Taking the Heat (Jackson: Girls' Night Out 3)

“So?” her dad muttered. “None of that was true.”

“So?” she cried. “I was fifteen! Do you think my classmates cared if it was true?” She slammed her hands on the table. “This was in my home! I didn’t have a safe place anywhere. He never touched me, Dad, but he violated me over and over. He took pictures of my ugly cotton underwear and posted them online. He made fun of my flat chest. He made sure other people made fun of my flat chest. It wasn’t enough to make sure I wasn’t popular—he wanted to hurt me, and you just sat there and let him.”

Her dad didn’t look so arrogant now. He hunched over his plate, pushing bits of tomatoes around. “You never told me about the pictures.”

“He called me an ugly cunt right in front of you, and you did nothing! Nothing!” This time when she hit the table, he looked up and seemed to snap out of his brief remorse.

He glared at her. “Stop being hysterical.”

Her palms stung, tingling with bright pain. “Three years,” she said softly. “They were only here for three years, Jason and his icy bitch of a mother, but he’s been in my head since then, reminding me that I’m not like anyone else, that I’ll never fit in, that I’ll never say or do or be the right thing. And you were right there with him, letting me know that I’m not quite good enough to be your daughter.”

“That’s not true,” he grouched, reaching for his wineglass. “I’ve never said that.”

“You never had to. But you know what? None of it matters anymore. I am good enough. I’m good at my job. I’m funny. I’m smart. And I fucking care about people.”

He stared at her for a long time, still looking perturbed, but really looking at her. Maybe he’d truly get it this time. Maybe he’d finally acknowledge just how thoroughly he’d failed to protect her.

“Fine,” he finally said. “You want me to contribute to this fund for troubled youth? Is that what all this is about?”

Her shaking heart fell as if she’d just dropped down the hill of a roller coaster. She was falling and her dad refused to catch her. She took a deep breath, stretching her fingers out on the dark wood of this huge dining room table that no loving family was ever going to gather around.

But she wasn’t falling, was she? She was flying, and no one needed to catch her. “Yes, Dad, that’s what this is about. But you’re not going to contribute. You’re going to fund the entire program. Every year.”

He scoffed. “I’m not paying tens of thousands of dollars just so you can—”

“Yes, you are,” she snapped. “You can make a big deal out of it. Look how much Judge Chandler cares about our children! Look what a wonderful member of the community he is! You can have a glamorous party. Raise money for the school. And in return, I won’t write a column about what a crappy father you were.”

His jaw dropped. “You little shit. You’re threatening me?”

“No. I’m telling you how you can start making this right. Because if you won’t do this, then it’s clear that there’s no hope for us. That you’ll never understand. That you don’t regret anything about how I was treated and won’t ever admit that you failed me. And if all that is true, Dad...then you don’t deserve me in your life.”

He shook his head, still outraged, still in disbelief.

“Helping these kids is important to me,” she said. “I’m asking you to do this for me. If you do, then we can start working on having a different relationship, one where you show me respect and I behave like an adult instead of a scared little girl. If you won’t do this, then we’re done. Maybe not forever, but for a while.”

“An ultimatum isn’t a negotiation,” he snapped.

“This isn’t a negotiation.” She put on her sweater and gathered up her purse and phone. “It’s an offer. Take it or leave it. I’ll either be writing a column about the wonderful new school program or I’ll be writing about exactly why I needed something like that when I was a kid.” She stood. “You decide what you want people talking about, Dad.”

Her knees were shaking when she walked out, but her steps were steady. Technically, she supposed she was blackmailing her own father, but surely there was another term when you wanted the money to go to a good cause? More important, she suspected her dad would actually respect a demand more than a request. He’d always admired ballsiness. It was so much less messy than dealing with ovaries.

Her threat was an empty one, though. She was going to write the same column regardless. As a matter of fact, she’d already written it. Whether her father funded it or not, she was going to bring this program to the school. The therapist had already agreed to be the local contact for the group. If she had to raise money for it herself, she would. She had a platform, and the newspaper would consider it good publicity.

Her dad texted her before she even made it back to town. She couldn’t resist peeking at her phone.

Well? Am I supposed to put a goddamn blank check in the mail or do you have more details?

She laughed. She laughed so hard she had to pull over. It was probably not the sane response to your father giving in to your blackmail demands, but normal people didn’t blackmail their relatives, did they? So she let herself laugh, and then she turned up the crappy stereo in the same crappy old car she’d had in high school and sang triumphantly along to Beyoncé.

As soon as she got home, she forwarded all the information she’d gathered about the program to her dad, along with a specific amount. Then she opened her column and read through it one more time to be sure it was perfect.

...And that’s why I believe so strongly in this program. Because I was one of those kids. I felt alone and scared all through high school. In fact, I still feel like that a lot today. But the truth is I’m not alone, and I never was; I just didn’t know who to reach out to.

The reason I’ve become a decent advice columnist is that I’ve lived through so many of the things the rest of you have. Low self-esteem, loneliness, body-image issues, bullying, communication problems, family tensions. I’ve spent too many years thinking I’m not good enough for love or my job or success, and my only defense was to pretend I was fine so that no one else would see the truth: that I wasn’t enough.

But the real truth is that I am enough, and when I read your letters I see myself in them, in your problems with anxiety and self-doubt and depression and love, and these kids deserve a chance to see themselves in others, too.

The column went live on the website the next day and was printed in the paper the day after that. Her stomach never stopped aching. She felt naked and exposed and dangerously vulnerable. As if she’d stripped off all the prote