Chapter 15 Father's Disapproval
POV: Tommy
His father walked ahead of him down the corridor without looking back.
Tommy kept pace two steps behind him the way he always did when Charles was in this kind of mood. Not angry. Worse than angry. Decided.
"You didn't have to come here." Tommy said.
"I told you. Meeting with Saltzman." His father said it easy, hands in his pockets, nodding at a passing faculty member like he belonged here.
"And stopping to meet Carly."
"I wanted to see her for myself." Charles said simply. "You've been with this girl for almost a year and I've met her twice."
"Because I knew how you'd be about it."
His father stopped walking.
Tommy stopped with him.
Charles turned and looked at his son with that expression that had been ending arguments since Tommy was twelve years old. Patient. Immovable.
"I'm not being any way about it." He said. "I'm being honest with you. The way I've always been honest with you." He stepped slightly closer and dropped his voice. "She's a good girl, Tommy. I can see that. Smart. Strong. She didn't flinch in there once."
"Then what's the problem."
"You know what the problem is."
Tommy's jaw locked.
"The bond exists whether you acknowledge it or not." His father said it quietly. "Choosing someone doesn't make them your mate. It just means you made a choice. And choices can be undone."
"I'm not undoing anything."
Charles looked at him for a long moment.
"One day." He said. "You're going to feel it. And when you do everything you chose is going to feel very different." He put a hand on Tommy's shoulder briefly. "I'm not your enemy here. I'm just the only one telling you the truth."
He walked away down the corridor and didn't look back again.
Tommy stood in the hallway and stared at the wall for a moment.
Then he turned around and walked back to the study room.
Carly was in the same position he had left her in. Pen in hand, book open, spine straight. She looked up when he came back and he could tell from the way she looked at him that she already knew some version of what had just happened in that hallway.
She didn't ask.
He loved her for that.
He sat back down beside her and reached over and took her hand. She let him.
"Sorry about that." He said.
"You don't have to apologize." She said it softly.
He looked at her for a second. The grimoire open in front of her and her color coded pens lined up beside it and her hair falling forward slightly over one shoulder.
"Come away this weekend." He said. "Just us. My family has a cabin about thirty minutes out of town, right on the water. No school, no pressure, no..." He stopped. "Just us."
She looked at him.
"I know things have been weird." He said. "I just want a weekend where it's not weird."
She was quiet for a moment. He watched her think about it, that small crease forming between her brows.
"I want that too." She said carefully. "But I have the project. Professor Swanson's assignment, the one that determines if I graduate. I can't just disappear for a weekend right now."
Tommy nodded slowly. "The group one?"
"Yes." She sighed. "And before you hear it from someone else." She kept her voice even. "My partner is Niko Monroeson."
The name landed in the room like a stone in still water.
Tommy went very still.
He took a breath. Let it out. "Why do you two have a class together."
"General education. Everyone's in it apparently." She rolled her eyes. "I didn't exactly choose him."
"I know." He said it carefully. His hand was still over hers on the table. "I just really don't like that guy."
"Join the club." She said with a small laugh.
He managed a smile back. Reached over and pulled her into him by the back of her neck gently, pressing his lips to her forehead.
She leaned into it.
He stayed there for a moment with his eyes closed.
His father's voice in the back of his head was quiet for exactly as long as that lasted.
"If he gives you any trouble." He started.
"I can handle him." She pulled back and looked up at him. "Who do you think makes a sport out of giving him aneurysms?"
He laughed for real that time.
She smiled back and it reached her eyes and he told himself that was enough.
It was enough.
Author's Note:
Charles Lancaster walked in here and said absolutely everything without saying anything at all and I am not okay about it. And Tommy standing in that hallway knowing his father is right and going back to Carly anyway? That's the most human he's been this whole story. Drop a like and tell me in the comments, are you feeling sorry for Tommy or are you already too far gone? Add us to your library because Chapter 14 is coming and Niko and Carly have to sit next to each other again and Aurora has something to say about it!