Because You Love Me (Falling for You, Book Three) (8 page)

"Growing up, my father was barely around," he pressed on, his voice fragile and pained. "Business trips kept him gone weeks at a time and when he came home, my mother insisted that I be on my best behavior so I didn't upset him. Seen and not heard. He did the obligatory meals, watched a little television, then retreated to his study." My father peered out the window, like he had a direct line to his past. "When he died suddenly, I remember how the preacher talked about how he loved his family. How he'd miss us all. I never told anyone this, but I thought it was all lies. He'd never told us he loved us. He never threw the ball around the backyard with me. I remember him patting me on the head, giving me some toy he'd collected from Timbuktu or wherever he’d jetted off to for business. I told myself we were better off, and someday, when I had kids, I'd give them the world. I'd do better."

He stopped, and I wondered if he was seeing the cyclical pattern. How the sins of the father were visited upon the son, two times over. I felt a hollow ache when I realized he was stopping to catch his breath. "We don't have to do this right now-"

"We do," he insisted, a bit of the authority I remembered re-entering his voice. "Too much time has been wasted. The choices I've made are the choices I've made. And they were the wrong ones. I chose wealth and prestige. Building this house, hiding behind money because I couldn't face the fact that the man I saw in the mirror looked a hell of a lot like a man I swore I'd never become. A workaholic who was a husband and father in name only. And worst—the time I had with you I spent making you feel like I was disappointed. Like you weren't enough."

I dropped my gaze to the floor. The parallels didn't stop with him and his father. I let my work become my life too. I shied away from the family piece, but I'd been on my way to walking the same lonely path.

Before Penny.

My father had shared things that I'd wanted him to share all my life. A lightbulb moment when he'd see that we were virtual strangers and we'd both go to our graves with regret. They were words I'd always wanted to hear...and it didn't change the past, and the very real future he'd tried to force on me with his will.

"What sob story do you have to explain your will?" I said, shifting back to the reason I was here in the first place. "I'm all ears."

His watered down, olive colored eyes searched my face and he let out a grunt. "I know that look. That anger that has you ready to punch a wall. Or punch me, but luckily, my cancer lets me off the hook."

Was he making a joke? Who was this man?

Why wasn't he being cruel? Dismissive? My heart felt too heavy to bear. "You can't joke your way out of this. Do you know how hard I've worked? And you're going to take it all away and give it to Marie?"

A part of me wanted him to laugh and rise from the chair. Pull out the tube and say that he'd paid some Hollywood makeup artist thousands to make him look like he wasn't long for this earth. We'd fall back into our roles, where he hated me and I would never be enough.

Instead, he looked up at me with tears glittering on his cheeks. "I do know how hard you've worked. You've done a hell of a job. When Marie slinked in here, already picking over my bones and asking about the company, I realized just how deeply I screwed up. I had a son whose life and identity was the company I built. A company that I'd used as a crutch to keep my family at a distance. I had a daughter who was a spoiled, entitled brat. We were all broken, and the addendum was my way to try and fix it."

My mouth hung open. The sound that came out sounded kind of like 'what?'.

"That is not my final will, Xander."

My world spun off its axis. I couldn't wrap my mind around what I was hearing. I shuffled to his bed, sinking into his starched linens. I gripped them in my fists, felt my nails cutting into my palms. I wasn't sleeping, but this wasn't real. It couldn't be real.

I shook my head. "That doesn't make sense. Your lawyer-"

"Took a big risk sharing that fake will with you," my father explained. "I assured him that you wouldn't take legal action when you learned the truth."

I released my death grip on the covers. "That's awful optimistic of you. What if I didn't show up here? What if I just said screw you, screw the company, and took my money and went off the grid?"

"Despite what the gossip pages say, you're not a petulant billionaire," he answered with that smirk. "I knew you would probably approach it with some sort of scorched earth strategy. You may have even found someone. And I hoped that whoever you found would show you that there's more important things than business meetings and  six figure acquisitions. I hoped that you'd come here ready to walk away from it all, because you're a better man than me and learned a lesson that it took staring death in the eye for me to learn. Love, son, is worth the risk. I'm sorry that it took me so long to say this. I love you, Xander. I couldn't be more proud that you are my son."

Tears coursed down my cheeks and I cleared them off just as quickly as they fell. My father just let his fall. We didn't say another word. We didn't need words to describe the healing that was taking place. He was nodding slowly, the smirk now a full-on smile. He saw me. He accepted me. And I knew now, that he really loved me.

I heard my mother's voice fluttering down the hall. The closer she got, the more I realized that she was on the phone with someone.

"You know that he's ill, Maury! How could you have agreed to something so ridiculous! Get a girlfriend or Marie will be the CEO? Clearly his illness has eroded his ability to make competent decisions!"

I watched in awe as my father sat up tall, like he was preparing himself for my mother's wrath. She stopped at the door, glaring at the back of my father's chair. I'd never seen her face so red, her body trembling with uncontrollable anger.

"Robert, you have clearly lost your mind-"

"It was a joke, dear," my father said with a sigh.

"A joke?" she said shrilly. "I'm not laughing! Your son's not laughing. He's-" She covered her mouth in horror. "My sweet Xander. Are you crying?!"

Before I could gape at this feisty woman disguised as my mother, Penny appeared instantly, her eyes wide with concern. She rushed toward me, my mother hot on her heels. She came to the bed, taking my face in her hands.

"Xander, are you alright?"

I turned my head and planted a kiss in her palm. "I'm great. It's going to all be okay." Her face scrunched in confusion, so I rose to my feet and took her hand in mine. "There's someone I'd like you to meet."

My mother hung up on Maury and gingerly slapped my father's shoulder for scaring her with the addendum. "I'm very angry with you." When she leaned in and pressed her lips to his, all was forgiven. The tenderness between them made me smile.

When I stood beside Penny, my father beaming up at me with excitement, I didn’t think about all the time we’d lost or all the ways we’d hurt each other. I thought about love and hope and enjoying the time we had left.

"Dad, I'd like you to meet the love of my life."

~

Thank you for taking the time to read the Falling For You series. I hope you enjoyed it! xoxo, Ava

A
va Claire is a sucker for Alpha males and happily ever afters. When not putting pen to paper or glued to her e-reader, Ava likes road tripping, karaoke, vintage fashion, and fantasizing about her favorite book boyfriends.

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