Empire of Desire(Empire #1)(8)

“I know. I didn’t mean to.” I grin up at him in an attempt to change the mood. “Aren’t you forgetting something else?”

He places his briefcase on the floor and opens his arms. “Come here.”

I dive in, wrapping my arms around him. “I love you, Dad.”

“Love you, too, Angel. You’re the best gift I’ve ever received.”

Moisture gathers in my lids and it takes everything in me not to be all emotional and tell him stupid things like how it hurts that I’m not Mom’s gift, too. That she considered me trash to be discarded. That she’s a coward who abandoned both of us.

Because, in a way, I’ve always had a hunch that he was waiting for her. Twenty years later and he must be exhausted. He must be at his limit.

Maybe I’m at my limit, too. Despite all Dad’s love, I’ve always felt that a piece of me was missing, lost somewhere I can never reach.

That could be the reason I grew up to be a hollow person with barely anything at my core. Someone sweet on the outside, but completely and utterly empty on the inside.

Someone with a dysfunctional brain.

Someone who needs lists and coping mechanisms to stay afloat.

“Did you change your shampoo, Gwen? It’s still vanilla, but is it a different brand?”

I roll my eyes as I pull back. He has a super sensitive nose, like he can smell when I’ve had a drink behind his back, even after I brush my teeth and consume copious amounts of mouthwash.

“I mixed two brands together. Seriously, Dad, you have a weird sense of smell.”

“It’s for when my angel decides to drink when she’s not supposed to.”

I make a face and Dad ruffles my hair, sending the auburn strands flying.

“Not the hair!” I jerk away and smooth the stubborn thing down.

“You still look beautiful.”

“You’re only saying that because you’re my father.”

“You got my genes, Angel, and that’s not something trivial. Anyone would find you beautiful.”

Not Nate.

A jolt rushes through me for just thinking his name. It takes all my resolve to say goodbye to Dad without turning a furious shade of red.

After he leaves, I sit on the steps, place my milkshake beside me, and grab my bracelet. The one he gave me for my birthday two years ago.

The same birthday where I kissed him and he rejected me so cruelly, I still feel flushed to my bones thinking about it.

If I thought Nate was turning cold around my eighteenth birthday, he’s now as hard as granite. He doesn’t speak to me unless it’s absolutely necessary. We rarely see each other, and when I go to the firm at the pretense of getting my father lunch, he just ignores me.

He doesn’t do it in a rude way that would make Dad notice. He’s subtle yet efficient. I can now count the number of times I’ve seen him over the last couple of years.

Crossing paths—about twenty.

Conversations—zero. Aside from the stray “How are you?” that’s detached and without warmth.

It’s not like he was always present when he was Uncle Nate. He was there for Dad mostly and didn’t pay me much attention, as if I were background noise.

A wallflower, maybe.

A kid.

But I could at least exist in his vicinity without feeling like I’d detonate from the inside out.

After I kissed him, I ruined the easygoing relationship we’d had for eighteen years.

But I don’t regret it.

Because I’d hoped I would be more than a kid to him. I’d hoped that he’d see me in a different light.

All my hopes are up in the air now.

But I need to plan Dad’s birthday in the next few weeks, and that means he’ll be there.

I gulp, my heart hammering in my chest.

Though it shouldn’t be, because I got over him, you know. It’s for the best, anyway, since Dad would go berserk, so everything is fine.

I’m fine.

I’ve been telling myself that for two years, but it’s never felt true. I guess that’s because he’s Nate.

The same Nate who taught me to control the emptiness inside me and turn it into a strength.

“That hollowness never goes away. It’s part of who you are now, whether you like it or not,” he said on my fifteenth birthday when he found me hiding in Dad’s wine cellar. That’s what I do when it gets to be too much and I don’t want to upset Dad—I hide.

That day was one of those overwhelming days. I hated it, my birthday, and myself. I felt like that abandoned newborn baby on the side of the road again, even though I remembered none of it. I felt like an unwanted presence and it made me empty. So empty that I couldn’t breathe and had to hold in the tears when Dad sang me Happy Birthday.

It was the day I realized that despite having the best father in the world, I didn’t feel complete. I thought I was weird because all I kept wishing for was a mother.

On every birthday, that’s the only thing I wished for. A mother. My mother. I wished she’d come back and explain why she did that to me.

But Dad was so happy that day, like on all of my birthdays. He always made them an event that he planned for weeks in advance. So I couldn’t be an ungrateful bitch and start bawling in front of him.

That’s why I sneaked into the wine cellar and did it alone, in silence.