Free Because You Love Me (Falling for You, Book Three) by Ava Claire

you?"
    One side of his mouth lifted. A smirk? My father didn't smirk!
    "I'm fantastic."
    The sarcasm? Definitely my father.
    "Sorry," I offered, taking a pensive step toward the balcony. The doors were wide open; sunshine, birds chirping, flowers blooming pouring into the room, but I felt as gray as my father's skin. I never thought I'd say the words that were rattling around in my throat, but being there with him, pride and resentment seemed to dwindle close to nothing. "I'm sorry I haven't been to visit."
    He brought his bony fingers to the nasal cannula that protruded from his nostrils, adjusting it with a wince. I leaned forward to help, to do something, but he grunted that he was fine and I retreated back to my spot in the sun and the darkness.
    "I'm glad you came," he said with a slight wheeze. "It took you long enough."
    I clenched my jaw. "You want to go in? Remind me of how I've failed you in your time of need? Have at it."
    He shook his head so slightly that I almost missed it. "Failed me? No, Xander. I failed you."
    Clearly, I was having some sort of delusion. A psychotic break brought on by witnessing something I'd been avoiding for months. But the look on his face was unmistakable. There was regret there. A sadness that ripped at my soul.
    "Growing up, my father was barely around," he pressed on, his voice fragile and pained. "Business trips kept him gone weeks at a time and when he came home, my mother insisted that I be on my best behavior so I didn't upset him. Seen and not heard. He did the obligatory meals, watched a little television, then retreated to his study." My father peered out the window, like he had a direct line to his past. "When he died suddenly, I remember how the preacher talked about how he loved his family. How he'd miss us all. I never told anyone this, but I thought it was all lies. He'd never told us he loved us. He never threw the ball around the backyard with me. I remember him patting me on the head, giving me some toy he'd collected from Timbuktu or wherever he’d jetted off to for business. I told myself we were better off, and someday, when I had kids, I'd give them the world. I'd do better."
    He stopped, and I wondered if he was seeing the cyclical pattern. How the sins of the father were visited upon the son, two times over. I felt a hollow ache when I realized he was stopping to catch his breath. "We don't have to do this right now-"
    "We do," he insisted, a bit of the authority I remembered re-entering his voice. "Too much time has been wasted. The choices I've made are the choices I've made. And they were the wrong ones. I chose wealth and prestige. Building this house, hiding behind money because I couldn't face the fact that the man I saw in the mirror looked a hell of a lot like a man I swore I'd never become. A workaholic who was a husband and father in name only. And worst—the time I had with you I spent making you feel like I was disappointed. Like you weren't enough."
    I dropped my gaze to the floor. The parallels didn't stop with him and his father. I let my work become my life too. I shied away from the family piece, but I'd been on my way to walking the same lonely path.
    Before Penny.
    My father had shared things that I'd wanted him to share all my life. A lightbulb moment when he'd see that we were virtual strangers and we'd both go to our graves with regret. They were words I'd always wanted to hear...and it didn't change the past, and the very real future he'd tried to force on me with his will.
    "What sob story do you have to explain your will?" I said, shifting back to the reason I was here in the first place. "I'm all ears."
    His watered down, olive colored eyes searched my face and he let out a grunt. "I know that look. That anger that has you ready to punch a wall. Or punch me, but luckily, my cancer lets me off the hook."
    Was he making a joke? Who was this man?
    Why wasn't he being cruel? Dismissive? My heart felt too heavy to bear. "You can't joke your