Page 65 of Dial F for Finance

And more importantly, why do we care what a woman who just brought you to tears thinks?

She looks up at me now. “Because my dad left. And kind of like you, he was—charming. Handsome. Everybody loves you.”

“I don’t mistake attention for love, Jenna.” I hold her gaze. “And there’s only one woman I want that kind of love from.”

She nods, wipes at a stray tear. “She was drunk before I even got there today.” She sips again, her grip steady now. “It’s not that she said anything I haven’t heard before. It’s just . . . the way she says it. Like failure is my only inheritance.” She looks up, and for the first time since I pulled her off that curb, the anger in her is hotter than the grief. “I don’t know what she wants from me. Everything I do is either wrong or somehow belittling. She found out Dad’s moving in with another woman, and decided to accuse Hailey and me of being just like him. We’re all my father. Always abandoning her, using her up. She basically called me a whore when I told her I went to Tokyo for work. Because what else would a woman like me do in another country besides whoring?” She swipes at her tears angrily. “I left when she threw the beautiful cake I bought her in the trash.” She downs the last of the whiskey and tips her head back, closing her eyes. “I’m sorry. I know I’m not making sense. I’m just . . .”

“Hurting,” I say.

Her throat works. “And I’m scared, Dominic. Of becoming her.” She bites the inside of her lip, blinking back more tears. “She was so beautiful—back when she and Dad were still together. Her whole body lit up whenever he was in the room. Like he was the sun and she was just . . . something that only knew how to bloom if he looked at her.” Her laugh is small and shredded. “And then he left, and she went out like a match.”

I don’t move.

Every instinct in me wants to. Wants to put the glass down for her, pull her into my lap, tell her she is nothing like that woman, that I would cut off my own hand before I let needing me make her smaller. I want to build a whole department, a life plan, a fortress with her name on the deed.

Instead, I stay still.

Barely.

“She loved him so much it destroyed her,” she says. “Or maybe he just ruined her and she called it love because that was easier. I don’t know. I was a kid. I just know that one day she was dancing in the kitchen, singing into a wooden spoon, and then she became bitter. Mean. Small.” Her voice catches. “I look at her and I think, is that what happens? Is that what love does if you let too much of it in? Does it hollow you out until all that’s left is a woman screaming at her daughters over a cake?”

“No,” I say.

It comes out before I can stop it.

Jenna’s eyes find mine. “You don’t know that.”

“Of course I do.”

“You don’t.”

“I do,” I repeat, because there are very few things in this life I’m willing to state without a hedge, and this is one of them. “Your father hurt her. Alcohol gave her somewhere to hide. And she chose to pass that hurt on to you and your sister. None of that is love.”

She looks at me like she wants to believe me and hates me for making it available.

“Love destroys people. All the time. I spent my whole life watching it.”

“Oh, sweetheart,” I say, and I gather her in my arms, let her body sag against my chest. “Is this why you’re always fighting so hard? You’re scared I’m going to destroy you?”

She nods against my chest, a tiny, terrified movement.

“Yes,” she whispers, the word catching on a jagged breath.

And there it is. The thing I’ve been negotiating against for three years without ever once seeing it across the table. It was never the marriage. It was never even me. It’s that every charming thing I’ve ever done—every room I’ve run, every laugh I’ve pulled out of a crowd—has been a warning bell in her head. A sequel to the same act her father used right up until he walked.

I press my cheek against the crown of her head. “I’m not your father, Jen. And you sure as hell aren’t your mother.”

The difference is her father worked a room to feed himself. I work a room so the people I love don’t get eaten.

I pull back just enough to frame her face with my hands. Her eyes are shining, completely stripped of their usual armor . . . and it wrecks me.

“I’m not going to ruin you,” I assure her, my voice dropping to a register that leaves absolutely no room for debate. My thumbs sweep the dampness from her cheeks, gentle and slow. “If anything, Pemberton, you’re the one who’s going to ruin me. And I’m going to let you.”

It’s not something I expect her to believe tonight. Facts don’t fix fear. Time does. Time, and a man who keeps showing up until showing up stops being remarkable.

However long it takes—however hard she fights—she’s going to watch me stay.

She lets out a shaky exhale, her hands still fisted in the fabric of my shirt. “You’re too good at this.”