The Secret (Winslow Brothers 3)

Exactly. Get your ass moving, sister!

I snag my purse off the counter, and with a shove, I push through the swinging divider door so hard it startles a customer Lydia is helping by the register. But I don’t have time to apologize. I have shit I need to do.

“I’m sorry, Lyd! But I have to go!” I announce as I stride toward the exit door.

“I had a feeling you’d say that!” Lydia answers, and when I steal one final glance at her over my shoulder, all I see is a bright smile. “I’m proud of you! It’s about darn time Rachel starts doing things for Rachel!”

Yeah, sis. It really is.

It takes me twenty minutes to get to NYU’s campus and another ten to make it to the second floor of the English building, but once my destination is in sight, I don’t stop until I get there.

The plaque outside the closed door reads loud and clear: Professor Nathaniel Rose. The man at the root of all the noise inside me that I’ve never been able to mute.

I force myself to lift my hand and rap my knuckles against the wood.

“Come in!” he calls out.

I falter, for just a moment, the panic of a lifetime of resentment temporarily seizing my body, but then I wrap my fingers around the doorknob and push into his office. He sits behind his desk, his reading glasses resting on the tip of his nose, and it takes him a whole ten seconds before he lifts his gaze to me.

“Rachel,” he greets, surprise to see me evident in both his eyes and the timbre of his voice.

“Uh, hi,” I say, more out of awkwardness than anything else. Everything inside me feels like a ten-year-old girl getting ready to ask her father something important. Something she knows he’s going to say no to.

But you’re not a child anymore.

I steel myself and straighten my backbone. I may be his daughter, but I’m an adult.

“We need to talk,” I tell him, and I will my feet to move my body toward one of the leather chairs across from his desk to stand in front of it. What I need to say to him, what he needs to hear, should come from a place of confidence, not self-doubt. Keeping my feet will remind me.

“Rachel.” He slides his glasses off his face. “I want to—”

“No.” I hold up a hand. “You’re going to hear what I want to say first, and you’re going to listen to every word without interrupting me.”

He pauses, then nods. A first for my dad in the entire twenty-six years I’ve known him.

I take a deep, cavernous breath and then let it fly. “You have to stop trying to dictate my life and my career. You are ruining our relationship by placing expectations on me that I don’t want. They’re draining me dry, Dad, and taking the love I know I have for you away with them. If you don’t stop, it’s going to create a wound between us that runs so deep, I’m not sure we’ll ever come back from it.”

I’m surprised again when he nods, but I keep going. I have a million practiced things to say, and if I stop to think before I get them all out, I’ll never get it all off my chest.

“I can understand that my relationship with Ty came as a shock to you, but I want you to understand that it came as a shock to me too,” I continue and begin to pace the space in front of his desk. “We didn’t plan it. It just happened. Truthfully, we were both helpless to stop it. And while I understand your position as head of the department, I want you to consider how you felt when you were in love.”

His eyes widen slightly, and I look away, back to the surface of his desk. “I’ve never asked you to bail me out of anything ever, and I’m not starting now. If you have to exert some disciplinary action, I understand, and I’m willing to face the consequences. Sometimes you have to break the rules a little bit to end up where you’re supposed to be. I know that now for a fact.” I turn to face him again and place both of my hands on his desk so that there is no refuting my words. “But you have to let me live my life, even when it goes a little off the path you’d like. That’s the journey. That’s the experience. That’s the point. I deserve that from you. My father.”

“I know, Rachel.” He pauses briefly, his eyes closing and his voice breaking just slightly, and then he repeats, “I know.” The easy admission and unheard-of display of emotion are such a shock to my system that I have to take a step back. Never have I ever seen Nathaniel Rose back down this easily.