PROLOGUE
TATE
“You walk out that door, Tatum Valor, and you might as well leave your last name here when you do.”
I stare at my father—at his stern face and too-proud posture, at his gray eyes, which are the same color as mine, and the hurt in them—and see the life he wants me to lead. One that matches the Waterford crystal vases strategically placed around his dining room—pretty to look at, serving no real purpose, and displayed simply to let others know how successful the Valor name is. I glance out the front door to Fletcher’s truck parked across the street. His head is bent forward as he looks at something on his phone, and all I can see is a future with him. No reprimands to act like a Valor. No leashes holding me back from pursuing the things I want to try and fail and try again without embarrassing the family name. Nothing but the blissful unknown stretched out for miles before Fletch and me. Nights full of laughter and love as I help him fulfill the dreams he’s had since he was a little boy, and I figure out the woman I am and who I want her to become.
Excitement swells as my obstinance holds fast.
“What are you going to do, Dad? Disown me?” I snort. “I’m a grown woman who can make her own decisions, thank you very much.”
It’s his turn to make a noise, and it sounds one hundred percent like disapproval. “Ah, to be twenty-three and think you have all the answers.” He takes a step toward me, the chuckle he emits anything but humorous. “You don’t know a thing.”
“What do you think, I’m incompetent? I graduated college at the top of my class. I traveled Europe for a year on my own. I seemed damn capable of making decisions for myself then. I was—”
“Doing all of that with my money paying your way.”
His words are cold but honest and rub me the wrong way because he’s right and there’s nothing I can say to refute him.
“True, but your money always comes with strings.”
“Just as your last name does.” We wage a visual war in the room that holds so many memories for me. Family gatherings and celebrations. Holidays and laughter. Traditions done the Valor way. I wish I could see the good times through all the disappointment and anger billowing around us. “And it’s not as if you complained when you were enjoying the benefits that either of them had given you.”
“This is ridiculous,” I mutter when he just keeps staring like I’m going to wither under his scrutiny like the little girl I used to be did.
Then the fear of the unknown creeps in as his threat lingers.
Is it the threat itself or the worry of doing wrong by him that the threat brings? Or maybe it’s the going against him part when I’ve always danced to his tune.
There’s no way he’d disown me if I left.
Would he?
The dead silence eats at me, and the certainty I felt when I walked in here to tell him I was leaving dissipates. I’d assumed he’d be angry but that he’d get over it.
I’m not sure if he will.
Not now.
“I meant what I said. You walk out that door . . .”
Tears well in my eyes because the decision a twenty-three-year-old must make between family duty and self-fulfillment is never an easy one.
“You don’t mean that,” I whisper when I meet his eyes, more than afraid that he actually does.
“If you think I’m going to pat you on the back and congratulate you while you throw everything away . . . you’re crazy.”
“Throw everything away?” My voice rises in pitch and I don’t care that I just committed a cardinal sin in this house—raise my voice to my father. “Maybe I’m just growing up and want to see the world. Maybe I need to find my place in it. Maybe—”
“And maybe you’ve met a man who tells you all the right things so that you’re blind to all the wrong things about him.”
My shoulders square in response. “You’ll say anything to keep me here. The question is, why, Dad? Don’t you want your kid to go out and spread her wings? Don’t you trust the wisdom you’ve given me to make the right choices?”
“I’m looking at the choices you’re making and not trusting much of anything at the moment.”
Screw you.
The words want to fall from my lips but don’t.
“He’s a boy, Tate—”
“He’s a man. We’re not teenagers—”
“And yet you’re acting like one by throwing away everything you’ve worked for, all of your talent, all of your hard work, by being with him.”
“I thought you said my hobby was a waste of time.” Every time he told me my photography was taking away from real hobbies runs through my mind. “Now, all of a sudden, when it’s in your favor, you tell me I’m talented. Why?” I ask, disbelief marrying with the anger coursing inside me.
“It was never a waste of time . . . but you spent two years in one of the top photography programs in the country.”
“Going to Yale was your requirement, not mine—”
“And then you spent the last year working your way around Europe to build your portfolio—”
“For what, though, Dad? So I could come home and you could tell me who I should date? Who I should marry so I can give you the most desirable offspring and keep you in the right circles so I don’t embarrass you?”
“Stop acting like a child, Tatum.”
“Then stop treating me like one!” I shout, frustrated and furious and disappointed this hadn’t gone a different way.
My father crosses the room and looks out the front window. He stares at Fletcher’s truck, and I know all he sees is the dented fender and the faded paint, not the quality or the character of the man behind its wheel.
“You working on your craft is more important than anything.”
“I will be working on it.”
“Not in some Podunk town. You should be here in Baltimore where you have the right resources and the right connections and—”
“And where you can tell me what to do and who to associate myself with?” I sneer. “This is total bullshit.”
“That’s enough!” His voice thunders, and when he turns to meet my eyes, the vein in his neck is bulging and his jaw is clenched. “You want to just throw away everything you did for the past seven years? All that education and talent? Your future?”
“You don’t understand . . .” My words hit him and fall flat, his expression unwavering.
And I know that if I spend one more night in this house, I’ll suffocate. Adventure I can find easily, but the strings attached with having Valor as a last name, the pretenses I must continually maintain, kill every ounce of creativity I have.
That, and there’s Fletcher.
“I’m warning you. If you walk out that door . . .”
“But I love him!” Fear begins to tinge the exasperation that owns every part of me.
“You don’t have a clue what love is yet. How can you?” His voice resonates with anger as my mom presses a trembling hand to her lips. Somehow, she knows—like I do—that there is no going against the wishes of Renquist Valor III without a life-changing fallout.
“You don’t get to tell me how to feel.”