“But you don’t think you’re worthy of being her daughter, so you hold that against a woman who is worthy of the title of mother.”
“It sounds terrible when you put it that way,” I sighed. “That’s the nuts and bolts of it, though. Plus, I always knew the two of us would come to an end, and then so would my life with them. I guess it was a way to distance myself without hurting anyone. If I continued to call her Birgitte, it was less personal than calling her mom.”
“The two of us would come to an end?” His head was tilted in confusion. “I thought we worked that out.”
“I agreed to keep working for you, Mathias. That’s all we worked out. The rest. I don’t know.”
“What’s the rest?” he asked, his whole being tuned in to me.
That was something else that had changed, I realized. He used to be distracted by his phone whenever we were together. Now, he never had it out and when it did ring, he usually let it go to voice mail.
“The kisses, the touches, the hot, the cold. It’s all very confusing to a girl like me. So while you say it’s worked out, I say it’s just typical Mathias.” He nodded his head continually for several minutes, and I wiggled to get more comfortable against the pillows. “This is ridiculously romantic. Do you do this with all the girls?”
“No, I’ve never done this with any other girl,” he said, snuggling in next to me. “It’s been a year since my last trip on a boat with beautiful women.”
I rolled my eyes since that didn’t answer the question. “Your point?”
“My point is this—I was cruising on beautiful boats while gazing at beautiful islands and surrounded by beautiful women, but I didn’t want to be there. I wanted to be here, doing this with you.”
“What stopped you?” I asked, my heart pounding. Did he really want to be here with me instead of with a bunch of beautiful women on a cruise? That was hard to believe considering his track record.
“Far,” he answered quietly, pulling me over onto his chest.
He was warm, and the way he stroked my arm made me sleepy. He pulled a blanket up around me, and I wondered if I’d finally sleep for the first time in too many weeks. Maybe he was right. Maybe being away from the house and knowing there wasn’t any work waiting in the other room would help me sleep. “Wait, Theo?” His words permeated my tired brain. “What does Theo have to do with it?”
“About five years ago I told him I wanted to take you out, like on a date. He told me no.”
“What?” I sat up in surprise. “That was right before we moved to Plentiful. Why did you need his permission? We were adults.”
“I wasn’t asking for his permission. I mentioned it one day, and he had a complete canary.”
“Why? I’m so confused, Mattie.”
“I was, too, until he told me he didn’t think I was worthy of his daughter.” He gave half a self-deprecating laugh and stared at the blanket. “He said it in those words too. He said I wasn’t half the man you deserved.”
I stared at him and blinked twice. “You’re his son.”
He tapped my nose gently in response. “I am, so what does that tell you about the kind of man I was?”
“Maybe he just secretly didn’t want you to settle for a girl like me when there’s a whole world of women out there to explore.”
“No, he straight up told me I didn’t deserve a girl like you,” he said, his gaze focused on the rock wall surrounding us. “He said I didn’t understand the depth of passion and trust you have for me, and that I’d break your heart in two days. He said if I did that, you’d never recover.”
I sighed and it was tinged with heavy embarrassment. “Which means Theo knew I was in love with you.”
“I think dads know those things about their daughters,” he agreed, stroking my forehead. “He wasn’t wrong either. I broke your heart over and over for years. I see that now. When he said I wasn’t good enough for you and that he didn’t trust me, it destroyed me.” His face contorted, and he rubbed his chest with his fist.
I put my hand over his to stop it. “I’m sorry. I feel awful that I’m the reason the two of you had a falling out.”
“Don’t,” he whispered, giving me a pained smile. “It wasn’t your fault, it was mine, and I see it now. I can see now that I didn’t deserve you, but the way he went about it ended up pushing me to do the opposite of what he’d hoped. I partied hard to put you out of my head and my heart. I slept with women when I didn’t even know their names, Honey. I was out of control. I knew it, and my parents knew it. I could see it in their eyes every time we got together, so I just stopped seeing them.”
I rubbed his chest, enjoying the feel of his strong muscles under my palm. I may never have him for myself, but these few moments of intimacy we shared were something I could hold on to. “Something changed your mind. What was it?”
“As I said, that party where I couldn’t remember anything was the catalyst for change. I saw Far afterward, and the look in his eye was brutal. I was in tears while I begged for his forgiveness. I insisted that day things were going to change. I spent three days sleeping at their house, being fed by Mor, and listening to my father apologize for being too hard on me. We healed that weekend, but I knew that wasn’t the end. I had to finish healing myself, and then I had to heal you.”
“The last year has been about self-discovery for you. Don’t think I didn’t notice.” I took his hand and held it. “I guess I was doing some of the same.”
“We’ve been through a lot the last year, and we’ve learned a lot of lessons. I wish we could do things over, but that’s not how life works. My only choice was to put it all behind me and be a better man. I had to be the man you saw inside me when we met in the park all those years ago. I had to be the man Far knew I could be.”
