It leached acid and spewed disdain and spit out a healthy dose of accusation just in case the first two weren’t enough.

“I thought you’d be able to relate to Callie, help her learn to listen and apply what her coaches enforced.”

“Yes, sir.” And I thought I’d done a pretty damn good job. She’d been better than ever at the Olympic Trials and every day besides, her practices in the gym as well as her performance on the world stage a testament to how well my coaching style jived with her talent.

“If she could listen to you, I figured she’d listen to me and her National Coaches.”

I didn’t move, didn’t speak because, to me, there was nothing to say.

He was talking about her like a dog or a child, a basic skill set like listening and obeying something to be learned instead of accepted, and Callie sure as hell wasn’t either of those.

I could see his jaw hardening in time with my own, his inference and my non-response pushing each other’s most sensitive buttons.

When the tension broke, he finally put it all out there. “I didn’t give you permission to date her.”

Leaning forward slowly, I settled my elbows onto the arms of the chair and linked my steady hands together.

“All due respect, sir,” I enunciated clearly, slowing down each word to make sure there was no confusion or misunderstanding when it came to my answer.

“But I didn’t ask for it.”

The rubber band on his cool snapped, bringing his body up and over the flat top of his desk until all of his imposing weight leaned viciously into his hands.

“Doesn’t consent mean anything to you?” he asked, angry, his veins standing out in his neck and a purple hue under-lighting the thin layer of skin.

“It means everything to me,” I told him honestly, staying in my seat to appear as far away from confrontational as possible given the circumstances. I didn’t want to be disrespectful, but I did want to prove my point. And I wouldn’t settle for agreeing to something I didn’t think was right.

“And Callie gave me one hundred percent of hers.”

That’s not what he meant though. For him, Callie’s permission and his were one and the same—but only when the order came from him.

His thoughts were written in the mottled purple splotches across his face and chest, and the inky abstract of their illustration read like a murder mystery novel where I was the victim and he was the killer.

“That’s—” he started to yell.

“And I’m sorry, sir,” I interrupted, “but when it comes to a relationship between me and your daughter, her happiness is the only kind that matters.”

I don’t know what I expected, but I know it was infinitely more positive.

To me, my reasoning was sound. Completely bulletproof in its simplicity and beneficial to Frank as the first man who had loved her.

But what I thought and what was weren’t one in the same, the mood and atmosphere in an already struggling room doing nothing but tanking.

“Well, it’s done,” he declared as though he had final say. Like what he said, went—period.

But I wasn’t his daughter, and I hadn’t spent my life trying to please him. I wouldn’t go so easily.

“It’s not,” I disagreed calmly, telling him the truth and admitting to my intentions all in one painful shot.

“I’m telling you it’s done,” he reiterated, and I finally lost a little bit of my cool.

“I got that, sir. And I’m sorry, but I don’t give a fuck. It’s not done. And it probably never will be.”

He sighed deep and heavy, before grabbing a piece of paper off of his desk and shoving it toward me.

I read over it quickly, and the gist had me about ready to lose my shit.

“A letter to the Olympic committee about misconduct?”

He said nothing.

“What in the fuck good would this do you? It’s the exact thing you claim to be trying to avoid!”

“You’re right. That’s where you come in.”

I heaved an angry breath and moved my fist open and closed, trying to calm some of the rage. My normal even keel was slipping away piece by piece thanks to what I now had no doubts would be the worst fucking father-in-law on the planet.

“If you go, there won’t be a letter, there won’t be anything. Nothing but success and the unheard of achievement of three Olympic games for Callie. But if you stay, with the way she’s running around with her head lost in you, this is going to happen one way or the other. At least this way,” he said, shaking the paper in front of my face, “is on my terms.”

I’d never wanted to punch a man so badly in my life, my normal instinct to reason completely overwhelmed by a need for a fight.

But it wouldn’t do anyone any good for me to fight it now.

Most of all, it wouldn’t do any good for Callie.

“Blackmail?” I asked, unwilling to believe he’d treat the fate of his daughter so callously and impersonally. I wanted to believe I was missing something, that there was some other clause he’d kept just to protect her.

His simple shrug said there wasn’t. “Whatever it takes.”

My hands shook as I looked out the window into the large space of the gym, unbridled, never before matched fury rattling the ends of my bones together and heating my normally cool blood to a boil.

Unaware of the conversation on our side, gymnasts and coaches smiled and laughed and carried on with their days. All the while, my world spun out of control.

I felt sick to my stomach, truly moments away from throwing up every last spoonful of the oatmeal I’d had for breakfast, the whole dirty thing screaming of poor decisions and unintended consequences.

I knew there was no clean break to this scenario, no get out of ramification free card, and no going back to the way things were.

I could only move forward, and the ugly choices presented to me didn’t make accepting that easy.

But, as the hamster in my mind spun and spun on its wheel, my heart had to step up and make the decision for it. And only one thing felt right.

After everything I’d witnessed today and up until this point, only one person deserved to make this decision and it wasn’t me and it sure as fuck wasn’t the dirtbag in front of me.

It was Callie. The one who had the most to lose and gain and a hand in most of the variables.

My instinct was to protect her, sure, but by doing so, I’d be doing her the same disservice as her father.

I swallowed thickly, clenching my jaw and keeping my eyes averted from his face.

I couldn’t even stand to look at him.

“It’s up to her,” I murmured, knowing that talking to her about this would be my only chance to come up with some other solution.

“She’s already agreed,” he said simply, the words echoing in the room like three individual gunshots.

Each one, a direct. Fucking. Hit.

Another sheet of paper shoved out in front of me. Blood started to seep from the holes, shock the only thing keeping me alive for the time being.

“That’s why she isn’t here,” he explained. “She’s agreed to my terms, agreed not to see you until the Olympics and any and all endorsement deals that follow are through.”

My teeth ground into my jaw and the sounds of the gym turned toxic. Tears threatened, and if Frank hadn’t been there watching me, I probably would have let them flow.

“She’s worked her whole life for this, Nik. She cares about you, that much is obvious, but she didn’t want to have to face you with this choice,” he reasoned with saccharine sincerity. “Make it easy on her.”

I took the page from his hands with a rip, studying the lines of her name at the bottom and willing it not to be so. But those were her curves of script, her lines and loops and cute dots above each ‘i’. She’d written her name in the chalk on the mats and in the sand at our beach enough times for me to know.

I wasn’t mad at her.

God, I wanted to be.

It would have been easier and infinitely less messy for my heart.