Dead Lines

4: Love Me Tender

Unedited.

I was beat and I was tired. I was finally home. For the rest of my shift, I’d shoved the argument with Schylar out of my head but as I stood on my front steps, about to let myself into the house, I couldn’t help but pause. Why was it as I took a moment in front of my front door, that I suddenly felt foreboding? I peered through the glass and saw a couple lights still on. Nothing was really amiss about that but for some reason I felt…separated.

My eyes squeezed shut as my head got a little fuzzy and a snippet of conversation I didn’t really remember having drifted through my head.

“Listen to me first. Please?...I loved your father. I think you know that. I loved him as much if not more than you love Cecil, the brave boy that he is. But you have to understand, my darling girl, that I loved you too. I still do, you and your father both. I didn’t tell your father or you because the short time I had…I just wanted to be his wife and your mother. Being Elite…it’s like being two different people. I didn’t want to do that, split my life…

As quick as it came, it was gone and when I opened my eyes, I was still standing on my front porch. That was the second time today it had happened and I was seconds away from calling on the Lord of the Underworld to find out what the hell was going on when my phone chimed.

I dug it out of my bag and found a text from Cecil waiting on me.

See you soon.

One simple sentence, that was all it took to have me feeling a little better. Whatever was happening to me could wait for now. Right now I just needed to get my butt inside and say goodnight to my father so he could go to bed. He was slowly getting used to my schedule of ‘not sleeping’ like I used to and generally didn’t head upstairs to bed until I was home.

When I got in, I found him sitting at the kitchen table staring down at some paperwork. There was a half full glass of white wine sitting in front of him and golden oldies crooning from the sound system in the living room. I sighed before putting my stuff down, knowing full well what all this meant. My father had a rough day and there was a decision facing him, a hard one.

“Daddy.”

I thought I would’ve startled him but instead all he did was sigh, his shoulders lifting and falling rather hopelessly. “Hey, Tales. I didn’t hear you come in.”

Oh, Dad. The past couple of weeks were…I wouldn’t say our relationship was strained but it had definitely changed. Before I became Elite, he gave me more than enough room to breathe. I was a teenage girl and even though he was my father, he’d never been a teenage girl and therefore didn’t really know anything about what it took to be one. Since I could remember, he always made it clear that I could come to him with anything and he was there if I needed someone to talk to. I respected his rules, he respected my space.

But Theodore Abernathy wasn’t an idiot. He could read me just as well as he could read any putting green and since Florida, he knew as soon as he saw me the very next morning that there was something off about me. He knew there was something on my mind other than the usual boys, friends, and school stuff that I wasn’t talking to him about it. I made me think that he was feeling it all slip through his fingers too.

“I just got here.” I propped a hand on the back of his chair and glanced over his shoulder at what he was studying. “Is that about the garage?”

He nodded. “The Davidsons have officially put in their bid and the board wants me to take until the weekend to consider it.”

“You said you weren’t going to take it.”