I decided to face who could only be defined as a steaming piece of shit in front me, not a man. How could he be? No, he wasn’t, was he?

  My lips lifted in his direction, the smile blatantly obvious in its condescending nature. “I’m not going to hit you,” I told him, sliding my hands into my pockets. “I figured it’s best to let our lawyers do the talking.”

  My statement seemed to intrigue him. He eyed me from under oiled hair. “How so?”

  I was hoping he’d ask just that. I lounged against the secretary’s counter, cocking my head. “Because I’m suing the shit out you. That’s how so.”

  I expected a few reactions to that. I had the power, the money, to easily ruin his life. Especially with a man as powerful as Mickey in my corner, but I didn’t get any fear.

  I got a smirk. A smirk.

  He turned from me, taunting me more with only the sight of his back, and I cracked my fists as he took his check from the girl behind the counter. The sound was so loud it got both their attention snapping my way, and that cockiness in Rich’s eyes left for a moment. He wasn’t fooling anyone. Least of all me.

  Palming his check, he came forward, but stopped just short of giving me permission to snap his legs like twigs.

  He pushed the check into his back pocket. “I think suing me would be counter productive, champ.”

  My lip snarled at the word. “Really now? It seems pretty effective to me. That’s what you do to people who—”

  “Who what?” he asked, lifting and dropping his shoulders. “Who what, Griffin? Acted on orders? Let me let you in on a little secret, my friend. I’m a business man through and through, and I don’t do anything without explicit due diligence from my client.”

  I had to laugh at him now. It was all I could do from doing something else. “I never told you to—”

  “I’m not talking about you. Yes, I may have gone through your fiancée’s bag, may have aired her dirty laundry to the entire world, but I’m simply the hit man. Not the hitter.”

  My eyes narrowed and I shook my head, not understanding where he was going with this.

  “You really don’t see it, do you?” he asked almost smiling. “What I was hired to do? I am the best publicist in the game, which was why Mickey hired me. I clean up. I make people look good despite what they surround themselves with and I’m damn good at my job too.”

  He was talking in circles, playing around, and I wasn’t trying to be led into the game. Something he’d did need to do was step back though, step off. I pointed at him. “I’m trying to give you the benefit of the doubt here. But if you don’t calm down and take a step back—”

  “She’s a liability, Griffin,” he spat, the words cutting through me like a sharp knife, a heated knife. “A liability that keeps you from appearances and makes you undesirable to the public just at the mere sight of you two together. And what? You thought that would just go unnoticed? That he’d be okay with that?”

  His gaze went above him just then, to the ceiling, to the floor above, and my heart raced. It clenched as if locked up in a vise.

  “No, he’s not,” Rich continued, shaking his head with it. “He’s not because it stands in the way of making him money. The only thing I did wrong? Was I guess take it a little too far. So when you call your lawyer make sure you’re suing the right person.”

  He left me standing there then, nothing said as he turned around and made steps away. But then he stopped in the middle of the bustling office, the office whose complete attention was now suddenly on us. Rich passed me a glance over his shoulder. “And when you ask Mickey about this,” he said. “Ask him why Roxie said yes so fast. To the prenup? Ask him why suddenly out of the blue she decided to sign it. Ask him what he told me to say to her to make sure she did.”

  Mickey looked up from his desk when I charged in only seconds later. He had a few assistants with him, my agent gracing me with a smile when I made it back so fast.

  “Griffin—”

  I socked a punch before, many times in the slums I grew up in. I gave punches for my brothers, for my cousins, and friends, but even still, that shit burned. It burned like hell and the bones? Yeah, the bones felt like they shattered upon impacting a human face. In this case, the face was my agent’s, my agent who was now on the floor with screaming secretaries around him.

  “What the hell, Griff!” I’d broken his nose, too. It was crooked. It was bleeding.

  Stepping back, I shook the slight burn out of my hand. But I only shook it to point, point at him. “You’re fired,” I told him, walking away. I heard his voice behind me, but it was aching, the sound of sharp pain. I hoped it ached for a long time.

  My phone went off in my pocket upon going outside, and as I’d been prone to answer it these days, I did.

  “What?”

  “Griffin? Griffin, is that you?”

  Christ.

  I pushed my hand through my hair, my Gram’s voice on the other end. “Sorry, Gram. I didn’t mean it. I just had to deal with something. I got agitated, but I’m fine now. What’s going on? You all right?”

  She didn’t say anything and I thought she was upset with me for how I answered the phone. But then, I heard her sniff. I heard her sniffling and a deep dread set off alarm bells in my head. I was in my twenties, well in, and I never once heard my Gram cry.

  “Gram?” I asked, gripping the phone. “Gram, talk to me.”

  And so she did.

  “Griff,” she paused, sniffing. “Griffin, honey. It’s your poppa.”

  I lost my breath. I lost it as she spoke again, and she was crying. Those were tears in her voice.

  “It’s your poppa,” she repeated, and I leaned back against the wall.

  I had to in order to steady myself.

  “Is your friend coming back today, Roxie?”

  I turned from the book I’d been reading. I hadn’t brought anything with me to my dad’s, but this book was on the shelf in the room here when I arrived. It was pretty dry as it was a textbook, but not so bad. I shook my head toward the door, answering my dad who’d popped his head into the room. I then made my way back to the book, but Dad didn’t leave. Not this time.

  “I just ask because I was about to start dinner. I wanted to know if I needed to make an extra plate.”

  I faced him once more. He’d been making dinner for Clare every night, because every night she’d been here. Tonight, she wouldn’t be by though. She had to work her second job. She worked behind the counter at a bowling alley, a job she never left after college despite getting a job as an art teacher at a local middle school. Clare was loyal like that. A fact I knew so well.

  I shook my head again. This time saying, “I know.” Because I did know why he asked. It made sense why he asked.

  It always lit up his eyes if I said anything to him no matter how little, a detail I made myself ignore. That it made him happy to hear me, see me. I didn’t want to feel it.

  I didn’t want to be aware of it.

  But the words didn’t light up his eyes this time, and if I had a guess, they borderline made him sad. He stood there for a moment, gaze to the floor and I placed my book down on the bed beside me. He did something he’d never done before after that. He crossed the threshold of the room for reasons other than to bring me food. Grabbing the chair at the computer desk, he took it, arranging it by the bed.

  My heart beat in ways I didn’t expect. What did he want? He’d never done this before.

  He clasped large hands together, ones aged, ones weathered from time, and he faced the floor, eyeing those hands.

  “I think you should go back,” he said.

  And my eyes flashed. Did he not want me here for some reason?

  “It’s not that I don’t want you here,” he continued as if reading my thoughts. His hands shook. He palmed him and my heart slowed. He seemed more nervous than me. “It’s that I do. I do want you here and I fear you won’t ever come back if I don’t let you go. If I don’t make you go.”

  I tilted my head, not understanding.

  He slid his chair closer, and he watched me, his gaze so thoroughly raking over my face. Like he was studying. Like he was memorizing. “I’ve been sitting on something, Roxie. And I told myself it was for your protection. You came here above all places. You came here and I…”

  He couldn’t stop his hands from shaking, so hard this time. Again, he palmed them. “I know now my reasons for what I’ve done had nothing to do with your well being. I did what I had because I didn’t want you to leave.”

  I thought about that, a long hard thought. But he didn’t finish. He didn’t say what he withheld from me.

  “What did you do?” I asked him, my mouth so dry. I’d only spoken to Clare and few words at that. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  The breath he let out was long and he didn’t stop bothering to keep his hands from shaking. “I didn’t tell him,” he said swallowing hard. “You asked me to call Griffin. Tell him that you were here, but I didn’t, Roxie. I didn’t.”

  The reality of what he said shot through me like a hot poker. All this time and he didn’t know where I was…

  Moving across the bed, I reached for my purse in a frenzy. I hadn’t used my phone in weeks, but I was about to now. I found it there, deep in my purse, but my dad’s words slowed my dialing fingers, as well as the race in my heart.

  “He knows,” he said, reaching out to pat the air. “Griffin knows now; don’t worry. He called here for you. I don’t know how he knew, but he did. He knows you’ve been here for a week now.”

  A week? A week. That’s when his calls stopped.

  They stopped because he knew where I was.

  The realization made me feel terrible, how I’d felt when he stopped calling. He stopped for a reason though. He knew I was safe.

  “Why?” I asked the man, my dad. “Why would you do that? Lie to me? Do that to him?”

  A laugh, so small touched the air from his mouth, one dry and without humor. “Because I was selfish. He called and I told him if he came here, if he tried to take you, I’d have him arrested. I had just gotten you back. I didn’t want you to leave.”

  I should be angry with him, furious. With his words, he no doubt took the dagger and made the wound deeper for the man I loved so much. But I wasn’t angry. I wasn’t and I didn’t understand why.

  “He said so many things, Roxie.”

  His voice softened on the end and I looked up, surprised to see a tear stain down his cheek, and then a tear, one then two.

  “He said you were depressed and you needed him. And so selfish, I believed if you just stayed here maybe I could…”

  Pushing my hand to my face, over my mouth, I watched this man break down. This man I’d never seen cry. He was Gregory Peterson. He was a Chancellor.

  He was my dad.

  He breathed, and with that breath, he was able to continue again. He reached for my hand in that moment, and I… I didn’t pull away.

  He squeezed, swallowing. “But you do need him. I see it every day. And from the way he sounded, he needs you, too. He’s what you need. Not me. I know that now.”

  The emotions burned my throat, twisted my heart and I blinked. I told myself I wouldn’t cry anymore.

  I can’t cry anymore. No.

  My hand shook over my mouth and I lowered it to my lap, letting it fall.

  “If you’re depressed, Roxanne,” he said blinking down more tears. “If you’re anything like your mom, you need to go to him. If your mama had the support… If she had a shred of what you seem to have with this boy, this man…”

  He let go of my hand to wipe his eyes and I wanted it back. I didn’t want him to let go.

  Swallowing, he attempted to continue. “I’d never forgive myself if something happened to you, baby girl. And though I want you here, I’m not what you need.”

  There was no stopping them now, the tears, and I let them go. I didn’t fight them anymore.

  “But what if I am like mom?” I said, my voice aching, burning under the influx of tears streaming from my eyes. “What if it ever gets that bad? I can’t risk putting him through that. He deserves so much better than that.”

  His hands made it into mine once more, and they felt like home. They felt like home for the first time.

  “There’s nothing better than you,” he said, his voice unwavering. “Nothing better. You hear me?”

  I looked away. “But mom… I remember mom. I remember how she was, how bad it got, and I…”

  “Roxie, listen to me. You are not your mama. You are Roxanne Nicole Peterson. You are strong and you make your own course. Yes, your mama struggled, but it was a place I helped her to with my absence. With a life of people and status, I placed above her. Above you. Me and your mom are not you and Griffin, sweetheart. Don’t run away from something happy because you’re scared of what might happen if you do.”

  I lowered my head and a hand on my shoulder made me lift it.

  “You don’t have to be your mom,” he said with such finality I felt it. I felt it. “You don’t have to be her.”

  The next time I saw my dad, it was late that evening and well after it had gotten dark. I found him in his study, a small duffle over my shoulder. It had been one he gave me before he left my room. That’s probably why he didn’t look surprised.

  That I was leaving.

  Still he asked the question anyway.

  “You’re leaving?” he asked, putting down his newspaper. He stood as I made my way over.

  I shrugged the duffle up my shoulder. I’d bought a few things since coming down here, clothes and whatnot since I came with nothing. Maybe in the back of my mind, I knew being away would be temporary for me, that I’d be coming home. I nodded, stopping in front of my dad. “I need to go home.”

  My home was wherever Griffin was, so that’s where I had to go.

  Dad nodded too, a small smile on his face. I think, in the end, he was making himself for me, for him.

  He led me to the door, through his home, and outside. It was a home, a life, he’d once built to follow me. He got his job as high Chancellor to pay for my education and be nearby, but this was something he never said. He never had to say it.

  My cab honked in the driveway, already outside as I called it. My dad offered to take me to the airport. He’d done this a few times since I told him how I’d be getting there. I refused the offer like I’d done before. This was something I had to do the rest of the way on my own, head home. But before I did go, I had a question.

  “That room,” I said, gazing over his shoulder as if I could see it from here. “The one I stayed in. Did you set it aside for me?”

  I think I already knew that as I had my suspicions, but still, the nod he gave had me feeling some kind of way. A warm kind of way.

  “Thank you,” I told him, but not just for the room and not just for the talk either. For everything.

  Tilting his head, his lips lifted into a kind smile, one I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t seen before. “Of course.”

  Reaching around me, he opened the cab door and I made a step toward the seat, just one. I think I knew this was it, this moment, and after it was gone, I wouldn’t get another. I think, in the end, that’s why I did it, why I turned on my heel.

  I think that’s why I hugged him.

  He embraced me tight, a tightness so familiar to me it felt like I had it yesterday. This was my dad. This was the man who raised me.

  “We’re getting married,” I told him, shaking in her arms. “And he makes me happy.”

  “I know, sweet pea,” he said, placing a hand on my hair. Sweet pea. He hadn’t called me that since I was a kid.

  And so the tears flowed again.

  “Be happy,” he told me, letting me go with the words. And did I after that.

  He let me go.

  I got to the airport after a short drive through the city that had been my home for four years. I changed so much since coming here originally, even more since leaving, and none of those changes had been bad. I think I needed it all. In fact, I knew I had.

  Once I made it inside the airport, I texted my dad that I’d gotten there okay.

  “Thank you,” he texted back. “For letting me know. Let me know if you need anything.”

  I smiled at the simplicity of the message. This felt like the beginning of something. Something not bad at all.

  I didn’t book my flight before I left since I’d been in such a hurry, so that’s the first thing I did at the counter. The next flight into Miami had a connection in Chicago. The plane there wouldn’t take off for a couple of hours so I decided to curl up on a seat to maybe rest a little. I think I could sleep now. I was so grateful I could sleep now. My phone buzzed shortly after closing my eyes and I pulled it out, hoping it was Griffin. I was more than ready to talk to him, about everything, and I think I finally could now. But it wasn’t him. It was Clare.

  “Thank god,” she said, and I shook my head confused. “Thank god you picked up.”

  I dropped my feet to the floor. “Hey. Yeah. Sorry about that. I’m at the airport. I’m going home to Griffin. I just booked a flight to Miami.”

  She was silent, and then… a breath.

  “Roxie… Roxie, he’s not there. They’ve all been trying to call you. He’s in Texas.”

  “Texas?”

  Why was he there? Why wasn’t he in Miami?

  “Yeah,” she continued. “It’s his dad. His dad had a heart attack, Roxie. He’s in intensive care.”

  It took me eight hours to get to El Paso after rebooking flights and every hour I caught myself holding my breath. With the traveling, I had no updates on Griffin’s pop and didn’t want to bother his family when I finally touched down to the ground. I simply went to them. I went to him. Clare told me what hospital to head to, so that made getting there quite easy, but the actual going inside wasn’t so much. I could imagine his entire family knew I fled from Miami. Of course they knew. Griffin told them everything. Me being here wasn’t about me though, so I forced confidence I knew I had, heading into the city’s hospital. At the front desk, I asked about the location of cardiac victims, and the man told me exactly what ward I needed to go toward.