Chapter Fifty Five-
Dax
I clench my teeth and feel my muscles tense as I try to explain it to him. "I'm so tired of feeling like I don't deserve to be happy because of you. I hate how you treated me, and this will help people who are in similar scenarios."
"Do you not understand? If it comes out that this happened, I could lose everything. Then again, that's what you want, isn't it? Is that why you already started a rumor that I'm having an affair? You've finally decided to try and take me down?" He snaps back, rolling his eyes as he leans back in the chair on the other side of my desk.
Noel is sitting on the couch, reading up on Anne Chamberlain, who surprised me when she asked me for his phone number at the party. She said she likes his spark and she wants to see about getting him a photoshoot. I might be biased, but he's model material in my opinion.
I see him glance over at us a few times, so I know he's listening, but he seems to be trying to mind his own business. I didn't know my father had scheduled a meeting. My assistant said it was important, so I let him in. It seems like a waste of time because now he's just bitching at me about trying to start a charity for children in abusive homes to seek help or refuge.
I know too many people who were forced to grow up in houses that they shouldn't have been, but he thinks that people will assume I'm doing this because I have personal experience with it. I do, but obviously, he doesn't want me to tell anyone. Everyone knows that business is 80% keeping secrets.
"I'm not going to get up on stage and broadcast what you did to me. Do you think I would ever let someone believe that I'm a victim? Please, the last thing I want is pity. Why would I start a rumor about you anyway? Until I find another name to put on the front of this building, your reputation and mine are linked."
"Wait, what?" Noel asks, sitting up to turn to us.
"Nothing, Noel. Stay out of it."
He looks at me for a moment before speaking again. "If someone says something about him it affects your business too?"
I sigh in annoyance. I'm not sure what part of 'stay out of it' he didn't understand, but I respond anyway, keeping my answer short. "Yes. If someone has a scandal of any kind it negatively impacts the family members of that person as well."
"I-I didn't know that."
I look over at him again, seeing the guilty look on his face. I pinch the bridge of my nose and take a deep breath. It's already bad enough that my father is here, and now Noel is being an idiot too.
You'd think it would be easier to manage my emotions after hiding them for so long but now it's like I yell or cry at some point every day. I have no idea how to keep it under control. Maybe that therapy thing isn't such a bad idea.
I glare at Noel. "It was you? Who did you tell?"
He looks at the two of us before lowering his eyes to his lap. "I don't know. There were three girls at the party. They were gossiping about Skylar's little sister and I wanted them to talk about something else."
"Three girls? Did they look my age?"
"Yeah."
"He's talking about the Ana's." My father informs me.
"The Ana's?"
"Eliana, Juliana, and Ariana. They've been friends since before we went to school together. They're on the lower end of the upper class, so they sneak into parties to get gossip and sell stories to the press. Everyone knows not to talk to them." I tell Noel. "Except you apparently."
"You don't have to be an asshole."
"So you can't even keep your whore's mouth shut? Whatever, there's no undoing that. Look, if you start this charity, my attorney and I will sue you for slander. Start a charity for runaways if you want to, but don't mention anything about abuse." He insists.
"Watch your mouth." I stack up the papers on my desk and set them aside before getting my laptop open. I go to the planning document and start to cut out some parts about the charity being personal to me and try to make the introduction less emotional overall. "You can't sue me for slander if what I say is the truth. You can act like it didn't happen if you want, but unfortunately, being your son was a traumatic experience that I don't get the luxury of ignoring."
"I don't ignore what I did. I know it was wrong, but making a mistake doesn't mean that you need to ruin the rest of my entire life. You know what accusations like this can lead to. My company could tank, and that's not just about me. Every single one of my employees would be jobless, and all of the money that's been invested would be gone. I'd go bankrupt, and unless you plan on taking care of your mother, she'd be fucked over too."
I ignore him for a moment, angrily typing new sentences on the laptop before stopping when I remember something.
"Did you have sex with men when I was a kid?" I ask him. I don't expect an honest answer. I don't know if my dad is capable of being honest. He'll say 'no', and I won't know if it's the truth or not.
He looks over at Noel and gestures for him to leave. Noel rolls his eyes and opens his mouth to argue, but I cut in before he can speak. "Leave, Noel."
"Seriously? You're letting him tell me what to do?"
"I'm telling you what to do, and after the shit you pulled, you're lucky you're allowed to speak at all, now get out."
He sticks his middle finger up at me and leaves without another word. Once he's gone, I turn to my dad.
"Do you have cameras in here?"
"Why are you so paranoid?"
"Do you have cameras or not?"
I take the remote from my desk and point it at the camera in the corner before clicking the button to turn it off. When the red light disappears, he takes a deep breath, reaching his hand up to run his fingers through his hair.
"Yes."
My stomach drops. I thought I'd be happy to hear him tell the truth. I thought it would be good for our growth, but I still can't get over how I feel. How could he hurt me for doing something he was doing too? How could he be such a hypocrite?
"So you came home and beat me for being gay when you were fucking men the whole time?"
"I didn't beat you for being gay, Dax. I beat you because I hated you." He confesses, only making my heart tighten more than before.
I bite my lip to hide it quivering while choking down my feelings like he always taught me. "Yeah, well, I don't know what I did to make you hate me so much."
He takes a deep breath and looks me in the eyes, showing a hint of vulnerability for once since I've known him. "If I tell you this, just know it's not for sympathy or pity. I'm not asking you to feel sorry for me or forgive me or anything."
I told Hayes that I have a pretty strained relationship with my father. It wasn't a session or anything. He's just become a good friend and I was confiding in him. He told me that sometimes it's best to just listen to what they have to say even when you think they're lying or making things up. He said it could help me understand, so that's what I'll do. I can listen even if everything he says is bullshit.
"Okay."
"When I was 15, I met a boy named Sean. He was on the basketball team with me. We bonded pretty fast and it didn't take me very long to realize that I had feelings for him. He liked me too, so we started dating. It wasn't public obviously. You know how people feel about that, and your grandfather was an asshole."
I snort softly. My grandfather hasn't spoken to me since I came out to my parents. I think the only one of us that he does like is my mom.
"We snuck over to each other's houses and went on dates in other cities to make sure nobody would see us. We even had girlfriends that we went out with to hide our dating. That's how your mother and I's relationship started. My dad constantly pressured me to have sex with her. I think he had a suspicion that I wasn't as interested as I pretended to be, but eventually, I took his advice and did."
"That sounds incredibly tragic," I comment, unable to keep it in. I want to feel bad for him. I know what it's like to love someone and have so many people trying to keep you apart. I know how hard it is to pretend that you're perfect. I know it sucks not being able to be yourself, but having a shitty parent didn't give him an excuse to be one.
"Shut up. Look, the day after, Sean snuck into my bedroom. We'd been sneaking around for three years by then, so I knew my dad's routine pretty well, but he walked in on us. We were only kissing, but he got pissed and hit me. He was never violent with me before. Not to that degree at least, but he hit so hard he broke my jaw and when I went back to school, Sean wasn't there. I looked through all of my dad's bank statements and he made a payment to Sean's parents the night he caught us together. I think he bribed them into keeping him away from me."
He laughs bitterly and uses his hands to cover his face. I'm not sure if he's crying or just trying to keep me from looking at him as he speaks, but either way, I've never seen him like this before. I've never seen him care so much about something before.
I do feel for him. He was in love and it was ruined. It sucks to lose a love you thought would last forever. It feels empty and sad. I can't even describe how torn up I was when I thought Elian cheated on me and left. Is that why he is the way he is? He's sad?
"It would've worked out even without Sean. I got access to my trust fund a few months later. I was going to move out and tell him that I don't care what he thinks. I was going to leave your mother and move to a different state for college. I was going to be the person I always wanted to be, but then your mother called me on my 19th birthday, three days before I was supposed to leave, to tell me she was pregnant. After that, every single time I looked at you it reminded me that the night she told me we were going to have a baby was the worst night of my life."
I sit back in my chair and look up at the ceiling, trying to blink away my tears. I know how he feels, but what am I supposed to say? I was a kid. I couldn't have changed any of that. It's not my fault that I was born.
"I always had this thought in my mind that if you weren't here, I wouldn't have had to be this person. I tried to change. I tried to be a better dad, but then you told me you like boys."
I remember that vividly. I was 14. He told me he'd never hit me again. He took me to the movies and bought me my first tailored suit. He did so much to bond with me, and just when I finally thought I could trust him, I told him I was gay. It was like we went back to square one.
He pulls his hands down so that I can see his teary eyes when they meet mine. "I hated you because you were brave enough to say it. I hated you because you were going to get what was stolen from me. Then I found all those pictures and realized how alike we are. I was sneaking men into hotel rooms to fuck them and leave because I had to hide. You were sleeping around even when you were out. I hated you because you only cared about the sex part."
He glares now, his anger building more, but he still looks sad. Too sad to scare me. I never realized that being in love was something he wanted so badly. I assumed from the way Spencer talked about him that he just liked sleeping with men but wanted nothing to do with having a relationship.
"You could've had something so much better than that. You could've fallen in love and had a real relationship. You didn't have to be with a bunch of sluts. I hated you because you chose to sneak around like me when you had every chance to have everything I ever wanted! You could've chosen to be with someone beautiful like-"
He stops mid-sentence and takes a deep breath, aggressively wiping the tears from his face before standing up. He huffs softly and forces out a fake laugh. "I can't believe I'm crying. God, this is so stupid."
"Someone like Sean?" I ask, and he rolls his eyes, taking another moment to compose himself.
"I'm sorry, Dax. I know you'll never believe that, but I feel shame every time I think about what I've done to you." His voice cracks, so he clears his throat before finishing. "If you want to do the charity, that's fine. Just take care of your mom. She hasn't worked a day in her life, and I doubt she wants to start now. She got knocked up and married rich for a reason."
I laugh at his comment. It's not like she got pregnant on purpose but marriage was probably her end goal. She's never been shy about admitting how much of my dad's money she spends and why she married him in the first place.
Part of me thinks money is one of the reasons she acted like nothing ever happened to me. She'd see bruises and ignore them. She pretended to believe him when he said I was clumsy. Even when I had to go to the ER when he broke my arm and gave me a concussion, they just told the doctor I had fallen down the stairs.
He's done a lot of really fucked up things, but looking at him now, he seems so genuine and sincere. It reminds me of something Noel had said during one of our arguments.
'Nothing will ever change unless you choose to try.'
I want to change how I feel about him. Nothing he says or does will give me back the innocence that he took from me, but I'm ready to try to move forward.
"Do you even love her?"
"Dax, we've been married for 25 years. I might not love her romantically and we butt heads, but she's my best friend. I want her to be taken care of."
"Okay." He turns to leave, and I debate with myself for a minute before throwing more words out of my mouth. "You can come to Sunday dinners again. You have to be nice to Noel, and you can't bring Elian until this whole thing between them calms down."
He stops and mumbles 'thanks' before leaving. Noel comes back in, his angry little face making me smile.
"What the hell was that? You're siding with him over me now? I can't believe you'd be such an ass. You know that was my first time going to a party like that, and you didn't put anything about those girls in your stupid synopsis." He starts, as I stand up and walk closer. I place my hands on his cheeks and when I do he looks even angrier. "Don't fucking look at me like that. How dare you talk to me that way? I did so well at your stupid posh party. I got a fucking job from it, and I'm not going to let you ruin how happy I am by-"
I press my lips to his which stops his rant. He whines for a second before kissing me back, shoving his tongue into my mouth before biting my lip.
I pull away and smile at him. "I'm not happy that you started spreading rumors without telling me, but I'm so proud of you. I don't know how you got that evil bitch to like you, but she seems serious about this modeling thing though."
"I know. Dax, I know something about her. I told her I wanted a job and that I could forget what I saw if she helped me."
"Okay."
"You don't want to know what it is? You don't think that's cheating? I got the job because she wants me to keep quiet."
"That's not cheating, Noel. You can't cheat when the game has no rules. You're keeping someone's secret. That's a point for you. I know secrets too. You don't have to share yours with me."
Noel smiles and takes a step back to fix my tie. He's been wearing nicer clothes too. He threw out some of his old clothes that had holes or rips in them and bought a few nicer things. He doesn't complain when I spend money on him anymore either. I think he's getting used to taking 'handouts'. Just because he didn't earn the money at a 9 to 5 job, doesn't mean he didn't earn it.
I press my lips to his cheek and take a deep breath. "Me and a few guys I know are having a meeting at the penthouse about an investment club. You're more than welcome to join us if you like."
"Sure. It'll have to be after I use the gym though. According to Anne, I'm flabby and need to lose ten pounds."
I roll my eyes and reach around him to grab his ass. "I think you're gorgeous."
"Good because you'll see me in a magazine soon."