I Hate Football Players 3 | 18+

Chapter 108: Logan

My mouth opened with a preloaded army of defenses for Ellie but his raised hand stopped me. "All requested and all rightfully deserved," he said. "I... haven't been the most straight-forward with you, one of Liv's favorite hobbies is pointing out my faults and, like Eleanor, she's pretty damn good at it."

"She is," I whole-heartedly agreed. "Ellie was the first person who actually hated me because of football but grew to like the actual person I was. She'd love me just as much if I was a high school football coach instead of played professionally. She doesn't like the attention and drama but she gets and accepts it... for me. And I'm pretty damn lucky to have found someone like that."

My admission nearly knocked the wind out of me but warmth spread through my chest the more my mouth word-vomited on its own about Ellie. While I believed every one word, as they settled in my brain, so did the gravity of how strongly I felt about Ellie.

I'd do anything for my girl, including whatever it takes to keep her mine.

"You are," Dad agreed like I'd just stated how nice the view of the sunset was over the water and in between the white sailboat's poles. At this point, my jaw had probably detached and dropped onto the table, so he used my continued shocked silence and added, "I'm sorry LT. I've made a lot of mistakes and hope you'll forgive me for them."

"I..." I snapped my mouth shut because my gut reaction was I told the man he'd given me too little, too late. But the defeated look in his eyes, which swirled with remorse, assured me that he was at least sincere. "I don't know."

"There's a lot you'd never let me explain." The way Dad shifted the conversation's focus to himself, like usual, quelled the warm feeling I'd gotten from Ellie. "I've made a lot of mistakes and want to own up to them but also clear up some possible misunderstandings."

"Misunderstandings?" My eyebrows squeezed high into my forehead. "Like what?"

"How I left Canada," he started in a surprisingly uncertain tone of voice. His eyes dropped down to his hands, which he clasped together and rested on the table between us. "I'd always said that it was the job promotion -"

"When you picked Brody to go with you," I interrupted and hated myself for the hurt that crept in and wrapped around each word out of my mouth.

"When you told me you hated me, never wanted to see me again, and get the hell out of your life," he corrected me.

I sat back in my seat and scanned through my memories, painful ones I usually buried deep inside and ignored their existence because they brought nothing but pain. Images of Brody and I huddled in our rooms while the floor vibrated from all the noise in the downstairs level flashed through my mind.

The fights.

The accusations.

The drinking.

"I had a problem," Dad started, then lifted his gaze, weighted and heavy from years of what he admitted next. "I wasn't a good father. Now I know that, along with how I wasn't ready to be one and I let... alcohol cause even more problems."

"So you're saying I was a mistake," I grumbled. "Fuck, this is just getting better and better Dad."

Instead of his go-to anger at my cursing, denial of his involvement, and displaced blame, Dad only clamped one of his hands over my wrist and spoke quietly but firmly, "No. No. You were a surprise, so was Brody, but both happy ones. I was the one who wasn't prepared to provide everything you and your mom needed and cracked under the pressure. I... failed, Logan. I'm sorry."

My shoulders slumped at his candid admission and the words settled inside me. I'd never expected I'd have ever heard those words from his mouth, so at this moment, I honestly had no idea how to react past stunned silent. The longer I looked at Dad, I no longer saw the proud, stubborn man who I'd known most of my life. Instead, he looked apologetic, almost broken down, by his own mistakes.