Here With Me (Adair Family 1)

Mac sighed again. “Robyn, I won’t lie to you and say I left Boston just for the money. I loved my job, and I liked traveling. In the end, I was a selfish prick.”

I didn’t know what to say. Mostly because I didn’t disagree.

“But I did try. I promise you, I tried.” He reached for my hand, squeezing it tight. “Something happened between your mother and me, and … when I told her I was taking the job with Lachlan and that we’d need to figure out a new custody arrangement, she told me that she was still in love with me and she didn’t want me to leave.”

I think my jaw might have hit the floor. “When … I was … but I was twelve. Regan was eight. Mom and Seth had been married almost as long.”

“It came out of nowhere for me.”

“I can imagine.” Jesus Christ. No wonder Seth and Mom had argued so much back then.

“I suspected she was just going through something and was fixated on the idea that whatever was making her unhappy was losing me. I didn’t believe that was what was wrong with her, and I told her to stay with Seth who loved her. To talk to him. Figure things out. But your mum … och, I don’t know, Robyn. I don’t know if part of it was that she was a wee bit jealous of my new job, my new life …”

“And the way I hero-worshipped you,” I added.

“Aye, maybe that too.” He released my hand but only to slump back in his chair. He looked exhausted, and I was just about to open my mouth to suggest we leave it there and talk later when he continued. “She started making it impossible to see you. Anytime I had time off and could fly back to Boston, it wasn’t the right time for her. When I asked if you could spend a few weeks in LA with me during the summer, she said no. It went on like that for a while, until you were about fourteen, I think, and out of the blue, she called and told me I needed to come to Boston, that you needed me, you missed me.”

When I was fourteen?

Oh my God.

The panic attacks. The doctor’s appointments.

She must have felt guilty for keeping him from me once she realized how badly his abandonment affected me.

I told Mac about the episodes at school.

Mac looked furious before he quickly cleared his expression. “Right. Well … that makes sense. I don’t know what happened after that, but … that was the last time I saw you. Every time after that, your mum made it harder to see you. We’d argue on the phone until my ears almost bled. She threatened to take me to court, to take away my parental rights. Warned me that no court would grant custody to a man whose job meant he traveled at the drop of a hat. She wasn’t wrong, Robyn.” He glared. “And I’m a selfish bastard because in that moment, I should have just gone back to Boston.”

“And let her bully you into it?” I knew how I’d have felt about that. My stubborn ass hated to be pushed into anything.

“Pride should not have come before my daughter.”

There it was.

“Nor the love of a job.”

“But it did.”

“I wrote to you,” he blurted out, expression almost desperate. “Real letters,” he huffed with unamused laughter. “It was alien to me to do something like that, but I needed a connection with you, and she wouldn’t even give me your email address.”

“Couldn’t you have hacked me or something?” I half-heartedly joked.

“I could have reached out to you without your mum’s knowledge, yes. But I didn’t want to do it that way, no matter how desperate I was. I didn’t want you to know you were caught in a war between us.”

Shocked, I shook my head. “I didn’t get any letters.”

“Your mother returned them unopened. I wrote until you were nineteen, and I sent you birthday and Christmas presents. And Regan too.”

“We never got them.” My hands curled into fists on my lap. Was this true?

“No, I know. I kept hoping Stacey would see I was sincere about wanting to see you and that she’d give the letters, the gifts, to you. She never did. But she’d return them with her own letters, updating me on your life. She sent me photographs, bits and pieces of work you’d done at school. Copies of your high school and graduation certificates, a photo of you at your graduation from the academy. The last photo she sent was four years ago, on your twenty-fourth birthday. You were in a bar somewhere, big, giant yellow cake in front of you, a guy covered in tattoos had his arms around you.”