Dad’s chest bounces with incredulity. “Maybe for your sakes, we should. Maybe it’s the right thing to do, but it’s too much to ask of all of us. I’ve resented that man half my life because of the faraway look I sometimes catch in your mother’s eyes. And the worst part is, I don’t even fucking know if it’s him she’s thinking about, or it’s just my paranoia. Either way, I don’t ask. I can’t, and I won’t blame her if she is because it’s my fault for walking away.”
I stand, stunned by his confession. “Then why—”
“Because she loves me more, Easton, and always has. And thank God for that.” He shakes his head. “For a lot of other reasons too, but this isn’t so simple or cut and dried. You say it’s history, son, and it is, it was, but what you’ve both done is drag it all right back, front and center.” He takes a long drag, hotboxing his cigarette, his exhale clouding the air. “Here’s a history lesson,” he grits out. “Other than in passing and only vaguely aware of each other before everything went down, we’ve never crossed paths.”
Cigarette pinched between his fingers, he points toward the door. “That’s the first goddamned time Nate Butler and I have ever truly come face-to-face,” he seethes. “You’re responsible for that, and if you stay married to her, you’ll be forcing us all to the sidelines to avoid each other. Do you want that?”
“That will be your decision.”
“No, it was yours. Even your wife is aware of it.”
Panic seeps in for what’s happening behind the villa door. “Dad, I need back in there.”
“No. He deserves his time with her.”
“He’s ripping her apart!”
“He has a right to be furious.”
“Do you want me to fucking resent you? Because I will if you continue to try to tarnish the thing that matters most to me.”