Stephanie was sat outside her parent's house unable to get out and go inside. She had been sat there for a good ten minutes and was still unable to move so did the only thing she could think of doing and that was calling her boyfriend.

Chopping up the last of the vegetables Paul was about to drop them into the wok when his cell phone began ringing. Putting it all back no the chopping board he picked up his phone when he saw Stephanie's fake name on the screen, "Steph? What's going on?"

"I can't do it?"

Confused he turned the wok off so it didn't set the smoke alarm off, "you can't do what?"

"I can't go in and tell my Dad how much he hurt me and how much I hate him."

He knew he shouldn't say it but he couldn't help himself, "why not? He didn't care about your feelings when he said that we couldn't be together any more just because the boys weren't happy."

She wanted to argue with him but she realised he was right and it was exactly what she needed to hear, "thank you baby, you're the best."

Not expecting that sort of response he was a bit taken aback, "uh . . . you're welcome I guess. Anything else I can do for you right now?"

"Nope, I'm good now thanks. I am going to get out of this car and go and tell my Dad how much I hate him. Thank you, I love you and I will see you later."

Happy he could actually help her rather than getting a mouthful from her he would take it, "I love you too. Good luck and I will see you when you get home."

Hanging up she took a deep breath and got out of the car to go and confront her Dad.

Ringing the doorbell she waited for it to be answered almost bottling it incase it was her Dad who answered but ultimately Paul's words were ringing in her head so she stayed where she was and was then relieved when her Mom answered the door, "hi."

Smiling at her daughter she was a little surprised to see her there, "hi. I didn't think you were going to come."

Shrugging her shoulders she clutched the strap of her bag tightly, "Pa . . . a wise person told me that I should take this opportunity to tell him how I feel and I am hoping it will make me feel better."

Nodding her head Linda didn't push her on what she was originally going to say and just motioned for her to come in, "well I guess you should come inside as dinner is ready to be dished up. You can go and take a seat in the dining room if you wish."

Shaking her head she wanted to delay the inevitable of coming face to face with her Dad, "no it's okay, I will help you in the kitchen."

Dropping her bag by the door so if she decided to run she could just grab it on her way out she followed her Mom into the kitchen to help.

Ten minutes later and they were all sat around the table in an uncomfortable silence. Stephanie didn't want to be the first to say something because she wasn't sure what words would come out of her mouth and she was hungry so wanted to actually eat dinner especially after her Mom had gone to the trouble of making her favourite dinner.

Linda patiently waited for everyone to finish eating to clear the dishes away before she brought up the topic of what Vince had done because there were plates and cutlery in the room currently and she didn't dare think about what could happen if things got nasty and those things were still there.

As soon as she had deposited the plates and cutlery in the kitchen she walked back into the dining room, "go into the lounge you two and we can talk in comfort in there."

Vince and Stephanie never did argue with Linda when she got so demanding so they both made their way into the lounge and sat in chairs at opposite ends of the room and Linda sat on the couch in-between the two but off to the side, "so who is going to start?"

Vince decided to start by putting his side forward, "I didn't mean to hurt you Stephanie but I had to do what was right for business. I thought with it being so early into the relationship then your feelings for each other wouldn't have developed too deeply so it wouldn't be a massive problem."

Staring at her Dad like he was crazy she didn't have any clue how to respond to that, he was truly crazy if he thought that their feelings hadn't developed for each other, "see that's your problem Vince, you just thought, you didn't ask. You have absolutely no idea how Paul and I feel about each other because you didn't ask us how we felt. You just assumed that because we haven't been dating that long that it wasn't possible for us to feel anything for each other, you didn't stop to think that maybe, just maybe, we had been falling for each other for a while and it had taken us a long time to pluck up the courage to ask the other out and a long time to decide to put our entire careers and reputations on the line for something that might not work and could go terribly wrong."

"So did you feel a lot for each other?"

She wasn't going to answer that as she refused to, "what does it matter if we did or we didn't? You put a stop to it so whether we were madly in love and could picture spending the rest of our lives with each other and could imagine the children and the house it's all over now."

Listening to her daughter talk Linda now knew why Stephanie was so mad, she felt like her future had been ripped away from her.

Vince heard what she had said but he didn't really listen, "I couldn't let it continue Steph, I couldn't have such unrest in the locker room, I couldn't hurt the product like that."

"No but you could hurt your daughter right?" Standing up she knew she wasn't going to get anywhere with him and they wouldn't fix anything because he wasn't willing to bend or acknowledge anything, "it's perfectly okay to rip your daughter's heart out and stomp on it because she's your daughter and she will have to get over it right? It simply isn't possible for you to take your daughter's side just this one time and to tell them all to keep their nose out of my private business as it had nothing to do with them unless it started to affected the business and as it wasn't you weren't getting involved. Don't worry Vince, I know who matters more to you and I won't bother you for anything in the future. Because I don't need to go above and beyond my job description any more I will be working more from home but I will be in the office for the important meetings. I will do my job whether it be in the arena, in the office or at home and keep my head down and just leave as soon as I can, I don't need to go above and beyond what my job description is any more because what people think of how hard I work doesn't matter, I don't give a shit what they think any more."

Taking a deep breath she headed for the door but paused briefly not wanting to be rude and turned to face her Mom, "thank you for dinner Mom, it was lovely." Turning back around she hurried out of the room as fast as she could with a bad knee picking her bag up at the door before she walked out slamming the door shut behind her blindly walking to her car through the tears that were now freely falling down her face. Reaching the car she struggled to get the key in the lock but as soon as it was unlocked she got in and threw her bag into the passenger seat and rested her arms on the steering wheel before she rested her head on top of them and cried.

Sat there as his daughter stormed out of the house Vince shook his head, "looks like I made the right decision splitting them up because clearly she isn't mature enough to handle a relationship in the business."

Staring at her husband as he walked out of the room she wondered how he couldn't see what was staring him directly in the face, Stephanie was deeply and madly in love with Paul and her heart was currently broken.

Getting up from her seat on the couch she moved to the window carefully peeking out to see if Stephanie had left yet and what she saw broke her heart. She could see her daughter sat in her car with her head resting on her arms and she could only imagine what she was doing and she wanted nothing more than to go out there and tell her it would all be okay but she had a feeling that it wasn't going to get better any time soon.