He Locked Me Out Now He’s Begging Me Back Chapter 38
Daniel sent me a set of photos.
All of Tessa and Noah’s things had been cleared out. The master bedroom and the study had been restored. Even the curtains and bedding had been changed back to the colors I liked.
“The house is back to normal,” he wrote. “Come see it, okay?”
Attached was a plane ticket he had already bought for me.
I neither canceled it nor used it.
A week later, Daniel drove to my apartment. There were several boxes of old belongings in the trunk, along with the bookshelf my father had made for me.
He carried it into my living room and set it upright before speaking in a low voice. “I cleaned out the whole house. Tessa’s never coming back, and only the two of us have door access now.”
“Did you replace the mattress she slept on?”
Daniel went pale.
“I did. I disinfected the bed frame, too, and repainted the closet—”
“That’s not the point.”
He stood there with his mouth slightly open, then finally forced out, “Then what exactly do you want me to do?”
“I never asked you to do any of this.”
His eyes reddened, and his voice suddenly rose.
“I had a huge fight with my mother. Tessa said she won’t recognize me as her father anymore, and Noah won’t even answer my calls. For you, I pushed away my own family, and you still won’t give me one chance?”
“There you go again.”
He froze.
“Throwing her out was *for me*. Fighting with your mother was *for me*. That way, if things turn out badly, you can say I forced you to sacrifice everything.”
I looked at him and said, one word at a time, “Daniel, those were your decisions. You are responsible for them. Stop looking for another woman to carry the cost.”
Standing beside the old bookshelf my father had made, he suddenly looked like a complete stranger.
I took the last box from him and opened the door.
“You’ve delivered the things. You can go now.”