Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 129084 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 645(@200wpm)___ 516(@250wpm)___ 430(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 129084 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 645(@200wpm)___ 516(@250wpm)___ 430(@300wpm)
I look around the room at the jaws gaping open, the pride in the women’s eyes, and then my father, who looks . . . neutral. No emotion at all.
My gaze pivots to land in friendly territory. Leanna.
As Noah’s assistant, she’s become a friend to him. I know we have kept our personal lives private, but her boundless support of Noah has helped him so much. So if I trusted one person in this office, it’s her.
“I’ve found love. Real love. Soul deep, it hurts to be apart, love.”
Leanna’s face glows with her smile reaching her eyes. She knows.
With the room stunned in silence, I look back at Chip to say, “I’m not telling you this to get a dig in or to hurt you. I’m telling you because I deserved happiness when you gave me none. I deserved honesty when you chose to be deceitful. I deserved my dad to believe me instead of taking your side. You marketed yourself perfectly and got all the accolades, including my father’s love. But I won in the end because I found true love.” I take a breath and tell my father, “When my life was falling apart, you made a new employee handbook and added a policy that I’ve now violated. But you know what? I don’t care. I’m tired of living my life in shame that you cast upon me. I should have never hidden what matters most to me to keep your reputation from being stained. I have a son.”
An audible gasp fills the room, but I don’t let it stop me. There’s no stopping me now, anyway. It’s too late, so I might as well walk out of here, placing the disgrace square on his shoulders where it should have been all along.
It had become so easy to separate my professional life from my personal life. So shame never followed me anywhere. It wasn’t something I felt over having a one-night stand or having a kid on my own. So I guess he tried to place it on me, but it didn’t stick after all. It just took me a while to realize it.
Since I’ve been dying to share the news since before he was born, I continue, “My son is seventeen months old and is the light of my life. He’s my heart, and for you to deny your grandson the love he’s owed unconditionally makes you the bad guy.” I shrug. “I guess you always were, though.”
“What a speech,” my father says, sarcasm dripping from his words. “You’ve made our lives a spectacle, humiliating yourself and me. You’ve attacked others while pretending to be the victim. So tell me, Ms. Bancroft, as you sully my surname in the mud, what do you want from me?”
Want? Wanted is more like it.
I have a mom who fought this demon to be in my life, a man who has shown me the definition of fatherhood and is a true partner to me. And Max. I have a son whose sunshine cleared away the clouds of damage that my own father had inflicted. So I don’t want anything from him anymore, especially not his approval. “Nothing,” I reply.
I take a breath knowing that’s not all I want to say.
This is it . . .
“I quit.”
36
Noah
Thirty minutes earlier . . .
We’ve been living in a bubble of bliss.
But everyone knows that bubbles aren’t meant to last. They always burst.
Cassandra’s vet running behind threw us out of our routine. Liv’s and my mornings have been full of rushing around to throw Max’s bag together and call a car to transport us across town in rush-hour traffic. Taking him to her place last minute was not in the game plan when I woke up.
It won’t do me any good to stress about what I can’t control. We both know that everyone in the office will judge her before me, so I’m glad she made it almost on time.
When I hop back in the car, I pull out my phone as soon as we leave the curb to text her:
The package has been delivered.
Laughing, I wait for her reply to basically tell me how hilarious I am and pepper me with compliments about how entertaining that text was. Okay, she doesn’t give compliments out like candy. She doles them out when there’s truth in them. It’s one of the things I love most about her—her honesty. I thought it was funny, though.
The three dots don’t show up.
Although I know the meeting has started by now, I check the time anyway. She sits next to her father. When I entered that conference room on my first day of work, I thought it was a position of power. It’s not. It’s her father’s way of exerting control over her. He makes her sit while he praises everyone else, and he never has to look her in the eyes to see the pain he’s caused.