The Hand That Didn’t Reach Me

“Talk to me,” I said.

My father stopped speaking.

Owen turned.

For one second, the relief on his face was so bare that I almost reached for him before I reached them.

Then my father looked at me, and the old coldness settled into place.

“There you are.”

“Yes. Here I am.”

I moved between them.

His gaze flicked toward a pair of students passing on the path. He lowered his voice.

“Don’t embarrass yourself.”

“You came to my university to corner my boyfriend.”

Owen went still behind me.

My father’s mouth tightened.

“Is that what you’re calling him?”

“That is what he is.”

“You’re doing this to provoke me.”

I smiled without warmth.

“You give yourself a lot of credit.”

“End it.”

“No.”

“Julian, I will not have you humiliating this family.”

“Then go home before you attract an audience.”

His eyes sharpened.

I knew that look. The calculation behind it. How much anger he could show before someone noticed. How many words he could say through a smile.

For years, I had been the inconvenient thing he tried to keep out of photographs.

I was tired of helping.

“You’re coming to dinner tonight,” he said. “You’re going to apologize to the Brooks family, and you’re going to stop this nonsense.”

“Natalie doesn’t need an apology from me. She needs her father to stop arranging her evenings with men who aren’t interested.”

“Watch your mouth.”

“Watch your hand,” I said as he caught my arm.

Owen stepped forward.

My father released me, perhaps remembering where we were.

“You think this boy loves you?” he asked.

I heard Owen draw a breath.

“What do you imagine he wants? You’ve been buying his attention, haven’t you?”

“Enough.”

The word came from Owen.

My father looked past my shoulder.

Owen’s face had changed. His usual uncertainty was gone.

“You can be angry with me,” he said. “You don’t get to speak to him like that.”

My father laughed once.

“You have no idea what he’s like.”

“I live with him.”

“Then you should know better.”

I stepped closer to my father before Owen could answer.

“I’m not going to dinner. I’m not breaking up with him. We’ve finished.”

“You ungrateful little—”

His hand came up.

I shut my eyes before I could stop myself.

The slap never landed.

When I looked again, Owen had my father’s wrist in his hand.

He stood beside me, not behind me now.

“Don’t,” he said.

He did not shout.

My father stared at him, astonished.

Owen’s fingers tightened just enough to make his expression change.

“Let go of me.”

Owen held his gaze for one more second, then released him.

My father jerked his hand back and adjusted his cuff.

A student near the steps had stopped walking.

“Get out of this,” my father hissed. “It’s a family matter.”

I took Owen’s hand.

“You lost the right to use that word with me a long time ago.”

My father looked at our joined fingers.

His face darkened.

“You think you can live like this without consequences?”

“I’ve been living with your consequences since I was fifteen.”

He glanced around again.

I lowered my voice, because I knew exactly what frightened him.

“You can threaten to cut me off. You can leave everything to somebody else. I don’t care.”

“Don’t be dramatic.”

“If you come here again, I’ll stop being discreet about the other family.”

His expression went blank.

We both knew how useful his public image had been. Devoted widower. Loving father. A man whose generosity had apparently been invented by his second wife’s absence from the newspapers.

My mother had helped build the fortune he used to polish that image.

I was not in the mood to admire the result.

“You wouldn’t,” he said.

“Find out.”

For a moment, he only stared.

I did not wait for an answer.

I led Owen away.

My father called my name once. I kept walking.

Owen’s hand was warm. Mine was cold enough that I could feel it even through the numbness.

We crossed the quad without speaking.

Halfway back, Owen slowed.

“Did he hurt your arm?”

“No.”

I looked at his hand.

“Did he hurt yours?”

Owen gave a startled shake of his head.

“Good.”

I wanted him to say something else. A joke. A question about dinner. Anything that would put the afternoon back into the shape it had possessed before my father arrived.

He stayed quiet.

At the suite, Marcus had left a message on the whiteboard saying he and Ben were at the library and would return late.

I was grateful enough to consider buying him something.

Then I looked at Owen and forgot everybody else.

He put his bag beside his bed. His movements were careful, almost automatic.

“What did he say to you?” I asked.

He shook his head.

“Owen.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me.”

He stood with his back to his desk.

For the first time since I had known him, he seemed unsure whether I wanted him near me.

I hated it.

“Look at me,” I said.

He did.

His eyes were red around the edges.

My anger found a new place to settle.

“What did he tell you?”

Owen swallowed.

“He said you knew exactly how to upset him.”

I waited.

“He said I shouldn’t think this meant what I wanted it to mean.”

“Owen.”

“He said you were only with me because I was a man, and because being with me would make him angry.”

I looked at the worn seam of his shirt. At the hands he had used to catch me, feed me, steady me, stop a slap meant for me.

I could have said my father was lying.

It would have been easy.

Owen would probably have believed me.

I was suddenly tired of easy things that left something rotten underneath.

“Making him angry was part of it in the beginning,” I said.

Owen’s face went still.

I reached for him.

He lowered his eyes before my hand got there.