Cross My Heart (A Contemporary Romance Novel)

pulling into his driveway. There were lights on in his house and in Jenna’s.
    It looked like she’d dropped Claire off and gone home, which seemed to be a clear indication that the three of them wouldn’t be getting together tonight.
    He sat in his car for a moment, trying to figure out who he was more reluctant to face—his daughter or Jenna.
    Better tackle the home front first. Claire was probably so mad she’d locked herself in her room, and he could make his apologies through the closed door.
    He sighed. Then he got out of the car and went into the house.
    “Hey, Dad.”
    He closed the front door behind him and turned to see Claire sitting in the living room, curled up on the couch with a magazine. She must have showered as soon as she got home, because the blue was out of her hair and it was still damp.
    Viewed objectively, he had to acknowledge she’d gotten a good haircut. If she were anyone else’s daughter, he’d even say a great haircut. Those spiky layers flattered her face perfectly. As attached as he’d been to her long hair, it had always been messy and stringy and falling in her eyes, and he’d hated the way she’d slouch with a strand twisted around her finger.
    She was sitting up straight now, and there was a new kind of confidence in the way she held herself.
    “Your hair looks great,” he heard himself say.
    She smiled. “Yeah, I know.”
    He was used to feeling out of his depth around Claire, but this was a new level of mystification.
    “Why aren’t you yelling at me? Aren’t you mad about the way I talked to you and Jenna at the clinic?”
    She shook her head. “Nope.”
    He went into the living room and sat down across from her. “Why not?”
    She shrugged. “You freaked out because that guy was in the waiting room when we were there. You were just worried about us.”
    “I’m always worried about you.” As he said the words, he realized how true they were. “I worry about you every single day. That’s no excuse for losing my temper the way I did, and snapping at you and Jenna. I’m sorry I did that, Claire.”
    “It’s all right. It was kind of...comforting.”
    He stared at her. “Comforting?”
    She nodded. “I’ve never seen you lose your temper before. Everyone else yells or screams or cries when they get upset, but not you. It’s kind of depressing sometimes, like you’re, I don’t know, superhuman or something. I hate it.”
    He remembered Angela yelling at him once, and saying she wished he’d yell back at her. He’d never understood why. He’d been subjected to plenty of screaming and crying growing up, and it was never an expression of love.
     “I never wanted to be the kind of dad who yells.” He hesitated, and then told Claire something he never had before. “My parents yelled. A lot. And it never made me feel like they cared about me.”
    Claire was staring at him with big eyes. “I didn’t know that. Did they...hit you, or anything?”
    He shook his head. “No. Just a lot of shouting.”
    She drew up her knees and wrapped her arms around her shins. “You’ve never told me anything about them before.”
    “It’s not my favorite topic. They weren’t good people, and I never wanted to be anything like them.”
    “And that’s why you don’t yell and stuff? Because you don’t want to be like your parents?”
    “That’s part of it, yeah.”
    “Oh.”
    They sat in silence for a moment. He could see Claire pondering this new information, and he wondered if he should have burdened her with even this small piece of his childhood.
    “So you’re not upset with me?” he asked after a while.
    “No. Jenna’s another story, though.”
    He dragged a hand through his hair. “She’s mad, huh?”
    “Well...I don’t know if she’s mad, exactly.” She frowned at him. “You made her cry, Dad. She kept wiping the tears away when she thought I wasn’t looking.”
    His heart clenched in his chest.
    “When everything went crazy at the clinic, Jenna got in front of me.” Claire bit her lip, which made her look younger than her fourteen years. “Mom used to do this stupid thing. Whenever we were driving somewhere, if she had to brake a little faster than usual, she’d throw her arm across my chest. It was totally ridiculous, because I was always wearing my seatbelt, but she did it anyway.”
    She looked up at him. “That’s what Jenna was doing. Protecting me, you know? And you made her feel like she’s totally irresponsible, like