As Alexis closed the door on her father, she couldn't help but swallow back a lump in her throat. She had to stay angry, to keep that small ember alive, else she'd run out after him and hug him, let him take her for ice-cream to make up for his insensitive behaviour.
The trouble was, he still treated her like she was six. If she were brutally honest with herself, that wasn't likely to change – he'd always see her as his little girl learning to ride a bike, or writing her very first birthday card to him, or standing on a kitchen chair dressed in a huge apron that had to be rolled up around her middle to even reach her ankles, learning how to make an omelette.
That was part of the problem, of course. Maybe it would have been different if he'd not been a stay-at-home dad, but he was used to being there when she got home from school, being able to check under the bed for monsters, holding her and offering ice-cream when she argued with her best friend over nothing.
Her go-to-guy. That's what he called himself, and she knew some of this was jealousy. Jealous over Pi, over her growing up, over her needing to be independent. He was still her go-to-guy, but only when she allowed it. If he could have wrapped her in cotton wool and chained her to the radiator, he might well have done so. He had probably considered it, too.
She looked around the small apartment, decorated in what a lot of people called shabby chic. Except theirs was by necessity, not design. She knew she had money, or rather that her father had money. All she had to do was ask, but that was the point. She wanted to do this for herself, to prove, in a way, that she wasn't just Alexis Castle, daughter of a highly successful novelist, that she was also Alexis Castle, person in her own right. And if that meant using an old door as a table, salvaging chairs from dumpsters, so be it. It wasn't because Pi was environmentally aware … okay, not just because of that. It was fun, too, seeing what people threw away, stuff that could be used. Pre-loved. And loved again.
He'd arrived wanting to find fault, and he did, with everything. She'd tried, she really had, but he was determined to be a pain in the ass, and succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. At least he'd tried to apologise, but it was because he'd been told it was the right thing to do, not because he was sincerely sorry for what he'd been like. He still wanted her to come home, be a child again, and maybe she would have let him in, except he'd tried to bribe her with ice-cream, as if she was a … a baby.
And she hadn't meant what she'd said about Beckett to come out the way it did. She was glad that Kate made him happy, and if she wasn't the right one for him, then Beckett was at least the right one right now.
She knew relationships didn't always last – she'd seen enough of that with her father's two ex-wives, countless girlfriends and at least one serious long-term relationship – but that didn't mean it would end badly for him and Beckett. Or her and Pi. That's what life was – a running gamble that never ended until fate dealt you snake-eyes and you crapped out.
Snake-eyes? Crapped out?
She sighed deeply and closed her eyes, leaning back on the door. Even alone, in a tiny apartment in a faintly squalid area of the city, she couldn't get away from her father's influence.