Handcuffed Rebel

10. Tell me how you really feel

10. Tell me how you really feel

Niko
"Have you been out drinking again?"

"I'm entitled to have a social life." She tried to crawl beside Talon. I grabbed her.

"You're not sleeping beside him smelling like the inside of a bar."

"He's my son. I can sleep beside him if I want to."

"Not after you've been out drinking and partying the whole damn night." She glared at me, grumbled something and walked away. I pulled her back. "What's your problem?"

"What's my problem? You are my problem." I glanced over at Talon then back at her.

"We're not doing this here. Let's go." I dragged her to my office.

"Now explain to me exactly why I am your problem."

"Where do you sleep at nights?"

"Excuse me?" She started swearing and switched to Italian.

"Where do you sleep at nights because it surely isn't here?"

"I sleep here, Kaitlyn. Where else would I go?"

"I don't believe you. You're never here when I get up in the middle of the night I've checked every room in this house. I should know. You don't sleep here." I studied her for a long while.

"You're not drunk, are you?"

"I'm not."

"Then why pretend?"

"It's the only time you seem to care about what the fuck I do. I realise that whenever I go out you're always here when I get back."

"Shouldn't I be?" She ignored my question and continued.

"The only time you ever show any interest in me is when the guards carry me home drunk."

"You know that is not true."

"You only care about me if it has to do with our son."

"You're talking crazy. You're the one who keeps rejecting my advances. You told me to stop remember? So why are you complaining because I did exactly what you asked by focusing on our son? I missed everything that happened in the first three years of his life. I missed his birth, his first words, when he started creeping then walking, I missed when his first tooth popped up. I missed all that. You have no idea what that's like. You're acting out because I'm doing exactly what you asked me to do, be a father. You're not being fair."

"I know and I'm sorry. It's just that," she stopped.

"It's just that what?"

"Why didn't you come for me?"

"What are you talking about?"

"When I left for university, why didn't you come for me? I waited. I gave you time. You never came. And then Phoenix came along and I fought hard to keep him out but you never came." A tear slipped down her cheek. "I hated you. I hated you for making me feel something for you, and I hated you for being cruel and mean." She wiped the tear away. "It was that hate that eventually made me give Phoenix a chance."

"And now? What do you feel now? Do you still hate me?"

"I do."

"I know when you're lying." I stepped closer to her and cupped her cheeks. "Kaitlyn, not because you didn't see me doesn't mean I wasn't there."

"What are you talking about?"

"I've kept an eye on you the entire time you were in university and for that year you were in Paris. I knew you finished your degree in two years and your business degree in one. I knew you did well in Paris at that design school and I knew when you decided to move back home."