For Keeps. For Always. by HALEY JENNER (top rated books of all time txt) 📗

“Baby, I know.”

“But it wasn’t his either?” She frames it as a question, begging me to agree with her. Or to disagree. I can’t be sure.

“I guess you’re right,” I admit reluctantly, being as honest as I can be.

Her head nods up and down. “I’m sad because if he chose to accept me as his daughter, even if I wasn’t biologically his, maybe my life would be different. Maybe I wouldn’t be so afraid of love.” Her eyes graze over my face intimately when she declares this. Wanting the world to understand why she’s so jaded. Or maybe not the world, maybe just me. “Why didn’t he want me, Brooks?” The crack in her voice stabs at my heart, and the only thing I can do is reach out and cup her cheek. To touch her. To stroke my thumb along her skin and listen. “All those years ago, was it just his pride?” She struggles to speak, her words breaking over her cries. “Was his pride more important than the welfare of a teenage girl? I have so many questions that he’ll never be forced to answer, and I’m relieved,” she confesses quietly. “I’m sad, but I’m relieved, and I don’t know how to process that.”

The side of her face presses more heavily against her palm, and I lean forward, placing a kiss on her forehead.

I hate that I don’t know how to rid this pain for her. I hate that even in death, Derrick is causing her harm.

But more than any of that, I hate that time and time again I’ve abandoned her in the same way Derrick did. I held onto my selfishness like armor, and when she wouldn’t serve my purpose, I left her. The way he did. I taught her that I loved her with condition and had the audacity to blame her for us failing when she’d shown me it wasn’t good enough.

“I don’t even know why I’m dressed like this.” She picks at the loose material of her black dress. “It symbolizes mourning. I should’ve done that at seventeen when I actually lost him. When he abandoned me.”

I feel the frown on my face as it forms. “Hen, baby, you’re allowed to grieve him even though he hurt you.”

“No,” she denies my statement vehemently.

“Yes,” I push just as fervently.

She closes her eyes, dropping her head in shame. “I feel so stupid.”

“For what?”

Her head lifts instinctively, eyes opening with a spray of contempt. “He didn’t want me, Brooks. Why should I care that he’s dead?” she asks me, begging me to give her logic. “He just cut me out as if I was nothing.” Her breathing stutters, her words coming out like shards of glass; broken and fragile.

I wrap an arm around her, pulling her into my side, and she comes willingly.

“You care because as shitty as he was, he was the only father you knew, Squirrel. Derrick professed to love you once upon a time. You’re allowed to hold on to that, even if it hurts to do so.”

She sniffs. “He left me everything.” She pauses, pulling in a breath large enough to push her frame upward. “His fortune. He left every last cent of it to me.”

Her small voice is warped in confusion. “He was sick for months and didn’t bother reaching out to mend our relationship, but then he leaves me his estate.” She stops, looking at me for understanding. “With what I can only assume is a pitiful collection of words trying to explain himself.”

It’s then that I notice the crumpled envelope in her hand.

“You haven’t read it?”

Eyes set on the flowing water, she shakes her head.

After a beat, she rubs a hand along her nose. “Do you think I should?”

“I don’t think you’re obligated to do anything,” I tell her honestly. “If you think it’ll bring you closure, sure. But if you think his words will only bring you more pain, then don’t give him the satisfaction.”

Standing, she brushes off the moss and twigs stuck to the back of her dress. I let her go without following, watching her determined steps as she moves toward the water.

Balancing on the river’s edge, she stares at the wrinkled envelope, her back tensed under her own scrutiny. Head tipping up to the canopy of trees above us, she fills her lungs, exhaling while letting the rigidness in her body fade away.

Her knees meet the cold, wet ground, the leaves rustling underneath her weight as she rests her ass on the balls of her feet. Picking up a stone, she holds it loosely in her palm, feeling its weight before holding the envelope in the water. Rock placed atop, she lets go, hands held up in a show of surrender as the middle of the paper folds in on itself, sailing away with the current within seconds.

I watch her, watch Derrick’s words float away. It’s poetic. Her burying his useless apology in the only place that brought her solace when he was in her life. A final fuck you, I wish I’d been man enough to give him when I was seventeen.

She watches the white piece of paper until it’s out of sight before standing on shaky legs. Not even dusting the dirt from her knees, she moves back to our rock.

“I’ve tried to call you.”

“My phone has been off.”

“I emailed too.”

“I’ve been avoiding that too.”

“Because you didn’t want to talk to me?” she asks, kneeling on our rock, close enough her knees are touching my hip.

“Because I wanted to talk to you too much.”

She waits quietly, her eyes frenzied as they search my face.

“I was afraid you’d reject me again.”

“Brooks, I’m—”

“Can I say something first?”

“Okay,” she whispers.

“I wish I’d never said the horrible things I did to you.”

“I’m glad you did,” she rushes out, grabbing hold of my hand.

My brows knot heavily on my face.

“You left, and I’d never felt so empty, so alone,” she concedes. “You were right, Brooks. I was so caught up in my fears, I was blinded to the way I was hurting you.