Worth Fighting For | Book #1

Chapter 49

Joshua Parker

My whole body ached as I laid back onto the bed, allowing Savannah to nose her way round my room. She was curious, something I'd always liked about her.

I couldn't understand how I'd managed to find a girl like her after living through what felt like a cursed childhood. And then again in high school, making me feel as if I really didn't deserve her.

But my thoughts were drawn away until she picked up the one thing I'd always avoided looking at or even touching. It was a photograph fitted into a dark frame, featuring what my family once was before it crumbled apart, or maybe after it crumbled apart.

"Is this your father?"

My heart sunk down to the floor when my eyes caught the exact individual she was referring to. I felt the habit of my quick temper rising to the surface, one trait I'd picked up from the person in question.

I pushed myself up to stand and stalked over, ripping the frame from her small fingers a little too forcefully. "Why did you pick that up?"

She looked frightened, but I couldn't help the anger taking over my features as I looked back down at the photo again. Where most would see a loving family spending their day at the beach, I would see the torture both myself and my family was going through at the time.

"I—I didn't realise—I'm sorry."

My mind was all too focused on my current vexation. "Never ask me about him again," as if on instinct, the frame escaped my hand with my hard throw with it against the wall, losing a care for whoever was around me, even if that was Savannah.

"Josh, I didn't know."

She moved her hands to reach out and comfort me, but I stepped back, the reminder of her presence hitting me like a tonne of bricks. Her expression was that of innocence, but with everything she had lied to me about today, she was far from it.

"You told me it was nothing in the car. But you've been acting strange all day, as if you're keeping something from me."

Without as much of a movement from her end, I reached out and grasped her upper arm, more in an attempt to stay close and hear from her, not to cause her harm.

"Get off of me, you're hurting me." She pulled slightly from the tight grip I had on her arm. I'd hardly realised I was causing her pain until her eyes found mine, "Josh."

Just the fear in her eyes was enough for something to click in my mind. I pulled my hand away hastily, hating that my anger had caused me to lay a single hand on her.

Maybe I was becoming more like him than I thought.

I shoved the notion of relating myself to that man into the back of my mind, hating that I even went there with myself, and especially with Savannah. I couldn't treat her like this, not when she was one of the only people I could truly rely on and the only person that I could trust.

Not when I was falling for her.

She stepped away from me as if I was poison; something she could no longer be around. Her head began to shake as I saw the words she was about to say before she even opened her mouth.