by Snow, Nicole
I just shove my things into my bag, then curl up in bed and sob myself to sleep, trying so hard to empty this feeling out of me so I can leave it behind in this cabin and forget it once I walk away.
* * *
It’s not until days later that I realize my notebook is gone.
Ugh. I must have left it at the cabin with Riker and Em, when Gabe and Skylar showed up to shuffle me off with my head down so I wouldn’t have to see Em’s miserable look or the fact that Riker wasn’t there at all.
But I almost burst out crying again when Em glued herself to my back with a whispered, tearful goodbye before running away without giving me a chance to respond. For days, Sky and Gabe have been all gentle voices and careful space and sympathetic looks.
All while I pretend to appreciate the tactful handling. Honestly, I can’t stand being around them when that connection vibrates between them. Their love is so tangible, so full of everything I thought I’d had with Riker and somehow lost in the blink of an eye.
So I stay in my room in this weird little two-bedroom shack off in the woods on the Oregon coast, watching the day turn into night.
There’s sleeping. A lot of depressed, heavy sleeping.
I’ve gone full Ophelia, and getting out of bed to take care of myself is my most impressive feat of the day. But I’d been thinking about throwing all of this into my book, killing off the hero after last one valiant struggle to wake from his coma, his last words a tearful promise of forever love before he’s gone, and the strong heroine has to stand alone. Fend for herself. Survive.
Except now my book is gone, too, and I...God.
I can’t stand the idea of going back to get it, let alone asking. Not when Riker would look right through me, and Em might be upset for betraying my promise to always be her friend, even if it isn't really my fault.
How can I be her friend, her anything, when her father shut me out of their life like nothing?
I’ll just have to start over, I tell myself. With everything.
With my life, looking for my independence on my own.
With my book, with a new draft.
Maybe one of the last things I’ll buy with Daddy’s credit card is a laptop, so I can save my novel in a better medium plus start looking for jobs. I’ll find somewhere to work, somewhere that can teach me better skills than I learned with a liberal arts degree that focused mostly on the type of secretarial work my dad expected. Maybe I’ll have to start off in like a women’s shelter or something like that, but sooner or later I’ll have a place of my own.
And I’ll be okay without Daddy. Even without Riker.
Though my heart’s telling me otherwise, right now.
My heart’s telling me I’ll never be okay again because I’ll never know what could have been.
Before I enact this grand plan, though, I’ve got to enact my grand escape. There’s one more thing I need to do with Daddy’s money before I take the scissors to his AmEx.
I’m going to fix this. So that no one has to worry about the Pilgrims ever again.
I can’t just sit here and mope until I waste away, waiting for someone else to wrap this up.
Not after Milah called this morning, shaking and afraid because she saw two black cars parked down the street from her house, and not even a double patrol by her security team scared them into driving away and settling elsewhere.
She’s terrified. She wants to come see me, but she’s scared to leave her house, scared to lead them to me, constantly pushing Daddy to turn himself in and falling back when he won’t listen.
This has gone on too long, and I’m tired of being helpless.
If the Pilgrims want blood money, I’ll pay them off out of Daddy’s own pocketbook. However much they want.
Daddy might argue with them, maybe, but I won’t.
By the time it’s done, it’ll be too late. He won’t be able to stop me, the money will be in their hands, and this can all be settled. I have my trust fund, too, and the private account Daddy set up with a stipend for me. I couldn’t access them before in case they might be tracked.
But it doesn’t matter if I’m giving the money to the people tracking me, right?
I linger on my small notepad, the only thing I salvaged with a few stray story notes, and that list I’d been keeping.
Seven hundred sixteen dollars and eighty-two cents. That's the final tally I have written down.
It’s weird to think that’s how much my life with Riker cost him, down to the smallest latte or pack of gum. That’s what my existence is worth, in the space of a few weeks.
That’s how much I’ll leave in my accounts. One way or another, I’ll get it to him, and turn the rest over to the Pilgrims to end this. A bribe of that magnitude, seven figures...
It has to be worth more to them than revenge.
They're monsters, but they're business people. It wouldn't be rational to stay angry if I give them far more than they'd have ever made off those drug pushers.
By the time my resolve hardens, I’ve already worked out a game plan.
After dinner, Skylar and Gabe always go sit on the back porch and watch the sunset and talk about fishing and some old stories from New Orleans when he was a boy. While they’re not looking, it’s easy to slip away.
Out the front door, into the woods, a backpack with a change of clothes and a few personal items slung over my shoulder. Within seconds, I can’t even see the house, but I know where the road is.
I stay in the trees, parallel to the small lane leading through the forest, and in another hour I’m coming out on the highway and can see the on-ramp for a small town nearby. Good thing I built up my leg muscles hiking through the hills with Em.
Just a short walk, a Greyhound ticket, and a bus ride to San Francisco.
I’m going to pay my last debt to Riker.
Then I'll end this insanity with the Pilgrims once and for all.
18
Try a Little Harder (Riker)
Let’s count the ways one man can fuck up his own life.
One: take on a job you know you have no business taking, because the money’s good enough to pay off your dead wife’s chemo bills and make sure your genius daughter can afford to go to college. Be an arrogant shit. Think you can honestly protect your family from the hell that’s going to come.
Two: blur the lines between professional and personal until a client job somehow turns into a fling, only for your coworkers to find out. It’s just a matter of time before your boss finds out, your career is ruined, and you’re lucky if you only take a pay cut instead of getting thrown out on your ass with a black mark on your resume and no references.
Three: let your daughter get so attached to your client-slash-fling that when you chase said client-slash-fling out of your life for her own safety, your daughter will never forgive you, still will barely speak to you, and will hold a grudge forever.
Bonus points if you also embarrass her in front of her crush and then forbid her from attending his scum-sucking father’s classes ever again, making sure you’ll be paying for this mortification until adulthood. Extra bonus points if your daughter pointedly takes over making breakfast each morning to remind you of who’s missing, and why the house no longer feels like home.
Four: fall for a girl you have no business having feelings for, because she’s too damn sweet and magical and vulnerable – too fucking good for you – and you’re too much of a defensive, snarly asshole to ever fall in love.
It's incredible I'm able to keep the list down to four.
I’m tempted to write them in the back of Liv's journal. She left it at the cabin and never came back for it, and I keep thinking I should call her to tell her I have it.
Of course, she wouldn’t want to hear from me. So it feels like writing those words in her journal would somehow bridge some connection between us, whenever I finally find a way to mail it to her.
Maybe because it’s hers, she’d feel those words as if I’d inked them onto her skin and k
now that I never meant to hurt her.
It just wasn’t meant to be.
Our fucked up almost-love is too much like her stories. Always meant for tragic endings.
I linger on those words she wrote. This story where somehow I live on the pages, but I’m a better version of myself than I could ever be.
I stare at those last few lines. They’re wrong. All wrong.
And I can’t help but uncap the pen she’s chewed to hell and back, the imprints of her teeth scratching against my hand as I scribble those lines out.
Guess I hope if I ever have the chance to give this back to her, I’ll also have a chance to tell her why.
So she’ll forgive me this one thing, even if I don’t deserve forgiveness for anything else.
* * *
I’m sitting in the car, waiting for Em to get out of school, once again paging through Liv’s notebook.
I’ve skipped over parts that aren’t her book – parts that are personal, about her, about me, about us. She writes down everything.
How she damn near lost her mind that first day we brushed real close in the kitchen.
How she thought she'd die during our shootout in Vancouver, how I saved her, how she knew I always would.
How hard she came the first night I had her sweet cunt. How she'd always remember being deliciously sore, eager to repay me a thousand times over with dirty, indecent, dick-killing shit I can't repeat, much less continue to read.
I slam the book shut with a sigh, feeling even more hollowed out.
I can’t bring myself to read more. I've already seen too much.
Hell, just reading her story feels like a violation of privacy, and now having her true, honest feelings about us carved into my soul that way...
Fuck.
I should be in the office, but the tension there has been stifling lately. I can just feel the other shoe waiting to drop. So I left early. Checked out.
Isn't that all I’ve been doing for the past few years?
Checking out, so I won’t have to face the pain of losing someone ever again?
I glance up as the school bell trills, and students come spilling out of the building. Em used to come tumbling out like an overexcited puppy, ready to tell me about her day.
Now she’s one of the last kids out of the building, shuffling slowly...and that Ryan boy is next to her, their pinkies linked while they lean in over a conversation that looks very private and miserable.
My jaw tightens. You did this, you fuck. Wasn't just Liv you crushed that day doing 'the right thing.'
It was your own stupid ass.
While I eyeball that kid hard any time he's up close and personal with my daughter, I’m actually glad she can still see him at school. I'm glad she has a friend.
I just don’t want her anywhere near his old man, Mike, when I clearly can’t trust him with anyone's safety. I wouldn’t even trust him with his own.
At last, she reluctantly peels away from Ryan and straggles over to the Wrangler. Instead of climbing in the front seat, she climbs into the back – just another wall between us, more distance to remind me that I’m not her friend anymore, I’m just her father, and her father is an asshole.
My jaw feels like it might break as I look up, watching her in the rear view mirror as I pull out of the parking lot. We’ve always had moments when I had to be the adult and the disciplinarian instead of her friend and confidant, but it’s never been because she shut me out and shoved me into that role.
I wish being Dad came with an instruction manual.
It’s a tricky line to walk when you have to be the adult, but also try to start off early respecting your daughter’s boundaries and making sure she knows she deserves it.
So I breach the silence with a simple, “How was school today?”
“It’d be a lot better if you weren’t picking me up,” she bites back, glaring out the window with her arms wrapped defensively around herself.
Fucking ouch.
Okay. Whatever.
I probably deserved that. I try again, “Look, Em. I get why you’re mad. But I think you understand why I had to take you out of karate class, too.”
She shoots me a furious look in the mirror. “You think I’m mad about class?”
I blink, splitting my attention between the road ahead of us and her. “You’re not?”
“Ryan still teaches me at school in PE. Big deal. Whatever.”
I shake my head. “Then I'm lost right now.”
“Of course you are.” She rolls her eyes. “You’re such a dad! No wonder Liv left. You were so stupid, and she ran away because you just don’t get it.”
That slams into me so hard, I almost hit the brakes, trying to keep my calm. “Em, love, Liv didn’t leave. I sent her away for her own safety. Had to. Enguard has more resources than I do alone. We couldn’t protect her anymore.”
“That makes it even worse!” Em fires back, her eyes brimming with big, fat droplets of angry tears. “Don't you see?! We were happy with Liv here. You were happy for the first time in years, and I had a friend, a real friend who likes all the same stuff I like, and she’s so cool and I want to be just like her, and you made her go away because you’re too scared of being happy! It’s like you wanted to die with Mom...you’re afraid being happy forces you to remember you’re alive!” She’s glaring at me, her face blotchy and red with fury and hurt, tears streaming down her little cheeks. “Mom’s dead, Dad. We've done nothing but dwell on it. We’re not. I'm so tired. I don’t want to be sad all the time, and I don’t want you to be sad all the time, either.”
I keep driving on pure instinct, focused on the road because I'm fucking gutted.
This is what having kids too smart for their own good means.
They're too smart for your own good, too.
Because while you think they’re off in their budding hormonal clouds stabbing at mundane teenage stuff, they’re seeing all the things you can’t even see yourself. They’re looking into you and understanding you and knowing you because even when they’re rebellious and wild and hateful and angry, they love you and need you to love them. They need to understand you, because you’re all they’ve got.
And my wonderful, amazingly smart, deeply hurting daughter clearly understands me better than I understand myself.
I wish I wasn’t driving so I could hug her, soothe her, tell her it’ll be all right. But I’m in the middle of traffic and can’t pull over, and I don’t know what to say.
I don’t say anything for a while as she sniffles and scrubs at her face and pulls herself back together as the sparks from that explosion start to fade.
But finally, I admit quietly, “You’re right, Em.”
She's too damn brilliant for me to patronize her. What else can I do besides be honest?
“I’ve felt guilty all these years, love. Guilty for surviving when your ma didn’t. Guilty helping you grow up because she didn't get a chance. So, yeah...you got me. If I was happy, if I had anything good, it wasn’t fair. Because I got to live and she didn’t.” I sigh. “But, you know, even thinking that way...I couldn’t help but be happy. I have you, Em, hands down the best thing in my life. Maybe I didn’t show it well enough, but I’ve always been happy to be your old man. And I always will be”
She meets my eyes in the mirror, a bit resentful but softening. “But Dad...I don’t get how feeling guilty is gonna change what happened. You can’t, like...suffer Mom back to life. And making Liv go away isn’t gonna do that, either.”
I smile faintly. There's a hot, red pain digging at my eyes, but fuck if I let it show.
“Got a better question, love. How did you get so smart?”
She offers a smile back, tired but genuine. “Mom lives on. She was a marine biologist, remember? I definitely didn’t get it from you.”
“Okay, that was below the belt.” But we’re both laughing – wearily, sadly, but suddenly we’re both father and daughter and friends again.
More than that, we'
re human. We're allies. We’re on the same side, locked in whatever this war of life is that we’re struggling to fight our way through.
But we sure as hell could use another friend down here in the trenches with us, and goddamn me if I don’t miss Liv with a physical ache.
I should have tried harder.
I shouldn’t have let my fear get in the way – my fear of losing someone again, my fear of not being enough to keep them here, keep them safe, keep them alive.
No, Liv isn’t Crystal – and I’m not the man I was when I was married to Crystal.
I’m someone new, someone better, someone stronger. And Liv was part of making me a new person as much as raising Em did.
The new man Liv taught me how to be wouldn’t walk away from her the way I did, when I’m not myself if I’m not protecting her.
I’ve got to go get her.
And then I have to do whatever it takes to end this, once and for all.
I catch Em’s eye in the rear view mirror. “Love, I need to fix some things,” I say. “Would you mind staying with your grandparents tonight?”
She worries at her lower lip, then asks softly, “You’re going to see Liv, aren’t you?”
“Yeah.” I smile. “Busted.”
Her little face lights up, the first time I’ve seen her truly smile since that terrible day at the cabin.
“Finally,” she says with exasperated amusement. “Sure. Let me just pack a bag when we get home, okay?”
“You got it.”
The air’s easier between us as I drive us home, and the moment we pull into the driveway she’s upstairs, rocketing away to pack an overnight bag. I settle on the couch with my phone to call her grandparents and make sure it’s all right to drop Em off on such short notice, but before I can pull up their contact, I see over a dozen missed calls and voicemails.
Damn. I’d fully muted my phone at work and forgotten to turn it off. But what starts as confused curiosity turns into hot, rushing alarm as I check the number on the calls.
They’re all either Milah or Landon.
