Read Online The Last Song by Nicholas Sparks - Free Book Online Page A

decided, it couldn’t be any worse than this.
    But that wasn’t possible. Not with Officer Pete here. He stood behind her now, making sure she went inside.
    She still couldn’t believe it. How could her dad—her own flesh-and-blood father—do something like this? She was almost an adult, she hadn’t been doing anything wrong, and it wasn’t even midnight. What was the problem? Why did he have to turn this into something far bigger than it was? Oh sure, at first Officer Pete had made it sound like it had been an ordinary, run-of-the-mill order to vacate their spot on Bower’s Point—something that hadn’t surprised the others—but then he’d turned to her. Zeroed in on her specifically.
    “I’m taking you home,” he’d said, making it sound as if she were eight years old.
    “No thanks,” she’d responded.
    “Then I’ll have to arrest you on vagrancy charges, and have your dad bring you home.”
    It dawned on her then that her dad had asked the police to bring her home, and there was an instant when she was frozen in mortification.
    Sure, she’d had problems with her mom, and yeah, she’d blown off her curfew now and then. But never, ever, not even once, had her mother sent the police after her.
    On the porch, the officer intruded on her thoughts. “Go on in,” he prompted, making it fairly clear that if she didn’t open the door, he would.
    From inside, she could hear the soft sounds of the piano, and she recognized the sonata by Edvard Grieg in E minor. She took a deep breath before opening the door, then slammed it shut behind her.
    Her father stopped playing and looked up as she glared at him.
    “You sent the cops after me?”
    Her dad said nothing, but his silence was enough.
    “Why would you do something like that?” she demanded. “How could you do something like that?”
    He said nothing.
    “What is it? You didn’t want me to have fun? You didn’t trust me? You didn’t get the fact that I don’t want to be here?”
    Her father folded his hands in his lap. “I know you don’t want to be here…”
    She took a step forward, still glaring. “So you decide you want to ruin my life, too?”
    “Who’s Marcus?”
    “Who cares!” she shouted. “That’s not the point! You’re not going to monitor every single person I ever talk to, so don’t even try!”
    “I’m not trying—”
    “I hate being here! Don’t you get that? And I hate you, too!”
    She stared at him, her face daring him to contradict her. Hoping he’d try, so she’d be able to say it again.
    But her dad said nothing, as usual. She hated that kind of weakness. In a fury, she crossed the room toward the alcove, grabbed the picture of her playing the piano—the one with her dad beside her on the bench—and hurled it across the room. Though he flinched at the sound of breaking glass, he remained quiet.
    “What? Nothing to say?”
    He cleared his throat. “Your bedroom’s the first door on the right.”
    She didn’t even want to dignify his comment with a response, so she stormed down the hall, determined to have nothing more to do with him.
    “Good night, sweetheart,” he called out. “I love you.”
    There was a moment, just a moment, when she cringed at what she’d said to him; but her regret vanished as quickly as it had come. It was as if he hadn’t even realized she’d been angry: She heard him begin to play the piano again, picking up exactly where he’d left off.
    In the bedroom—not hard to find, considering there were only three doors off the hallway, one to the bathroom and the other to her dad’s room—Ronnie flipped on the light. With a frustrated sigh, she peeled off the ridiculous Nemo T-shirt she’d almost forgotten she was wearing.
    It had been the worst day of her life.
    Oh, she knew she was being melodramatic about the whole thing. She wasn’t stupid. Still, it hadn’t been a great one. About the only good thing to come out of the whole day was meeting Blaze, which gave her hope