Page 52 of I’m Fine Save Me (The Spiral Duet #1)

Chapter thirty-three

Tegan

One Year Later

Unknown

This is my new number. I had to change phones again. I need to talk to you, sweetheart. Dani won’t answer me and I want to see my grandson.

I blink at the screen a few times before I register that it’s Wayne reaching out again. Over the last year he’s had six different numbers, well seven now. He’s texted me at least once a month since his threat about Cooper’s job over a year ago.

I keep my responses short and as snarkless as possible so I don’t trigger him, but I also don’t leave it open for further conversation to continue. I don’t want him in my life. I have to figure out the balance between keeping him happy, and keeping him far away from my family.

Hannah has been doing so much better this last year. I’ve been doing better too. After meeting Lorene in person, I found a platonic soulmate that supports me in so many ways. I’ve hit and maintained my goal weight, and I feel pretty damn amazing about myself.

Morgan and I still talk every day. Cooper only reaches out to him to talk every so often, it’s still more than I ever expected.

They still surprise me and plan nights for me, but he still hasn’t allowed Morgan and I to meet in person.

It’s still a hard limit for him that we’re respecting.

No matter how much I love Morgan, I could never cross that line without Cooper’s agreement.

These are all things Wayne can potentially disrupt if I don’t give him just enough to think I’m still on a tight leash with his threats.

I save the new contact in my phone and delete the previous one with a long, heavy sigh. Appeasing him is even more exhausting than weathering one of Cooper’s episodes. I have less patience for Wayne because Cooper is half of my soul.

Wayne is just– the one who donated genetic material to bring me into this world.

Tegan

Dani stays pretty busy. I haven’t even seen my nephew in a month because they’ve been so busy. It’s not my job to make her talk to you.

Sperm Donor

You’re her big sister. She’ll listen to you.

Tegan

Dani doesn’t listen to anyone. Especially me.

Sperm Donor

Just call me, Tegan. Please. I’m your father and I need to talk to you.

I look at the phone screen for a long moment and look up at the clock. I have to pick up Hannah from school in less than an hour. I’m done with work for the day, Morgan won’t be around to talk until later this evening, and Cooper is working late tonight.

I know I don’t need an excuse to not talk to him. I could just block his number and call his bluff.

Even though he’s proven time and again that he can talk anyone into anything, they can’t take Cooper’s job over something that happened over a year ago… but Cooper stopped going to therapy six months ago. He stopped taking his meds a few months before that without telling me.

It’s been a rough adjustment, but his good days are so much better.

The bad days– well the bad days hurt my heart and soul, but he refuses to go back on medication and he hasn’t found a therapist that he’s comfortable actually talking to.

I can’t risk him losing his job anymore now than I could when the threat was first thrown in my face.

I take a deep breath and hit the call button, hating that little part of myself that still hopes for a normal conversation with the man who sired me.

What girl doesn’t want her father to fucking love her the way he should?

Just one conversation, one phone call where he talks to me the way my mom does when she calls to check in, is that too much to ask? The line rings twice before he answers in a broken, gravely voice that I didn’t expect.

“Hey, sweetheart.” My teeth clench at the greeting and the endearment.

When I was little and had no idea of the struggles between my parents, I used to think of myself as a daddy’s girl. I used to think the world of him playing games with my sisters and me, or showing us how to make shadow puppets on the walls with a flashlight when the power would go out.

At the time, I didn’t realize the power was out because he’d gambled his and mom’s paychecks away before paying the electric bill. Now that I know what I know, my childhood memories are tainted, along with that endearment that used to make me feel loved.

I have to swallow the burn of bile in the back of my throat, and remember that I’m keeping Cooper safe when I respond.

“Hi, Dad.” It has been my way of appeasing him ever since he made his threat. Call him dad. Respond to his texts. Be the dutiful daughter but keep him at a distance.

Keep him away from my family.

“She won’t let me see him just like you won’t let me see Hannah,” Wayne says in that broken tone.

For once, he sounds genuinely hurt and not just putting on a dramatic, victimizing show.

“You girls used to love me. I used to mean something to you before your mother poisoned you with her side of the story.” There’s a sniffle like he’s actually crying.

“I guess if I had the money to spoil you… if I had finally gotten a return on my investments, you’d all have a reason to keep me in your lives. ”

It’s the same fucking line, but this time it sounds so… broken.

“You know it was never about the money. We have told you that a million times,” I tell him calmly, like I’m talking someone off a ledge.

That’s exactly what this feels like.

It feels like my father is standing on the ledge of a skyscraper, toes hanging over the edge, and the slightest lean will send him tumbling to the busy street below. I swallow that panicked feeling trying to claw its way up my throat.

“All we ever wanted was for you to stop trying to slander Mom. I just wanted you to be my dad without her telling you that you had to be. You constantly make it out like we have to choose which one of you to love, and never let us just be your kids… you wanted me to be your therapist when it wasn’t my place to know anything that happened between you and Mom. ”

I stop there because I can hear my tone shifting to anger, and I know that I have to stay calm. I know I need to keep my tone as even as I do when Hannah is having a meltdown or Cooper is spiraling.

Taking a breath, I turn away from the phone to exhale slowly so he doesn’t hear before I speak again. “W–Dad, are you okay?”

“No, I’m not okay,” he says quietly and that panic tries to gain purchase once more. “You’d all be better off if I just ended it now. I know which veins to slice. I’ll bleed out before you get here…”

As much as I hate him for everything he’s done, for everything he still tries to hold over my head, I jolt at the words. “You— Please don’t talk like that.”

“Why? It’s true.” Wayne gives a soft huff of a mirthless laugh into the phone. “No more texts or calls to ignore. No more of me trying to get rich quick so I can make you and your sisters love me. No more of my new wife or me trying to get you to get to know my new family.”

I grit my teeth and glance at the clock. “You need to talk to someone. You could get into therapy and we could come to your sessions. We can figure something out where everyone has a better outcome.”

I quietly gather my keys and get into my car, putting him on Bluetooth before pulling out of the driveway to head towards the school.

It’s déjà vu.

Another car ride. Another conversation with the man who is trying to break a piece of me that I thought I’d buried and forgotten.

Wayne’s tone sounds gruffer as he raises his voice. “I don’t want to talk to some shrink. I can hardly get any of you to text me back and you think you’d show up to a counseling session for me?!”

His voice cracks and it sounds so real, that I no longer think this is a ploy. He’s going to do it…

This is the one.

Part of me is panicking and part of me is braced to be relieved… and that part makes me feel like the lowest kind of human.

“No. Tegan, I’m going to hang up and slit my fucking wrists. I’m going to save you all the fucking trouble of ever worrying about me darkening your fucking doorstep again.”

I expect the line to go dead. I expect him to hang up and for the dread to grip my heart any second. Instead the line is still connected. I can still hear him breathing heavily into the phone like he’s waiting with baited breath for my reaction.

It’s at that moment that I realize he got to me.

He played me.

He heard me pleading for him and knew that he’d gotten through to that little girl who still loves her father and wants him in her life.

He worked his way through the cracks in my armor.

He found that one buried heartstring that still hopes for him to change back to the man I thought I remembered.

I’m pulling off of the exit that leads to Hannah’s school when that realization settles, and I steady myself to call his bluff.

Am I brave enough to do this? Can I do this? Can I live with myself if it is real this time and it’s my fault?

Apparently I take too long because he has to dig it in a little further.

“Is that what you want me to do, sweetheart?” He’s still maintaining that raspy tone, like he’s been dragged over hot coals just to speak to me… to beg me to save him from himself.

I feel the tears burning my eyes, but I keep my voice steady.

“Stop threatening it and grow the balls to fucking do it.”

Then I hang up the phone before I can take it back. A minute passes, then another, and he doesn’t call me back like I think he will.

I expect my phone to ring and for him to be livid that I called him out.

It’s happened before. He called me back and told me how he couldn’t believe I would just let him kill himself.

It doesn’t happen, even as I pull my car into the carpool line at the school and lower my visor with Hannah’s pick up number displayed for the staff.

My heart pounds in my chest and I finally call the police station where he works.

The dispatcher answers and I tell them that I need them to do a wellness check on Wayne Millington.

“I’m his daughter and he just called—” I repeat our conversation and even confess to what I said before I hung up the phone while tears trail down my cheeks. “Just please go check on him. Please .” I beg and the dispatcher agrees.

The call ends before the back door opens and the teacher on pickup duty helps Hannah into her booster seat.

She’s eight, but she’s small and I like to know she’s still safe when she’s in the car with us. We pull out of the school parking lot and start driving back home, my daughter completely oblivious to the turmoil rolling around in my gut.

She’s chattering away about school. I’m so lost in my thoughts that I can’t even marvel at the progress her speech has made in the last year. We get home and I get her settled with a snack, her favorite music, and the worksheets she’s supposed to do as homework.

Twenty minutes later my phone rings and I don’t even look at the screen, thinking it’ll be the police department telling me that they found Wayne’s body. Hell, maybe they’ll tell me that they’re coming to arrest me for some kind of assisted suicide charge.

“Hello?” I can hear the anxiety in my own tone.

The voice on the line is not unknown to me, and it’s full of anger.

“ How. Fucking. Dare. You ?”

The rage my sire laces into each punctuated word wraps me in an icy chill.

“You couldn’t even come to check on me yourself?

” Wayne seethes into the phone and my entire body tenses.

“You called my job , Tegan!? Do you know how fucking embarrassing it is to have my co-workers come to check on me? My own daughter can’t even come to check on me herself when she thinks I’ll kill myself? ”

Tears burn my eyes and I feel the bile rising while I fight like hell to swallow back the acidic burn.

“I was stuck… in traffic… picking up Hannah from… school.” I’m breathing erratically, panic threatening to take over as I lean against my closed bedroom door.

I don’t want my daughter to see me like this and feed off of my emotions. “I couldn’t– I had to call.”

“You told me to fucking kill myself!!!” He bellows into the phone accusingly, and the accusation hits its mark like a sniper. “Then you couldn’t even face the consequences of your own selfish fucking words… I raised a fucking coward.”

The line goes dead before I can find the words to respond.

I don’t know what to do.

I don’t know what to say.

I don’t know how to feel. Shouldn’t I be happy he didn’t do it? Disappointed that it’s not over? Guilty that I told him to do it and then didn’t go check on him myself?

I look at my phone and type out a text to Morgan. I delete it before I can send it.

What can he do? What could Lo do if I reached out to her? I can tell them everything that happened, but neither of them can put their arms around me and hold me together.

I open my text thread with Cooper, but type nothing. What will telling him before he gets home do other than make him spiral? I selfishly think that I can’t handle that level of spiral just yet.

I text my group chat with my mom and sisters, letting them know what happened. They all tell me I should’ve expected it and not to feel bad, and that’s the end of that discussion.

I toss my phone onto the bed and bury my fingers into my hair, curling them until I feel a burn in my scalp from how hard I’m pulling at the roots.

I’m fine.

I’m fine.

I’m. Fucking. Fine.

No one can save me from these feelings. No one can save me from this twist of emotions that makes all the sense and none of it all at the same time.

“Mama!” Hannah calls from the kitchen, and I straighten my posture.

Releasing my hair, I step into the adjoining bathroom to wash my face with cold water, slide a brush through my hair, and consult my reflection.

I can see all of it, but I school my features until I’m sure my daughter won’t. Then I walk back out to go and finish the rest of our afternoon routine.