Episode 1321: You Lied

“I’m sorry, but you didn’t want me spending time with him and neither did my dad, so I had no choice.”

Unfortunately there was enough moonlight filling the car that Hope could plainly see her biological father’s raised eyebrow followed by his hard frown. They were still parked in Paul’s driveway, his intention to take Hope home and probably tell her parents that she’d been lying to them, too. This was a disaster, except for the part where Holt and Morris were, at least for the night, someplace safe.

“You did have a choice,” Paul said, suddenly sounding more sad than angry. “You didn’t have to lie to me.”

“But-”

“I’ve lied to my dad, too,” Paul said, “even when I haven’t outright lied to him, there are still plenty of things he doesn’t know about me, things I’ve just left out because I knew he either wouldn’t understand or it wouldn’t land at all well with him. I know we’re different, that you already have another father. Still, when I think of you and I, I can’t help it, it is as a father and kid, and I really wanted our relationship to be better than what I have with my dad. I wanted to feel like you could talk to me. I thought we were getting there.”

“I couldn’t tell you or my parents,” Hope insisted. “You and my dad made that impossible. You only stopped fighting each other because of,” she used finger quotes, “daddy issues. You both thought that was why I was friends with Holt. So if I’d told you he was still my friend, then you and my dad would think there was no point to your truce, your war would have started all over again with me in the middle or banished from seeing you. So yeah, I just let you all think I wasn’t Holt’s friend anymore because I didn’t want everything messed up.”

Tears welled in her eyes. “And before you say I could have just stopped being his friend, no, I couldn’t. He needs a friend in a bad way. In an even worse way than I knew at first. So now I have to worry about you and my dad again blowing up, and at the same time I don’t know what’s going to happen to Holt and Morris and if Jesse can even really help them.”

Episode 1322 (Title TBD) Coming December 9, 2025