Chapter 09 – Shaken by her Father
The pounding started as a dream—then turned into the door.
Lily jerked upright, heart slamming, sleep tearing loose in scraps. Light pooled thinly across the floor; the clock read 10:11 a.m. The pounding came again, harder.
“Lilith! Open the door.”
She knew the voice. Her father.
She swung her legs off the bed, the room tilting once before it steadied. Another knock—no, a fist. She crossed the small stretch to the door and cracked it, chain still on.
Her father filled the gap. Gray suit, clean shave, jaw set too tight. His eyes ran over her face, then past her into the apartment.
“Open it.”
She slid the chain free.
He stepped in without waiting. The room seemed to shrink around him. He took in the chipped tiles, the wobbly table, the unmade bed. His mouth tightened.
“This is where you live?”
“It’s my place,” she said, softer than she meant to.
He shook his head and let the door fall shut behind him. “The insurance company called me.”
No greeting. No how are you.
“Said I’m still listed as emergency contact. Said there was an accident.”
Her stomach dipped. The forms she hadn’t changed.
“I’m fine,” she said. “It was—” She searched for the least explosive word. “—manageable.”
“Manageable?” He turned to her fully now. “You crashed into a car.”
Her throat went dry. “There was rain. The turn— I misjudged. No one was hurt.”
He stared. “Do you have any idea how this makes you look? How it makes me look?”
Something old and tired pressed against her ribs. “It was my accident. Not yours.”
He huffed a laugh without humor. “You think that’s how it works? You still carry my name. People call me.” He gestured at the room again, as if the apartment were the punchline. “This is exactly what I warned you about. You run off to ‘make your own way’ and a month later you’re wrecking cars.”
“Three months,” she said.
“What?”
“I moved out three months ago.”
He waved that away. “How are you going to pay for it?”
“It’s handled.”
“How?” He took a step closer, voice stiffening. “Your insurance doesn’t cover everything. The cost they gave me—”
Her head snapped up. “They gave you a cost?”
“They called me.” He let the words sit, then added, “They assumed I’d be involved. Sensible assumption.”
Heat climbed her neck. “It’s being taken care of,” she said again, slower. “The other driver arranged the tow. His shop is handling both cars. I’ll work it out.”
“The ‘other driver’,” he repeated. “Name?”
Her palm twitched. She kept it at her side. “Blake.”
“Blake who?”
“Callahan.”
He blinked. No recognition—only suspicion. “And Mr. Callahan is… what, exactly? A saint? He’s paying?”
She hesitated. “He said not to worry. He… has people. It’s being managed.”
He stared at her like she’d said she’d won the lottery. “That doesn’t happen. Strangers don’t pay to fix your life. Are you crazy?”
She flinched. “He was there. He handled it. He called the tow, the mechanic, the police. I told you—no one was hurt.”
“That isn’t the point.” His voice rose and fell, the way it did when he cut meetings in half. “The point is you don’t know this man. You let him ‘handle it’ and now he has leverage. What does he want from you?”
“Nothing.” Too fast.
He lifted a brow. “Nothing? No one does something for nothing.”
“He didn’t ask for anything.” She heard the memory as she said it: You don’t. “He helped because— because it was the right thing.”
“The right thing,” he echoed softly, tasting the words. “No, Lilith. The right thing would have been to call me.”
Her mouth opened. Closed. I didn’t want to burned her tongue.
He looked up at the ceiling. “You’re not well. You’re not sleeping. This place—”
As if on cue, a bass line thumped once upstairs. His eyes cut upward, incredulous. “You call this living?”
“I do,” she said.
“On café wages?” He let out a short breath. “Dance classes all day, shifts until midnight— you’ll drive yourself into a wall.”
The words sat between them, too literal. He smoothed his tie, as if he could take them back with the gesture. “I told you this would happen. It’s not sustainable.”
“I’m managing.”
“You are barely holding on.” His tone softened by a degree—always worse. “Come home now. I’ll cover the bill. We’ll get your car sorted properly. Take a semester off, get some real experience, think clearly.”
She stared at the floorboards. The offer slid across her like oil—shiny, suffocating.
“I’m not coming home.”
His jaw worked. “You can’t afford this.”
“I’ll find a way.”
“How?” He spread his hands. “Borrowing from a stranger is your plan?” His gaze sharpened.
She felt the drawer in the dresser like a small animal at her back. “You’re not listening. He said I didn’t have to repay him. He gave me his number in case I needed anything else. That’s all.”
Her father watched her as if she had confirmed something. “There it is.”
“There what is?”
“The part where you think this is a solution. A man you don’t know steps in, makes a few calls, tells you it’s not your fault, and you mistake that for stability.” He took a breath. “You are not a child. Stop acting like one.”
Something in her flared. “I handled it. I decided to let him help. I’m allowed to accept help.”
“From a stranger.”
“From someone who didn’t make me feel like a problem,” she said, low. “Who didn’t judge me. Who just helped.”
He went still.
Silence edged up around them. The building breathed. A pipe clicked in the wall.
“This is what happens,” he said finally, the softness gone. “You don’t listen, you chase fantasies—dance, ‘independence’—and then you call me when it collapses.”
“I didn’t call you.”
His mouth tightened. “No. Your mess did.”
She let out a thin breath. “Please leave.”
“You’re asking me to leave.” He said it as if translating a language he distrusted.
“Yes.”
He looked at her a long moment. The anger in his face shifted into something colder, the expression he reserved for lost causes. “I won’t fund this,” he said. “I’ll cut you off completely. Not one dollar toward a choice that puts you in danger and embarrasses us both.”
“I didn’t ask you to.”
“And if he doesn’t pay?” He tilted his head, prosecutorial. “If your ‘Blake Callahan’ decides the bill is yours after all? If his ‘people’ change their minds? What then?”
“I’ll figure it out.”
“You’ll come home,” he said.
“No.”
“You were always stubborn.”
“At least that’s one thing you taught me.”
A flash—offense or pride, she couldn’t tell—ran through his eyes and was gone. He looked around one last time, as if the room itself were an argument he could win. “You have two options,” he said, as if reading from a page. “Take the help that makes sense—come home, get steady—or keep spiraling and expect me to stand by while you do. I won’t.”
He reached the door, hand on the knob. Paused. “You have potential,” he said without turning. “Stop wasting it.”
She didn’t move. Didn’t look up. Stayed silent.
He opened the door, glanced back once, and stepped through. The latch caught.
The apartment swallowed the space he’d occupied and was too small again, and too big. Lily stood where she was, palms cold, breath shallow, as the quiet settled. Upstairs, the bass started back up, late and lazy, as if nothing had happened.
She moved on stiff legs to the dresser and pulled the top drawer a few inches. Folded shirts. A loose hair tie. The card resting on top.
She didn’t touch it.
She slid the drawer shut and pressed her fingers flat to the wood until the tremor in her hands steadied.
Her father’s questions hung in the room—How will you pay? What does he want?—like hooks. She felt them tug.
On the table, her phone vibrated once with a spam notification and went dark. The sound made her flinch anyway. She rubbed her forearms as if the room were cold.
A breath in. A breath out.
She crossed to the sink, ran water into a glass, and drank. Metal on her tongue. She set the glass aside and braced her hands on the counter.
“Okay,” she said to the empty air. Not a plan—just a word to fill the space where panic wanted to live.
Her body remembered the hour she’d finally slept. Her head remembered the line that had taken the edge off.
Structure gives you strength.
She looked toward the bed. The sheets were still tangled from the night. She began to pull them straight, smoothing fabric that didn’t want to be smooth. One corner, then the other. Pillow. Blanket. Small order in a small room.
When she finished, she stood again, listening to the bass, the pipes, her own breath.
The drawer stayed closed.
For now, his words would have to be enough.