The Year I Stopped Being His novel Chapter 466

Sloane's fingers froze on her phone screen.

She looked down at the IV needle in her hand, falling silent for a long time. An ambulance wailed in the distance outside, its red and blue lights sweeping across the ceiling through the gap in the curtains before vanishing.

"He has his own family. His wife, his daughter. I don't want to intrude."

Her tone was incredibly detached, as if she were talking about a complete stranger.

"But you're his daughter too."

Sloane looked up at him, a faint, almost imperceptible smile touching her lips.

"A daughter? When I was starving and freezing under Willa's care as a child, where was he? When I was digging through the trash in the middle of the night looking for my mother's belongings, where was he? He never cared about me. Later, when I grew up and got into Riverdale University, he suddenly remembered he had a daughter."

"He just needed a decent poster child for his business. He wanted me to marry a rich man so his company could climb to the next level. In his eyes, I was never his daughter. I was just a useful tool. In my heart, that father has been dead for a long time."

She spoke with such eerie calm it sounded like she was reciting someone else's resume. But Garrison noticed the hand resting on her lap—her fingertips were trembling slightly.

He knew this calmness was a wound in itself. It had taken years to scab over, but the flesh underneath had never truly healed.

He fell silent for a moment before speaking, his voice so soft it felt like he was testing a lock he wasn't sure he should open.

"What if... his days are numbered?"

Sloane's fingers violently gripped the edge of the bathrobe.

She whipped her head around to stare at him, a flash of shock in her dark eyes. "What did you say?"

"You're saying he has cancer and wants to see me."

She looked up, a thin sheen of tears pooling in her dark eyes, but she fought them back desperately, her eyes turning rimmed with red.

"But why should I? Just because he says he wants to see me, does that mean I have to go?"

Her voice began to shake. It wasn't weakness; it was the fury of years of suppression finally tearing open.

"When I was a kid and broke a plate, Willa locked me out on the freezing balcony in the dead of winter. I wanted to see him then—but he refused to see me."

"When I won the state swimming championship, everyone else's parents were sitting in the audience. I was the only one standing on the podium, clutching my trophy all alone. The judges asked me where my family was, and I said they were busy. Where was he then? Why didn't he come see me?"