“You know I do have a say in this as well,” Abigail muttered as she curled up in the other armchair.
Spider just looked at Night and arched a brow in a silent question. Did his friend really mean it?
“Yeah, I do,” Night said. “I shouldn’t have meddled last time.”
“Meddled?” Abigail straightened in her chair. “What do you mean meddled? What did you do, Eric?”
“No,” Spider said quickly. “She’s still recovering from what she went through, she doesn’t need to hear this story now.” Once Abigail knew, there would be no going back. Her view of him, her brother, and her parents would change forever, and not for the better.
“You don’t get to spring this on me and then not follow through,” Abigail warned her brother.
“It’s time, Ryder,” Night said with resignation.
“It changes everything,” he warned. The last thing he wanted was for Abigail to be isolated from the only family she had at a time when she needed love and support the most.
“Tell me,” Abigail demanded.
Sensing that Night would tell all regardless of whether it was a good idea or not, he resigned himself to the fact that he might be about to lose Abby before he had a chance to win her back.
“I’m waiting,” Abigail said tensely.
“The night of your graduation when you and Ryder were together for the first time, someone saw you,” Night started.
Abigail gasped. “You saw me and Ryder together?”
“No, not me, Dad.”
“Dad? Dad walked in on me and Ryder in bed?”
“Yep,” he confirmed when she looked to him.
“How did I not know this? And why do you know?” she asked her brother.
“Honey, your dad didn’t approve of me dating his daughter,” Spider said, breaking the news as gently as he could.
Her brow crinkled in confusion. “He told you to stay away from me?”
“Yeah, he did.”
“That doesn’t make any sense, my dad loved you, way more than he ever loved me. You were like a son to him. Wait …” she trailed off, pressing her fingers to her temples. “I get it now, he didn’t think I was good enough for you.”
That couldn’t have been further from the truth.
“Dad loved you, Abs. How could you even think that?” Night demanded.
“How could I think that? Really? Did we grow up in the same house, Eric? Dad was disappointed in me my entire life. I wasn’t strong enough, I wasn’t tough enough, I didn’t like shooting, I didn’t like hunting, I didn’t think it was fun to go traipsing through the woods carrying my bodyweight in supplies on my back. No, I liked to dance, I liked pretty things, I wanted to go shopping or get my nails done. I didn’t fit in in our family and you know it. Of course Dad didn’t think I would be good enough for his precious Ryder.”
Tears swam in her eyes but she didn’t let them fall. There was no way she would cry in front of him and her brother because she believed what she’d just said. Abigail believed that her parents hadn’t loved her as much as her brother because she wasn’t interested in the same things as the rest of them were.
He’d met Night when he was ten and he’d gone to live with his grandparents who lived next door to Eric and Abigail. He and Night had hit it off right away, his grandparents had been old, they’d loved him but they didn’t keep good health and couldn’t keep up with an active pre-teen boy. Night’s parents had taken him under their wing, taking him along when they went camping or to the shooting range. They had become like a second set of parents to him, and he had loved them both dearly.
As much as he knew they had loved him back he wasn’t their flesh and blood.
Abigail had been a tiny wisp of a girl, those magical eyes, her effervescent personality, her spirit, her love of life, her ability to see light where the rest of them saw darkness.
That made her special.
While her parents had been confused by her, unsure how to connect with a child who was so different than them, they had loved her.
“No, sweetheart, it wasn’t that your dad thought you weren’t good enough for me, it was that he didn’t think I was good enough for you,” Spider explained.
The worst part was, her father was probably right.
12:46 P.M.
“You’re not good enough for me?” Abigail asked, confused. That didn’t sound like something her dad would think, her whole life all she had heard was how wonderful Eric and Ryder were. They were so smart, so strong, so tough, they were going to make fabulous SEALs one day, and she was nothing but a ballerina.
Her dad had adored Ryder, loved him just as much as he had Eric. In fact Abigail had always believed that if he could, he would have changed DNA to make Ryder his son and her not his daughter.
Now Ryder was saying her dad had broken them up because he wasn’t good enough for her.
No.
She didn’t believe it.
None of this made any sense at all.
“I want to know what’s going on, now,” she said, giving both her brother and Ryder a sharp look. “Why would my dad think you weren’t good enough for me, and why does this have anything to do with you?” she asked Eric. “Were you there with Dad as well that night?”
How had the most romantic night of her life turned into such a disaster?
It had been bad enough when the night had gone from special to awful when she woke up to find that Ryder was gone without so much as a goodbye, but now to know that her father and possibly her brother had seen them naked in bed together soured her stomach.
“Your dad came home about an hour after you fell asleep,” Ryder began, looking resigned like he knew that her finally hearing this story was not going to end well. “I was lying awake, holding you in my arms and trying to figure out how a guy like me could have a girl like you fall in love with me and want to give me their virginity.” He held up a hand when she went to ask what he meant by a guy like him. “The door to your bedroom was thrown open and your dad was there. He looked angry, and I didn’t want you to be blamed for us running out on your graduation party so I snuck out of bed to talk to him in the living room.”
“What did he say?”
“That I was never to touch his daughter again.”
Massaging her temples, Abigail struggled to take all of this in. It still made no sense to her. “Why?”
Ryder hesitated for a moment, then said, “He told me that I wasn’t good enough for you and that I should leave and never come back, then he collapsed.”
“I know, he had a heart attack that night.” Was that why Ryder had ended things with her, because he felt guilty that her dad had collapsed after seeing the two of them in bed together? It had to be because nothing else made sense. Ryder wouldn’t just leave because her dad told him to. Sure, Ryder loved her father, but he had told her that night that he cared deeply about her. It wasn’t the same as saying he loved her, but she’d known that he cared enough that it would turn into love one day if given a chance.
But that chance had been snatched away from them.
Because of her own father.
“Is that why you stayed away, Ryder, because of my dad’s heart attack?” she asked. She knew there had to be more to this story than he was saying because the Ryder she knew would never just give up on her.