“That’s just it,” Emma stated coldly. “I’m not doing it. I was wrong to even consider doing it. Look at you.” She gestured towards him and at the bed around him.
Cigarette burns littered the sheets along with various stains from both liquor and where Sebastian had been too intoxicated to make it to the bathroom. The whole room smelled like a sewer; it was a disgusting sight to behold.
“I can change!”
“No.” Emma shook her head. “No, you can’t. And I see that now. I’m too late to save you, Dad. When you look at things, you really died when Mom did. What’s left of you now, that’s not worth saving.”
Sebastian held back tears as his bottom lip trembled. For so long he had avoided any mirrors, refusing to accept the dramatic changes that he’d undergone. But here was his daughter, beautiful and defeated, showing him what he could no longer avoid: his true reflection. In her eyes, he saw that he had fallen too far for redemption.
“I’m not going to sacrifice my happiness just so you can continue sleeping in your own piss.”
The harsh delivery of the words made Sebastian recoil.
“It’s time you saved yourself, Dad,” Emma said, shaking as she did so.
Sebastian looked at her as a solitary tear fell down his cheek.
“I won’t marry Nick,” Emma repeated. “I just won’t. You’ve gambled everything else away, but I refuse to let you gamble me.”
Sebastian looked at his daughter, with a mixture of pride and self-contempt churning inside of him. As she berated him, her beautiful features distorted in anger, she reminded him so much of her mother, Miranda, that it was devastating to witness. Miranda Delacourt was a woman with an iron will. Without her guidance, Sebastian had floundered and ultimately been consumed by his own demons.
“You’re so much like her,” he whispered.
“She’s gone, Dad.” Emma cried. “She’s gone, and nothing will bring her back. Its time you accepted that rather than hiding behind your liquor and drugs.”
Emma stood up, her hands bunched in fists at her side. Her mouth opened and closed, but instead of saying more, she turned on her heels and stormed from his bedroom. Sebastian was alone once more.
The door slamming echoed around the room and exacerbated Sebastian’s headache, but he ignored the pain. Emma’s words still hung heavy in the air around him. Everything she’d said was true; everything she’d said should have been addressed a long time ago. But she’d found the strength to stand up to him, to tell him how much of a failure he had become.
That moment was crystalizing for Sebastian Delacourt. He knew that if his daughter could find the strength to finally defy him, then he could find the strength to be the father she could be proud of, and become a father worthy of saving.
He got out of bed and headed straight for his bathroom, where he poured away whatever liquor he had left in his bedroom. It was a new day, and Sebastian Delacourt made a vow that never again would he let Emma down. If he could clean up his act, perhaps she would reconsider her decision and marry Nick to save him after all.
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Also by Clarissa Carlyle
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Designing Emma (Volume 2) Page 6