Page 2 of Then You Happened
“I will be working on it.”
“Not in some Podunk town. You should be here in Baltimore where you have the right resources and the right connections and—”
“And where you can tell me what to do and who to associate myself with?” I sneer. “This is total bullshit.”
“That’s enough!” His voice thunders, and when he turns to meet my eyes, the vein in his neck is bulging and his jaw is clenched. “You want to just throw away everything you did for the past seven years? All that education and talent? Your future?”
“You don’t understand . . .” My words hit him and fall flat, his expression unwavering.
And I know that if I spend one more night in this house, I’ll suffocate. Adventure I can find easily, but the strings attached with having Valor as a last name, the pretenses I must continually maintain, kill every ounce of creativity I have.
That, and there’s Fletcher.
“I’m warning you. If you walk out that door . . .”
“But I love him!” Fear begins to tinge the exasperation that owns every part of me.
“You don’t have a clue what love is yet. How can you?” His voice resonates with anger as my mom presses a trembling hand to her lips. Somehow, she knows—like I do—that there is no going against the wishes of Renquist Valor III without a life-changing fallout.
“You don’t get to tell me how to feel.”
“Like hell I don’t,” he thunders as he points to Fletcher’s truck and my suitcases lying in its bed. “Do you think he’s going to be with you when the money runs out? Do you think that, when times get tough and the pipe dream he has of breeding horses falls flat, he’ll still love you? Men like him are all the same. They take and take and then take some more. It’s all fine and dandy when your mommy and daddy are helping foot the bill, but sweetheart, how long do you think he’ll stick around once mommy and daddy say enough is enough?”
“When did you become so judgmental? When did people who didn’t have money become less than us?” I shake my head and realize I no longer idolize the man standing in front of me. In fact, I hate him. “You’re not being fair.”
“I’m not? You think I don’t know that you poured some of your monthly trust payment into fixing that heap of his out there? You don’t think I know you plan on using your money to help him buy the land and the horses and everything else he needs to prepare for failure? I may be old, Tate, but I’m far from stupid.”
My hands fist and teeth grit as I hold back the words I want to scream at him: it’s my money; I can do what I want with it.
But I don’t say a thing because he won’t hear me. He’s already made up his mind.
“Dad—”
“I wish I’d listened to my gut and never let you ride,” he says the sentence like one big swear.
“Why? Because the stable hand I met at the country club isn’t good enough for me?”
“You’re goddamn right he isn’t!” I jump when his fist slams onto the table at his side, my mom’s beloved Kosta Boda vase rattling as her yelp fills the room.
I glance to her and taste the bitterness of her rejection. How can she not step in and defend me? How come she isn’t telling my dad he’s wrong?
“It’s a hard lesson to learn, and I hate that I even have to teach it to you . . . but if you walk out that door, that’s it. The money you have in your savings is yours, but your trust fund is cut off. There will be no calls home asking for more. There will be—”
“So that’s the leash you’re strangling me with to stay? You’ll cut off my trust fund in the hopes that I’ll come crawling back begging for money?” I huff out a laugh, part disbelief that he said it and part gratitude over the huge transfer I just made from my trust account to my personal savings account.
“Yep.”
“And then, of course, you’ll give me the ultimatum that, if I want my money, then I have to leave him?”
“No worries there. If the money runs out, he’ll already be gone.” My father’s voice is barely a rumble of sound, but it’s deafening to me.
“And if you’re wrong?” I shake my head and cross my arms over my chest, suddenly cold when there’s no chill in the air.
“I’m not. How does a man know how to be a man when he’s never even known his father? Knox isn’t even his father’s last name, you said so yourself.”
“You’re grasping at straws—”
“And his mom? She’s no better with how she entertains the men at the club with her more than particular skill set. Money may not pass hands but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t get paid for it in one way or another. Fletcher’s rumored to be a result of that. Did you know that? Raised with seeing the revolving door of men who use money like water and throw it around as a way to cover up a mistake. Are you telling me that’s the family you want to be associated with?” He steps forward, and it takes everything I have to not grab onto his arm and shake some sense into him. To tell him he’s wrong.
