Cruel Legacy (Cruel 3)

He tilted his head to the side at my long rant. “Are you done?”

I deflated at his words. “I don’t know. Are you still mad? Because I can keep going.”

“I’m not mad,” he said gently.

I bit my lip. “No?”

“I was never mad.”

My look was incredulous. “You flew across the world to get away from me, but you…weren’t mad?”

“Okay, fine. I was a little mad. But mostly disappointed.”

“Oh, ouch,” I whispered.

Finally, a small smile broke through his features. “But I knew you were different the moment I saw you sitting there in that hippie clothing, writing furiously on your computer.”

“You…you did?”

He nodded.

“And you just…let me rant and rave at you for the last ten minutes anyway?”

He grinned fully. “I had to be sure.”

“Penn, I’m so sorry,” I breathed.

He held up his hand. “Look, I take partial responsibility for this whole thing. I created you after all. I made you what you are. Let loose that monster within and brought you into the spotlight on the Upper East Side. It was my fault.”

“No, no, no, it was my fault,” I insisted. “I asked you to help. Begged you to help me survive them.”

“I know, but I saw that you were messed up after what Katherine and Lewis did. I could have refused. I could have forced you to talk to me about it more. Gotten therapy or something. But I was so desperate to be with you that I didn’t care how I got you. I should have cared.”

I sighed at his words. We’d both been desperate, just for different things. And by the time we’d both wanted each other, it was too late.

“Either way,” he continued, “I shouldn’t have run away. That wasn’t fair to you.”

“You had every right to walk away after what I did,” I told him. “Even if I hated it.”

“No, I had no right. I told you that I’d be at your side, that I’d never leave, and then I left. I told you from the beginning that you would see a side of me that you might not like. But I didn’t account for what it could all do for you. That’s not fair to you. I don’t want either of us to run away every time something goes wrong.”

“I know, but…I needed the time anyway. So, you were right after all.”

“Just because you came out on the other side of it all on your own doesn’t mean that I want you to think that I’m going to fly across the world to get away from you. I don’t want to be that person. I don’t want to be my father,” he said crisply. “Make you second-guess who I am and what you mean to me.”

My heart fluttered at the words. He wasn’t gone. I just needed to reach out and take him.

“I know what you mean to me,” I said, taking a step toward him, “what you’ve always meant to me, but I’ve been too stubborn to admit it.”

“And what is that?” he asked, meeting me for the next step.

“Everything. You mean everything to me.”

His eyes searched mine. Our blues clashing in the space. My heart racing, hoping against all hope that we could fix this between us.

“Hmm,” he said, glancing away from me. “You know that I was at this conference all week, debating philosophical theory and presenting papers.”

I swallowed. “Yes. You’ve told me what philosophy conferences are like.”

“There’s this colleague of mine from Stanford who writes very forward-thinking papers. She is incredibly well respected and favorably published in some of the best journals. Her dissertation became a seminal book in the field.”

I waited. Wondering where this was going. Stuck on the one word that didn’t seem to fit. She. There weren’t many female philosophy professors.

“Many of my colleagues think that she’s incredibly attractive.”

I held my breath at his words.

“Many think that we’re already attached.”

My stomach rolled.

“In fact, earlier this afternoon, before I received your package, she asked me out for drinks.”

“Oh,” I peeped. “I see.”

He tilted my chin up to look at him. “I don’t think that you do. The thought of her made my stomach turn. I felt physically sick at the idea of us going to get drinks. All I could think was that that wasn’t me anymore. That the only woman in my life that I care about is you. And you weren’t here. And I’d seriously fucked it all up. And how I needed to make this all right.”

Tears welled in my eyes at his words. “I love you so much.”

He withdrew the lock from his pants pocket and slid it into my hand. “I love you, too.”

I threw my arms around his neck and buried my head into his chest. I couldn’t stop the tears from falling as relief hit me like a flood. It definitely didn’t help that I hadn’t slept in almost a full day. But this was just…beyond what I could have hoped for from him.