My heart comes to a screeching, skidding halt. She met Griff?
Why do I have the sinking feeling that I’m even more fucked? Because my brother goes out for drinks about seven. Keeley is breezing in about ten thirty. A lot could happen in three and a half hours. I try not to imagine what.
My feet feel like blocks of lead as I enter the condo, shutting the lanai door behind me.
“You went outside?” She sounds surprised.
“Yeah.” I nod nervously as my heart decides to wage an all-out war with my chest. The battle is so loud I hear it in my ears. “You were right. It’s nice out there.”
I’m babbling. I wipe my sweaty palms on the soft cotton of my pajama pants. I want to touch her so badly, but her face is unreadable. I don’t know what to say.
She nods and kicks off her pumps. “Do you want to know about my evening with Griff?”
Yes and no. Mostly no. I wish like hell I had any idea what was rolling through her head. I stand there mutely, a boiling pot of emotion melting my brain. I blink. She looks beautiful. There’s really no way my brother didn’t see her, zero in on her, want to know everything about her before he saw every inch of her.
The thought is killing me.
“I’m not sure.”
She softens a little. “Sit.”
Keeley chooses the corner of the L-shaped sectional. I sit one cushion over, going through the motions of breathing so I don’t freak out.
This makes no fucking sense. Twenty days ago, I didn’t even know this woman. I would have passed her on the street and stared…before I shrugged and walked on. Now I’m seriously thinking of surrendering my future to her. Giving up the only sense of self I’ve ever known for her.
“Did you talk to him?” I finally ask into the protracted silence.
“Yes. He’s…like you. And not. He’s smart and ambitious and interesting. You’ve got that in common. But he’s more serious. More intense.”
Griff is. He always has been. I wonder if it’s because he has a chip on his shoulder about being the younger brother, if he always feels like he needs to dig deeper to keep up.
“What happened? What did you talk about?”
“I got your message with the name of that bar that Harlow passed on. I thought I’d go over there and see if I could figure him out just by observing. I was on my stool about two minutes when he came over to me, drink in hand and swagger in full swing.”
Knowing he studied her and sized her up as a potential nightly fuck makes me want to both curl into the fetal position and beat him senseless. Breathing is hard again. I’m wishing I had booze or a punching bag—something to bleed off my growing fury. Griff looked at her, damn it.
The worst part is, I have no one to blame but myself.
“What did he say?”
“Not much. We made small talk, exchanged names and a little info. We joked about our favorite drinks, then made a pointless bet about whether the new waitress would drop a huge tray of drinks. He won, by the way. She wasn’t practiced enough to handle all that. We mentioned where we were from, where we’d gone to college, and the fact that we’re both single.”
Technically, Keeley is single. I know it in my head. The rest of me is shouting a big “fuck no.”
“That took three hours?”
She raises a brow at me. It’s a subtle warning that I don’t own her.
“We took our time. We ended up finding a booth and sharing appetizers. We talked about business. I gave him a cover story. He thinks I work retail but am thinking about going into real estate. That opened him up to talk about business. He spoke in veiled terms about the Stowe deal.”
As much as I hate the cozy picture her words paint, it doesn’t sound as intimate as I feared.
I let out a pent-up breath. “Okay. So that’s it?”
“No.” She folds her hands in her lap and looks at her entwined fingers.
Is she trying to collect her words? Or hide her guilt?
“And?” I demand, hearing an edgy note creep into my voice.
I can’t stand being on tenterhooks anymore. The not being able to draw in a deep breath, along with the sharp, perpetual tensing of my gut, is killing me. The pain bolts down my sternum.
“We talked about family. He mentioned you.” She taps her thumbs together and pauses again.
“Spit it out.”
“He hates you.”
I guessed that. The feeling has been unspoken for something just north of a thousand days. But Keeley’s soft words makes everything inside me crater.
Not knowing the truth for certain was easier.
Fuck, one deal tore up my family. This one is going to rip up my heart.
Goddamn it.
“Yeah.”
“And he loves you. He didn’t say that, but I know it.”
My heart nearly implodes. I love him, too.
I shut my eyes and feel tears sting like acid. I miss that stupid motherfucker so much.
“Maxon?” she prods at me.
I refuse to cry. It’s been an absolutely terrible day. Not the first. It won’t be the last. I clench my teeth together. I will not lose my composure. I am fucking going to hold it together so I can hear the rest of this.
“Yeah.” I drag in a shuddering breath. “So where did you leave things?”
“He asked me to dinner tomorrow night.”
Jesus. Motherfucking son of a bitch. My stomach tightens so much it’s one giant ball of ache.
“What did you say?”
She looks past me, out to the lanai, biting her lip. The tension is killing me.
Finally, she nods. “I, um…told him this week was hell on my schedule and I’d have to juggle my schedule to make it work. He gave me his number. I’m supposed to call him tomorrow afternoon.”
“Where does he want to take you?” That will tell me a lot about how interested Griff is.
“Nowhere. He wants to cook for me.”
That’s a lie. He wants to fuck her.
I can’t take that sitting down.
Lurching to my feet, I lunge across the room, raking my hand through my hair. “It’s a ploy. He only invites a woman over when—”
“He wants to sleep with her. I’ve been around the block, Maxon. I know.”
“What the hell? I…”
She can’t go. I can’t let her. On the other hand, will she even listen to me? Does she want Griff?
“So you had drinks and appetizers and came home.”
“I came back to your place,” she corrects me.
It’s not home to her. Right.
I swallow as I turn to face her. “Did he walk you to your car?”
“Yes.”
“Did he kiss you?”
“Yes.”
I stagger. That one word feels like the sharpest blade buried right in my heart.
Before I can wrap my brain around her reply and insist that she’s never seeing him again, she cocks her head and speaks. “When do you want me to go out with him? I have a feeling I can undo him in a night.”
I gape at her like she’s lost her fucking mind. “Less than a week ago, you were preaching Kumbaya bullshit about repairing the relationship between me and Griff, and now you’re smacking lips with him and willing to help me tear him down.”
“Once I realized that you were never going to care about more than business, that didn’t leave me with many options. I can either keep forcing a peace on you that you don’t give a flip about or I can live up to my word. You want to destroy your own family? You’re the one who will have to live with the consequences. Why am I standing in your way? You’ve painted Griff as a man who abandons his loved ones and doesn’t care about the son he’s never met. As far as I can tell, you’re both getting what you deserve. When you approached me with your plan, I naively believed that everyone has good qualities. That, deep down, all people are capable of love. Yes, even you. I was sure you wanted happiness. I just had to show you the way. But most every choice you’ve made since I’ve known you has been selfish.”
I wince. She’s right. “Keeley—”
“No. You brought us to this place so now you’re going to listen. You don’t know what love is. And it’s clear to me that you don’t have the first clue how to be happy. So if you want to know why I’m all in with your stupid plan suddenly, it’s because I want to get this over with and move on to a less toxic situation. Griff’s pitch is Thursday. Isn’t that what Britta said last night?”
“Yeah, but—”
“There’s no ‘but’ here. That doesn’t give me a lot of time to work, but since you’re willing to sacrifice everything to win, I won’t feel bad about being really fucking charming to your brother over the next two days. It’s not like Griff is hard on the eyes. By the time you pitch to George Stowe on Friday, he’ll have a muddled head. And you should have a clear path.”
I tear across the room, torn between violently pounding the wall and clutching Keeley to me like a sobbing boy until she swears she won’t let me go. “No. No! Fuck no! You swore that you didn’t intend to sleep with him, that I couldn’t make you. You didn’t want to be a whore, and I respected that.”
“You accepted it because I forced you to. But it’s my body and my life. It’s just sex.” She shrugs. “No big deal.”
I grab her shoulders and lunge in her face. “It is a big deal. Huge fucking deal. You can’t date him. You can’t touch him.”
She tilts her head, raises a brow. Somewhere in the back of my brain, I know those are warning signals. I try to slow down my outrage and fear. Somewhere under that, I feel logic lurking, trying to reassert itself. But at my head’s insistence that maybe she’s right, my emotions shove those thoughts down.
“Why?” she asks softly.
I’m used to animated Keeley, the one who teases and cajoles while she tries to get me to see the best in every situation. That woman lightens me, soothes me, balances me. I’ve grown so attached to her that I’m thinking…yeah, maybe the whole love thing isn’t a crazy hoax. But the Keeley in front of me now is cool, almost calculating. She’s willing to blow up everything between us.
Fuck. This is exactly how she felt when she seemingly overheard me giving her up for my ambition last night. Unimportant. Confused. Destroyed.
“Why, Maxon?” she prods. “Why shouldn’t I go distract your brother?”
Because I love you. The realization rolls through my head. It jets blood through my veins. It envelops my beating heart. She thinks I don’t know what love means, but suddenly I understand. Absolutely. Totally. I would kill for this woman. Die for her. Do anything to make her smile. I cannot live without her. I cannot release her from my life.
I cannot give her to Griff.
“I-I…” Do I tell her? Will she believe me? Do I give her that kind of power over me? Will she even care?
Too many questions pelt my brain. As I’m sorting through the tangle—tough to do when I’m dizzy, shocked, and grappling with how much Keeley Kent has changed me—someone starts pounding on my door. This isn’t a polite knock but a nonverbal demand that I open up now.
Damn it, talk about the worst possible timing.
“Who the fuck is that?” I snarl under my breath.
No one ever comes to my place except Britta and Rob. I don’t have any other friends. Come to think of it, I don’t have anyone I can really talk to.
Except Keeley.
I’m going to ignore this unwelcome visitor. If I don’t answer, my staff will assume I’m not here or that I’m busy. If it’s a solicitor or religion peddler, they’ll go away soon enough. Everyone else, I don’t give two fucks about.
This beautiful redhead in front of me is definitely at the top of my give-a-fuck list—in all ways.
But whoever is outside is clearly a persistent ass, as the beating on my door resumes, even harder than before.
“Whoever you are, go the hell away,” I shout.
I’m focused on the most important person in my world.
“Open up, you stupid snot. I brought you into this world and paid for your overpriced education. I’ve come a long way. Show me a little fucking courtesy and let me in.”
I’d know that voice anywhere.
Keeley gapes at the door. Dread fills my belly before it drops to my toes in a sickening rush.
“Is that…” She frowns as if she can’t quite believe what her ears are telling her.
She’s about to see me at my very worst. No way she’ll ever love me after this. And there’s not a fucking thing I can do but watch my demise happen.
“Yeah.” Fucking son of a bitch. “That’s my dad.”
With a curse, I pull away from Keeley. “This will probably be ugly. Go to the guest room and shut the door. If Dad has come all the way from San Diego unexpectedly, this won’t be good.”
She pauses, and I expect her to run to the safety of the bedroom. After all, he’s already shown his usual charming stripes. To my surprise, she shakes her head. “I may be mad as hell at you right now, but from the sound of things, you’ll need a friend.”
She’s right, and that something soft lurches in my chest again, as if it can get closer to her. I would love to have her hold my hand while my dad, just by being himself, drives me crazy. But my need to protect Keeley is stronger. I can already guess how her interaction with my father will go, and I want to spare her. “I would feel better if you didn’t get in his path. Please.”
A million reasons crowd my head but Dad starts pounding again. I don’t really have time to relay all the terrible crap between me and this man. It’s impossible for her to understand the decades of our complicated relationship, even if she saw each moment in real time, much less to blurb it in ten seconds.
Keeley looks as if she’s going to resist, and I grab her hands. “Please. I promise I’ll get through it. After a lifetime with him, I’m a pro. If he pisses me off, I’ll come talk to you afterward. He’ll want privacy. If he doesn’t get it, he’ll be an even bigger asshole. Go.”
When I nudge her toward the guest bedroom, she drags her feet a bit but finally nods. “I’ll be here if you need me.”
I nod her way, then when she’s safely ensconced in her room, I slump toward the front door. Dread is digging a hole in my stomach as I turn the lock. I haven’t clapped eyes on my father in over three years. Hell, I’ve barely talked to him. But he’s come from San Diego on the spur of the moment and insists on seeing me. Every moment I keep him outside is just another moment for him to get more irritated.
Knowing I can’t put it off anymore, I wrench the door open and step back to admit him. Damn, he’s aged. Before he left Maui, his hair was still salt and peppery. Now he’s completely silver, even his beard. He sporting a summer tan in early February, which tells me he hasn’t stopped being a regular at a tanning booth. He’s fit, as always. But his shoulders are slightly slumped. His jawline isn’t as firm as it once was. He’s wearing glasses now—a weakness I never thought he’d bow to. He’ll turn sixty-two this year, so maybe I shouldn’t be surprised that time has changed him. He no longer appears invincible. When I was a kid, my dad was always larger than life to me, and seeing him look more like an old man is a shock.
“Hey, Dad,” I finally manage to say.
He scowls at me—nothing new—as he barges inside, dragging a huge suitcase on wheels behind him. His overstuffed briefcase dangles from one big hand. “Took you long enough. What are you doing, jacking off?”
“No. Nothing you’d care about. Welcome to Maui. This is unexpected. Does your sudden visit have something to do with Mom leaving?”
“Your mother, that ungrateful bitch,” he huffs, then plops himself on the couch. “I fed, clothed, and supported her for thirty-five years. I bought her a lavish house, took her on extravagant vacations all over the world, gave her designer everything. She had two responsibilities. Two. Throw good parties—something she’s never managed without a caterer—and to give me a good-looking family for corporate Christmas cards. You and Griff were exactly what I had in mind, but she had to get knocked up a third time.”
I want to butt in that it takes two to conceive, but clearly he thinks the responsibility for not getting pregnant rested solely on my mother, never mind that he’s both the aggressor and the one with the sperm. What a dick.
He hasn’t changed a bit.
“But fine. Whatever.” Dad tosses a hand in the air. “Harlow was a cute kid. Her fucking wedding is going to cost me a fortune. But Linda couldn’t even manage to raise you kids while I worked my ass off without constantly wanting my input or for me to straighten you boys out. How fucking hard is it to change a few diapers and drive someone to soccer practice?”
My father gives me a disgusted sneer. I can’t imagine why I’m stunned. He’s never hidden the fact that he wants nothing to do with his kids. Playing the family man gave him good corporate optics at a time that shit mattered. He’s good at his job. Great, even. He should be since he’s a workaholic. He has no friends and doesn’t value his family. With every passing year, he’s grown more cynical and bitter.
I can’t stand him.
Even as I’m staring at him, thinking what a grade-A asshole he is and that I shouldn’t let him upset me, the fact that I was nothing more to him than a clean-cut face on a card sent to his associates once a year cuts me deep. Maybe it bothers me so much now because I’m already agitated by the kiss Keeley shared with Griff. I’m fucking bleeding inside at the thought. I don’t need my father’s attitude right now.
“Have you gone mute?” my father hisses, then rakes a hand through his hair. “Jesus, I gave you good genes to work with. Your mother was a beauty queen with half a brain. I’m a self-made billionaire. What’s your problem?”
“It’s just been a long day and I wasn’t expecting you,” I bite out. “So Mom has never been all you want her to be and…what else?”
“She left me. Me. Are you fucking kidding? What did I not give that bitch? My thirty-five best years, a fortune—”
“You didn’t give her love,” I cut in, vaguely aware that I’m sounding like Keeley. Then I swallow because I know Dad won’t understand a word I’ve just said. The shit is about to hit the fan.
“Oh, boo hoo. I knew I shouldn’t have left you here when I moved back to San Diego. Apparently, you’ve grown a vagina since then. You know love is all greeting-card crap.”
Yes, I’ve known how he felt my whole life.
“Linda knows that, too. Love was never part of our deal.”
That throws me for a loop. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that he approached marriage like a business agreement. Somehow it kinda does.
“So Mom has finally decided to leave you? Why do you care?”
I don’t know why I’m trying to understand. Dad will cut off her access to all other funds, and within a few weeks she’ll most likely come home. This drama played out when I was four, again when I was eight, and for a final time at fifteen. Since then, their marriage has seemed steadier, though not necessarily happier. But after they came through three incidents in roughly ten years, I’d hoped the last eighteen years without separation meant something.
Obviously not.
“I care because it looks bad! She claims that she’s fallen in love with Marco, some asswipe she met on a dating site for the over-fifty crowd. He likes old movies, antiquing, and wine weekends.” My father rolls his eyes. “What kind of pussy does that sound like?”
The explanation that all people are different and each have various likes and dislikes will only be lost on him. I know from experience, so I don’t waste my breath. But Dad’s explanation still manages to shock me.
“Mom is dating someone else?”
“Yeah. She says she’s moving in with him. Apparently she’s been seeing this bastard for almost a year. And fucking him that long, too.”
Good for her, finally getting some on the side. “Did her decision have anything to do with you finding another new mistress?”
“I suppose.” He slumps down on the sofa, almost pouting like an overgrown kid. “I never hid them. Your mother and I had an understanding. I pulled her out of her dirt-poor farming town in Nebraska, and she performed the two wifely duties I outlined. She never liked sex much, so our arrangement worked. She lost her mind when I told her that Amanda was pregnant.”
“Amanda?”
“My most recent mistress.” He sighs. “She’s due in April. I’m too fucking old to be a father again.”
My world has just tilted on its axis. Now I have to sit down, too. “How old is this woman?”
He doesn’t meet my gaze. “Twenty-five.”
I hate to be judgmental…but I’m grossed out. I never imagined that my old man gave up his mistresses, but I’d hoped that they had somewhat aged with him. “She’s Harlow’s age.”
“I don’t think about it like that. Amanda looks fucking hot in Victoria’s Secret. Or she did.”
Now I’m even more grossed out. “How did you not take precautions to ensure that Amanda didn’t get pregnant?”
“She said she was on the pill. Hell, I’ve seen her prescription since I spent half my nights at her apartment in the city.”
“You could have gotten a vasectomy years ago. You should have if you didn’t want more kids.”
He rears back and stares at me like I’m stupid. I know that look well since I’ve seen it all my life. I actually know what he’s going to say before he even opens his mouth.
“No one is cutting off my balls. Besides, Amanda conceiving was a fluke. She seemed equally mortified when the doctor confirmed that she was knocked up. But she refused to have a damn abortion, even when I offered to pay for it.” He waves his hands at me. “Before you unleash whatever blah blah bullshit I see all over your face, she and I are over now.” He shudders. “Never could stand fucking a pregnant woman. Big bellies and leaking tits… Ugh.”
I try not to roll my eyes. The universe has always revolved around him—at least in his mind. Why shouldn’t a woman growing another human being in her womb keep her pre-pregnancy shape for dear old Dad?
“So, you two broke up. Has she asked you for child support?”
“You know she has.” He sounds cynical and pissed off. “I’ll be DNA testing that kid the minute he pops out—it’s another boy. If he’s not mine, I’m going to rip Amanda a new asshole.”
Because that’s what every new mother needs. Why can’t he just thank his lucky stars and move on since he doesn’t want the baby, anyway?
I shake my head at him because I really don’t know what to say. “And if it is yours, now you’ll have four kids.”
“Six,” he grumbles.
“What?” I stare at him like I don’t even know who he is. Honestly, I probably shouldn’t be shocked but I can’t seem to help it. “I have two other half-siblings?”
Dad hems and haws and does his best impression of a bobblehead while stalling. Finally, he sighs. “I have a daughter named Bethany who’s six months younger than Griff. Evan, my other son, was born three days before Harlow. Both kids have different mothers. But I’ve paid for everything—”
“So what? They grew up without a father. God, you’re a selfish bastard. Forking over some cash doesn’t excuse you from being an absent parent. You had a responsibility to those kids.” And to the ones my mother gave him.
When I stare at him, he’s wearing his I-don’t-give-a-fuck expression. “A father’s responsibility is to provide. I think I’ve done that handsomely. What good would I have done by being a more involved father?”
Actually, he’s right. He would only have warped us kids more. Mom was unhappy and worn down by life, but she at least tried to be kind and occasionally affectionate. Dad made her too brittle to love us, I think. She tried her best, but he mentally belittled her and beat her down, just like he has everyone else in his life.
I, too, know exactly what it’s like to feel small and inconsequential after a chat with him. In fact, I feel like that after virtually every conversation we share.
“So what’s your next move?” I ask. “Are you actually getting divorced this time?”
He raises a brow. “I hear she’s trying to serve me with papers. I am not giving that bitch fifty percent of everything I’ve broken my back to earn. She took half the money in our checking account. Fine. It’s a pittance. But my portfolio is substantial. I’m not giving her a penny of that.”
Mom deserves it. Hazard pay for putting up with him for so many years—the mental abuse, the infidelity, the single parenting and corporate bullshit. But I’m keeping my opinion to myself. It’s not worth the argument. He’s not worth it. I can’t change the fact that this small-minded, bitter man is my father. He’s right that he gave me life and one hell of an expensive education. But I learned by his example, and I’m not proud of it. He also gave me anger and baggage and years of misplaced indifference toward most everyone around me.
“How are you going to avoid that? You can’t sidestep being served until Mom can claim abandonment. You’re talking years. You’ve never been able to stay away from the office for more than seven days.”
“I’m still working on that. Right now, I’m taking a vacation while I sort out all the legal stuff. I’m talking to a cutthroat lawyer who can ream your mother a new asshole before we ever make it to court.”
“What leg do you have to stand on?” I ask before I can think better of it. I’m outraged on Mom’s behalf.
But as soon as I’ve spoken the words, I know the dragon I’ve tried to slay for years is going to turn all his fire on me.
“Oh, because I’m the philandering prick? Because I wasn’t ‘sensitive’ and didn’t let her carry my balls in her purse? I provided for her, gave her identity and community. She was someone because she was married to me. I bought her diamonds in Paris. I made sure she became PTA president when she wanted to run. I never missed a birthday, holiday, or special occasion. You think the courts are going to punish me because I don’t believe in love?” He scoffed as if he found that laughable. “Your mother knew exactly who she was marrying when she said, ‘I do.’ She told me she would do anything to ensure she didn’t have to go back to Halsey, Nebraska, population 144, the day I met her. She was Miss Blaine County and had earned a scholarship because of it, so she’d managed to get as far as the university in Lincoln, but that wasn’t far enough from home for her. She wanted to move somewhere warm and never worry about money again. I gave that to her. She swore she’d never care who I fucked and vowed never to divorce me. In the last few months, she’s gone back on her word in every way, while I’ve lived up to every promise I ever made her. And you think I’m the bad guy here? Fuck, you’ve turned into a whiny little bitch, like I always said you would.” He stands and reaches for his suitcase. “I’m going to your brother’s. He’s got more steel in his spine. That’s why you always played first loser to his winner.” He claps me on the shoulder. “Until you pull your head out of your ass and be a man, you always will.”
I want to scream at him that I’m not a loser, but I bite the knee-jerk defense back. Instead, I hit him with something he’ll understand and respect. “Fuck you. I’m the number one real estate agent on Maui, thank you very much. I’ve earned that. Griff has been chasing my tail for the last three years.”
My dad shrugs. “Call me when you’ve made your first hundred million. Then I might be impressed. But I know you, Maxon. You lose to him every fucking time because you lack the killer instinct. Your mother coddled you too much as a kid, until I told her to stop ruining you. By then, it was too late. I even tried pitting you two boys against each other in the hopes that you’d grow some real balls. But only Griff’s got bigger because you didn’t accept that even your brother can be your enemy. Instead, you rolled over and showed him your vulnerable belly and tried to make him your friend.” He shakes his head like he’s utterly disgusted at me. “Dumb ass. What a waste. I’m going to go stay with the winner. Does Griff still live in the same place?”
I can barely digest all the ugliness in his speech. Worse, I know this is Dad’s version of truth. He really believes everything he’s saying. Mom is ungrateful because he did her one decent favor when she was nineteen. Never mind the ensuing thirty-five years of terrible. He really doesn’t understand why she’s no longer kissing his loafers. Just like he doesn’t understand that Griff and I never wanted to be at each other’s throats. My brother was simply better at hiding it, and half the time I let him win so that Dad wouldn’t berate him and tear him down. I could tell my father that, but he’d only respect me less, and he’s settled on a reality that works in his head. I’ll never change it.
“I don’t know, Dad. Griff and I haven’t spoken since a few months after you moved away.”
“Did you argue about a deal or a girl?”
Does it even matter? “Both.”
“It’s too late to tell you to wrestle that deal to the ground and hump it into submission, I’m sure. But fighting over a woman… Tiffanii?”
I have no idea why he wants to know. “Yeah.”
My father shrugs. “She might have been good in bed but she wasn’t worth losing a deal. Get your fucking priorities straight.”
I feel as if an elephant stepped on my chest. I can’t breathe. “You slept with her?”
“It was easy.” He says the words as if any idiot would have logically made the same choice. “Girls like it when you flash cash and give them attention. She was more than happy to put out in return. Don’t look at me like I just took away your toy. I didn’t think you’d care. After all, I was willing to share my mistress with you when you turned sixteen.”
God, I’d blocked that out. When Dad summoned me to his office right after I’d gotten my driver’s license, I’d hoped it was because he wanted to congratulate me, maybe finally tell me he was proud. No, he just wanted to introduce me to Danielle, his latest assistant/fuck doll. He told me that she was going to make me a man. The whole thing was both tempting and skeevy. I tore out of there, heading straight home.
“You were a pussy even then,” he barks. “When Danielle dropped her dress, you nearly pissed your pants, then ran home to Mommy. My father got me laid at fourteen, and I was damn grateful. So was your brother when I gave him your same opportunity with AnnaBeth a few years later. He was far smarter than you. I think he even came back for seconds when he thought I wasn’t looking. He’s always had the killer instinct. I don’t know how the fuck I went wrong with you.”
I can’t take any more. This whole day has been too much. Rob and Britta both threatening to quit. Then Keeley disappearing for hours…only to find out she’s kissed Griff. Hearing that it’s not a big deal to her if she has sex with my brother. And now my father dropping all his shit in my lap and making me feel like an inadequate boy all over again. Worst of all, Keeley is just on the other side of her bedroom door, no doubt hearing one of the most terrible, demeaning conversations of my life. Seen through the filter of my father’s eyes, he’s still trying to man me up. But through Keeley’s lens, she knows just how tainted my soul is and why. She probably has no problem understanding the reason I was all business and bravado when she met me. And now she knows for certain that I’m not redeemable.
It’s killing me to know that she’ll never look at me again the same way.
At the thought, every joint aches and every bone feels as if it’s about to break. But I can’t look at this hateful bastard for another second.
I pick up his suitcase and walk it to the door. “Get the fuck out.”
He stands slowly, laughing. “Look at you, suddenly all defiant. It only took you thirty-three years, Maxon. But that doesn’t change anything.” He hoists his briefcase onto his shoulder and meanders to the door, gripping his suitcase as I open the portal. “You’re still a loser, and you’re always going to be one, especially where your brother is concerned.”
“And you’re always going to be an asshole, you miserable bastard. You’re going to die alone, old and bitter, knowing that no one cares about you. And I’m going to cheer because we’ll all finally be free from your toxic cloud. I hope to fuck you’ve learned something by then. But you’re so stupidly self-important I’m not counting on it.”
I slam the door in his face and throw the latch. Finally, he’s out of my life, and I should be happy. Right now, I just feel exhausted and turned inside out.
I lean my forehead against the door and drag in labored breaths. I know I have to turn and face Keeley, who will be emerging from the bedroom any second… But I can’t catch my breath. My heart races. My fingers are tingling again. I can’t hold myself together.
I’m so fucking angry he unloaded on me, that I still feel like a kid again after being verbally whipped by the old bastard and his slurs, that Keeley will know me at my absolute weakest and worst.
No. No! Fucking no!
I can’t take it. I stomp to the kitchen and swipe all the loose papers there onto the floor. It’s wholly unsatisfying. There’s no crash. No destruction. If I’m coming apart, everything around me should be, too. Goddamn it.
I look for a better target. The coffeemaker stands squarely in my crosshairs. Yeah.
Yanking the cord from the socket, I jerk it from the counter and hurl it against the closet door on the other side of the foyer. It falls to the ground in a twisted heap. The water in the reservoir splats all over the walls and floor. After a belch, the guts hang out. The unit lies there without fight, totally dead.
Unfortunately, I still have a raging ocean of fury flowing inside me. It’s boiling, brewing, bubbling. I look around for my next victim. The microwave looks promising. That son of a bitch has never worked right, and it would be so satisfying to teach it a fucking lesson.
But as I pull the cord free and wrap my arms around it to hoist it up, I feel a soft hand on my shoulder. And I freeze.
Keeley.
I drop the appliance on the counter. If I didn’t want her to see me beat down by my old man, I didn’t want her to see me enraged, either. Shame slithers through me. I close my eyes, wishing the world would swallow me up whole.
“Go away. Let me do this alone. I don’t want to talk about it.”
With a gentle hand, she curls her fingers around my arm. I know I should resist, but how can I refuse something I want so badly? Someone I love so much?
I let her pull me around to face her. I still can’t look at her, but I feel her all around me. Her empathy. Her tenderness. Her adoration.
“Maxon. I’m here.” She pulls my stiff form closer, toward her embrace.
I try not to go. I try not to cry. I try not to be the loser my father accuses me of being. “You should go.”
“I won’t leave you like this.”
“I don’t want you feeling sorry for me. Don’t do it.” I stab the heels of my palms into the sockets of my eyes and retreat from her until my back hits the counter. “Don’t you fucking dare!”
“That’s not what I feel at all. Maxon, look at me. Please.”
I’m huffing. I can’t get myself under control. I can’t find my center. The fury rages with a sadness I can’t get out from under or push away or process out. It’s just sitting in the middle of my chest, suffocating me.
But her voice is pulling me away from the darkness, beckoning me with hope and kindness and promise.
Finally, I open my eyes. Blink. Stare. “Jesus. Oh, sunshine…”