I desperately want to roll my eyes, but I refrain as I open the door just enough for me to slip through the crack. With my eyes down, I make my way toward my father’s desk. After placing myself in front of one of the desk chairs, I remain standing.
My voice is crisp and professional, “You wanted to see me, Mr. Page?”
“Sit,” he motions toward the chair I’m standing in front of as he lets out a huff and leans back in his chair.
The silence stretches between us. Even though I know it’s a tactic, it does get to me. Lies and truth reside in the silence in equal measure. Lies I need to tell myself start to fade and the truth finds the cracks pushed by the hope to be exposed.
“I think it’s time that we start to talk about your future with the firm,” my father’s voice is pragmatic in a way that makes it difficult to remember that he’s not just my boss.
A little spark ignites in my chest. Fucking hope. For a split second, I latch onto the thought that I’ll finally be able to do the job I should have been doing for the last three years instead of only registering above the secretaries.
“I’m going to meet with clients and get my own cases?” The hope in my voice rings like a bell in the relative silence of the room and I cringe internally.
My father doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. He simply speaks as if I haven’t said a word.
“In six months, we’ll be announcing your marriage to Eric Prescott,” my father’s words feel like a bomb even though there’s no inflection in them.
Unable to help myself, my head snaps up and I meet the disapproving mask my father always seems to wear around me. When I was growing up, I told myself it wasn’t as bad as it was. I made excuses for the man because he was overworked.
Now, I know what is at the root of his disappointment. I was always supposed to be a boy.
And I wasn’t.
I never will be. Not being male and remaining the only child caused my father to make a different plan. My gut has been screaming at me for years, that the future he just laid at my feet was inevitable even though I tried to ignore it and deny it.
Laughter tries to bubble up at the thought that I was ever going to escape my fate and their expectations. I clamp my lips shut and try to focus on my breathing. Losing my shit in front of my father would not be a good thing. He already thinks I’m weak.
“In six months, you’ll be announcing my marriage to Eric?” I repeat his words, my voice damn close to hysterical. “I’m marrying Eric? Eric Prescott?”
I can’t help myself. There is no way he just said what I think he just said, what I just repeated back to him. There’s just no way.
My father heaves a heavy sigh as if I’m a dimwitted annoyance to him. It makes my heart clench.
“Yes,” he sounds bored as hell, like we’re not discussing my future and a marriage I don’t want and will never want, “you will be marrying Eric Prescott. It’s the only way to ensure the firm remains in both the Prescott and Page families. Hopefully,” he looks at me with barely contained disdain, “you’ll have a son who can become a partner here at the firm when the time comes. Until then, this is the best we can do,” he finishes with a resigned sigh.
As if he hasn’t just tossed a grenade into the middle of my life while effectively obliterating the last bit of love I was harboring for him, and the tatters of hope I was desperately trying to piece back together that things could get better. Knowing you’re fooling yourself and having it be proven to you are two vastly different things.
My soul splinters.
I’ve seen real families and how they function. We’ve never been a family. I was hoping that things could change, that my parents could change.
It was stupid.
The feeling of the walls starting to close in on me becomes overwhelming.
“You can go back to your desk. There will be plenty of decisions to be made over the next six months to get the wedding planned. The engagement will only be six months, a year at most depending on venue availability.”
What he doesn’t say, what exists between his words, is the fact that this won’t be my dream wedding. This will be a business wedding with all the trappings of elitism, and with the details picked strategically instead of because it’s what I want.
Does what I want really matter? I’m being treated like property and being handed over to a man like Eric Prescott. He’s arrogant and slimy. He’s also the last man on earth I would ever want to marry.
Not like it seems as if I have much of a choice.
With a stiff nod, because I don’t trust my voice, I stand on shaky legs and try to make it look like I’m not rushing out of my father’s office. I don’t even look towards his secretary.
I have no idea what she knows or doesn’t know, but if she has even an inkling of what just took place, of how my father destroyed the last bit of light I was clinging to, the last thing I want to see is her pity. Or, even worse, her apathy.
How I make it back to my desk, I’ll never know. My legs feel far too wobbly to support me, but I manage. Somehow.
