TRADING MY CHEATING HUSBAND FOR THE LYCAN KING novel Chapter 141

CHAPTER 93: A TERRIBLE FATHER–2

Each word rips him apart, and I watch him absorb them, watch his face crumple further with each

accusation.

“You’re right,” he whispers. “You’re right. I was useless. I am useless. I couldn’t have saved you even if I’d known because I was too busy trying to save myself from the bottom of a bottle.”

“Then why are you here?” I demand. “What could you possibly say that would make any of this okay?”

“Nothing.” He meets my eyes, and the honesty in his gaze is almost unbearable. “There’s nothing I can say that will make it okay. There’s nothing I can do to undo the damage I’ve caused. I know that. I’ve known it for years, every time I looked at myself in the mirror and saw the man I’d become instead of the father I

should have been.”

He takes a step toward me, then stops, like he’s afraid of getting too close.

“I’m not here to make excuses,” he continues, his voice trembling. “I’m not here to ask for forgiveness I don’t deserve. I’m just here to tell you that I’m sorry. Not because I expect it to fix anything, but because you deserve to hear it. You deserved to hear it years ago, and I was too much of a coward to say it.”

The tears are threatening again, burning behind my eyes, and I blink them back furiously.

“I was a terrible father,” Maurice says, and the words come out like he’s ripping them from somewhere deep inside himself. “I was weak and selfish and so lost in my own pain that I couldn’t see yours. I let your mother control everything because it was easier than fighting her. I let her turn you into a bargaining chip because I was too drunk to stop her. I signed those papers and I took that whiskey and I told myself it was for the best, that you’d be better off with a rich husband than stuck with a failure like me.”

His voice breaks completely, and he has to stop to compose himself.

“But you weren’t better off,” he continues, barely above a whisper. “You were suffering. My little girl was suffering, and I was too far gone to notice. Too weak to help. Too broken to be the father you needed.”

“You’re right,” I say, and my voice is steadier than I feel. “You were all of those things. You were weak and selfish and broken. And I needed you. I needed you so badly, and you were never there.”

“I know.”

“I used to wait for you.” The words spill out before I can stop them, dredged up from somewhere I thought I’d buried years ago. “Every night, I used to sit by the window and wait for you to come home. And when you did come home, I used to pray that you’d be sober. That you’d be the dad I remembered from when I was little. The one who called me Birdie and took me to the park and told me I was special.”

Maurice makes a sound like a wounded animal, raw and broken.

“But you never were,” I continue. “You were always drunk. Always distant. Always somewhere else, even when you were standing right in front of me. And eventually I stopped waiting. I stopped hoping. I stopped

C CHAPTER 902 A TERRIBLE FATHER 2

believing that my father would ever come back, because I realized he was already gone.”

“Birdle-” He catches himself. “Ember. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry I wasn’t the father you deserved. I’m sorry.

I let you down. I’m sorry wasn’t there to protect you from your mother, from Gale, from all of it.”

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