Page 94 of Beautiful When He Breaks

“A child exists because Celeste raped me, manipulated me, and abandoned her own child!” I exclaim. “And before you start that shit again, I am not doing this. I’m not standing here while you pretend what happened was some mutual mistake just because the truth makes you uncomfortable.”

My father’s face goes stony. “You are still clinging to that story.”

The anger in me rises more and more with every word that comes out of his mouth.

I take one step forward. “Be very fucking careful with what you’re about to say.”

My mother flinches at my tone again, but my father only stiffens further, all his righteousness crowding closer to the surface.

“We didn’t come here to fight in the driveway,” my father exhales hard through his nose. “There are ways to fix disgrace. A child out of wedlock is a public mess. You living here in this—” He gestures toward the house with naked disdain. “—spectacle. Lawyers. Restraining orders. People talking—”

“People can talk until they choke.”

His whole expression turns darker in a way I don’t understand at first. There’s something wounded in it, but it’s buried under so much pride that it comes out ugly.

“You have no idea what you’re asking me to do,” he finally says. “You’re making me do to my own son what my sister did to hers.”

The sentence confuses me so much that for a second my anger stutters. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“You heard me.”

“No,” I say, sharper now. “I heard the words, and they don’t make a damn bit of sense. What are you talking about?”

He looks at me as if I’m the one dragging this out. “Your cousin Brendon was cut off a few months ago for being involved with a man.”

The whole sentence still takes a second to become real. I’m too busy trying to process the fact that my father is standing here telling me I’m forcing his hand by loving and keeping my daughter, while his own sister already did this to her child.

Brendon.

Quiet, stiff, churchgoing, law-student Brendon. The one who always comes to watch my games when we play against Lakehaven. The only one who ever bothered to keep up with my life, whom I haven’t spoken to in months because of how chaotic my life got.

“What the fuck is wrong with this family?” The words crack out of me harder than I meant them to, and this time I don’t care when my mother flinches. “Don’t stand here and act like you’re the victim; you’re not. You’re making a choice, just like your sister did.”

He takes another step forward, voice dropping into that dangerous quiet he uses when he wants control back by force. “This is not the same. You still have a chance to correct your situation.”

The sentence is so monstrous I actually stare at him before understanding hits.

He just compared what they’re doing to me with what happened to Brendon because somewhere in his head all of this lives in the same moral category. His sister cut off a son for being with a man. He’s about to cut off his son for refusing to erase a child born in scandal. To them, these are adjacent sins. Adjacent embarrassments. Adjacent stains to be managed.

The realization makes me feel sick.

“No, what I can do is keep my daughter safe and make sure she grows up knowing she’s wanted. What I can do is refuse to let two people who called her a bastard child anywhere near her life again.”

My mother makes a soft, wrecked sound, while my father goes still.

“You do not get to speak to me about family,” I continue, and now every word comes clean. I’m finally too angry to wobble under it. “Not after the way you talked about her. Not after the way you talked about me and what happened to me. Not after standing here and acting like I’m making you do something awful when you’re the one choosing appearances over your own son.”

“You watch yourself,” he grits out. “You know exactly what you stand to lose.”

There’s his last weapon. I think of how scared I was once of this exact conversation and how, standing here now, the terror has finally curdled all the way into contempt.

“There it is,” I say softly. “Money.”

My mother looks genuinely distressed now, but that doesn’t move me anymore. “It’s not just money, Eli—”

“It’s always money with people like you when love and threats stop working.”

My father’s mouth thins. “If you walk away from us, you walk away from every comfort you’ve taken for granted. Your mother and I will not continue funding recklessness.”