Page 72 of The Absence of You
“I know what you’re thinking, Grayson.”
I doubt it.
I still at her words, but I don’t turn around. She approaches me from behind, and her hand touches my back. “Please turn around while I say this.”
I should walk out of her room and not look back, but she deserves to have her chance to talk too and fuck knows I owe it to her to listen. Taking a deep breath, I turn to face her, ready for her to tell me the reasons she could never love me back, but her next words are so far from what I’m expecting.
“Grayson. I don’t want you to leave like this. You think you aren’t deserving of love. But you’re wrong. I love you. I have always loved you. Even before I was old enough to know what love really meant, I loved you. That love was the only thing that kept me going when I felt alone. When I had the weight of the world on my shoulders. And when I came back, and you shut me out, I still loved you.” I wait for the but. I wait for her to tell me how badly I fucked it all up, because why else would she say she can’t do this.
“You’re not that same boy I fell in love with. You’re a man now. And I know you think you’re not a good man, but you’re wrong. You’re just human. And it just makes me love you even more.”
Never in my whole eighteen years of life has anyone told me they love me. Lia is the first person to say it, and even though I know there is a but coming at some point, just hearing her say she loves me, that she loves this version of me, is enough. Hope flares inside me. I turn back to her, but her eyes are glazed with unshed tears.
“But we can’t be together right now, Grayson. This stuff with my dad, I need to deal with it on my own. I need to know where I came from, and I’m not sure how I will feel afterwards. And I need to think about my future. For the longest time, I’ve been under the impression it was because of me that he’d left. I thought I wasn’t enough for him. I thought I wasn’t enough to keep my mum sober. I thought I wasn’t enough for you.” Tears start freely sliding down her cheek and she absentmindedly wipes them away with the back of her hand.
“The last few days have shown me that all of my assumptions were untrue. I was wrong about all of it. And I’m not wasting another minute, trying to be more, when none of it was even about me.” I hate that she could ever have believed she wasn’t enough. This girl, this woman is one of the strongest, most capable people I’ve ever known, and all of the important people in her life, me included, have fucked up spectacularly for ever making her doubt herself. She tucks her hair behind her ear and straightens her spine with resolve. “I love you Grayson. I love my mum and Dee, but I need to take these next steps on my own.”
I don’t like that she feels she needs to deal with what comes next, on her own, but I understand it. I respect it, and I’ll accept it. For now. We’ve both admitted we love each other, and it brings an inner peace I haven’t felt in a very long time. I have absolutely no intention of letting that go. I will give her the space she needs, but then I will spend the rest of my life making sure she never feels like she isn’t enough ever again.
Chapter Fifty-Four
GRAYSON
GRAYSON
Itossed and turned all night, running over the previous day’s events and Dahlia’s words to me. Swinging between sadness, anger and frustration, none of these emotions were going to let me get any rest. I wanted to get up and drink, or go and beat the shit out of something, but I wouldn’t let myself. I’d made a lot of mistakes, but that didn’t mean I needed to keep making them. She loves me. Lia loves me. Repeating it over and over in my head like a mantra, I hang on to that thought as I shower and get dressed. I can’t change the past, but I can make sure everything I do from now on, counts. Lia needs time, and she can have it, but I’m going to use that time to prove to her that I deserve her love.
Instead of getting ready for school, I log onto my computer, pull up the scholarship form Professor Seed emailed me, and I start to fill it in. An hour later, I have completed it and pressed submit. Maybe I would be successful and maybe I wouldn’t. Or maybe I’d be rotting in a jail cell with my father before I even find out, but it’s in fate’s hands now.
Moving my finger across the mouse pad on my laptop, I access my encrypted files. I send a copy of the contents to my phone and shut down my laptop.
Taking a deep breath, I steel myself before I head to my father’s office. I can hear him in there, doing fuck knows what, this early in the morning. Last night I told Lia how I wanted to be a better person for her, and I meant it.
I kick the door open. He looks up at me from his desk with disbelief as the door crashes against the wall.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing, Son?” He grimaces when the door swings shut, and he sees the mark the handle has left on the wall. “Is there a problem?”
“Yes, there’s a fucking problem, and I’m staring at it.” I see him flinch at my blatant disrespect. He jumps out of his chair and storms towards me, chest puffed, fists clenched.
“How dare you burst in here and speak to me like that? You address me as Sir and don’t treat my home like that or you’ll be learning discipline at a military academy.” I laugh, and I laugh. Fucking hell, why had I put up with this prick’s bullshit for so long? It’s not the first time he’s threatened me with that, but it’s never going to happen. Taking a step towards me, he squares up to me. Always thinking he has the upper hand. “I’m not joking, Grayson. One phone call, and I can make that happen.”
“I am not going to a military academy, Father. Not now. Not ever. I’m eighteen years old. I can walk out of here and get a job if I need to. I don’t need anything from you anymore.” Now he’s the one who laughs. I cannot wait to wipe that smug smirk from his face. He walks back around his desk and picks up the phone. As he starts to dial, trying to call my bluff, I pull up one of the documents from the encrypted files I’ve just sent myself. It shows a list of jobs I’ve done for him over the years, and I turn the screen on my phone around to show him. He looks at them, his resolve faltering only slightly, before he quickly disguises his reaction.
“Oh Son, you stupid boy,” His lip curls as he sneers at me. “Any evidence you have that incriminates me, will incriminate you just as much. I’m assuming you’re threatening to show those to the authorities in a pathetic attempt to blackmail me?”
I mean, he’s not wrong. That information is evidence of all his crimes. But it’s also evidence of my involvement too. I’m well aware of that. I wish I’d found something in his safe that could just put him away, but I didn’t, so here we are. But what he doesn’t know, what he’s failed to realise… is that I don’t have anything left to lose. Yes, Lia loves me, but if I continue to work for my father, I will never be worthy of her love. Any relationship I might have had with my mother ended years ago. I have no other family worth mentioning. If I end up in jail, then I’ll see out my sentence. Most of my crimes were committed as a juvenile, and I hope the law will see that and be more lenient. But I deserve to pay, and I’d rather have no future at all than one where I’m beholden to him.
“You don’t understand, father. I’ve already lost everything, so nothing you could do at this point scares me.” As I say the words, a weight lifts off me. I genuinely don’t feel fear at the thought of what releasing this information will do. Whatever the consequences are will be worth it. It’s clear the minute he realises I’m deadly serious.
“Listen here, you little shit.” He lunges forward and grabs my collar, spittle hitting my face as he rages at me. “I have kept you around because you served a purpose, that’s all.” I scoff. I am so past letting statements like this bother me. That shit hasn’t touched me since I was a kid. I hold my stance, using my four-inch height advantage to stare him down. When he realises that physical intimidation has no chance of working either, he changes tack with his rant. “If you’re not worried about your own future, then this might motivate you.” He storms over to the wall and knocks the picture hiding the safe off the wall. He yanks open the safe door and pulls out a folder and throws it on the desk in front of me.
“I’m going to spell this out for you, Son. You release that evidence, and I will not only make sure you are sharing that prison cell with me, but I will also destroy your little girlfriend.” I flinch. I figured as long as I stayed away from Lia, as long as I didn’t let on how much she meant to me, the threat to her was gone. But his entire modus operandi is based on his ability to sniff out people’s weaknesses, and clearly it was no different with me. “I did a little digging, and it turns out Dee and Rosie have been keeping her in the dark about certain things. Seems like her daddy not sticking around had less to do with him being an immature teenager and more to do with the fact he murdered her grandfather in cold blood.” He throws down the papers in front of me, clearly no idea I already know what they are.
“Do you think the academy will let her stay on at school when it becomes public knowledge that she’s the daughter of a murderer? Even if they do, it’d be pretty embarrassing for her. And her relationship with her family. How do you think it will be when she finds out they’ve been lying to her all this time? She doesn’t seem the type to forgive and forget. Oh and her mother, she’s an alcoholic. Did she share that information with you?” His ranting is verging on hysteria now, and he’s too worked-up to even notice I’ve not reacted with shock at any of his revelations.
I finger the documents in front of him. I don’t need to read these documents. I poured over the copy I took of them. I’ve read them front to back. I heard Dee’s firsthand account, not once but twice. I know what’s in there, and I know what damage it would do to her reputation. Dahlia already knows everything that’s in here, but the prick is right. Her knowing, and the whole world knowing are two different things. And if it were to come to light, that there’s a question-mark over who is actually her father too…
Fuck, Dahlia deserves to be able to make her own mark on the world. She’s spent too many years being haunted by this shit. She shouldn’t have her future overshadowed by it too.
