Chasing the Sun by Jacob Z. Flores

Author:Jacob Z. Flores [Flores, Jacob Z.]
Language: eng
Format: epub

Chapter 7

THE feeling of invincibility disappeared as soon as his daughter entered his house. What was it about children that made them not only a source of a parent’s strength but also the kryptonite that could potentially bring them to their knees?

He had wanted to tell her immediately about Tom, to blurt it out and deal with the consequences, but one gaze into Sami’s dark-green eyes caused the words to die in his throat.

How could he tell his daughter he was in love with her brother’s childhood friend, or that they’d been sharing a bed for the past few weeks? For Heaven’s sake, Tom used to play with Sami when she was little, and he comforted her when her brother tormented her to tears.

This wasn’t information he could just carelessly divulge, even though that was what he had intended to do. How could he soften the blow? How could he make him sound less like some pervert to be avoided at all costs and more like a man who’d happened to fall in love with someone from their shared past?

He had to tell her in a way that would allow them to still have a relationship after this was all said and done.

Tom had suggested they tell her together and present a unified front. Gil had denied that request. This was something he needed to do alone. Sami needed to be free to scream and yell if that was what she wanted, and she might not feel she could do that with Tom in the house.

He owed it to his precious girl to take whatever she dealt to him like a man instead of the coward he’d been for far too long.

“I’m glad you could make it,” he told her as he took her suitcase and followed her into the kitchen. “I wasn’t sure you would come when I called.”

“How could I not?” she asked as she opened the refrigerator to search for her beverage of choice—an ice-cold can of Coke. Gil made sure he stocked up before her arrival, and he was pleased to see her pull out a can of soda and pop it open. The fizz of the carbonation took him back to her youth, when she would come home from school, drink a Coke, and tell him about her day. “It’s not every day my father asks me to be his date.”

“It’s not every day your father calls, either,” he admitted as he placed her brown Louis Vuitton bag, the one he gave her two Christmases ago, by the kitchen table.

She nodded as she winced from the bite of the carbonated drink. Ever since she was a kid with a tangled mess of red hair, she drank the soda too fast and suffered the consequences, a throat burning from the fizzy sting.

“I see you haven’t changed.” He laughed as he sat at the kitchen table. “It’ll taste just as good if you drink it slowly.”

Sami knocked back another hearty gulp before placing the can on the countertop and burping.

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