Page 23 of Obsessed Daddy
“Your car is still at the bar.”
Shit!
“Mom and I took a drive over there when you weren’t answering your phone. Who did you leave with if not Dillon?”
Okay, she knows! She knows everything! She went to the bar, she asked questions, and surely someone told her that a man matching Clint’s description dragged me into the backroom and out of the building!
Well, my life is over. There’s no going back. Mistakes were made, but there’s always my next life to try again.
As my sister continues to stare directly into my soul, I can’t help but question the hesitation. Usually she’s already set to attack-mode when she knows something.
What if they don’t know? What if this is a game to see if I crack?
I can’t spill out the truth here and now. I mean, I could, but I won’t. I’m not going to throw away this divine second chance.
My chest tightens and my heart races so fast I swear smoke is coming out of my ears.
I don’t know what to say. What the hell comes next?
“You went home with someone else, didn’t you?” my mother adds, sipping what I hope is decaf. “Who did you leave with?”
“What?” My heart hammers.
“She doesn’t want to tell us who, Mom.” June grins. “I give you a hard time, Bella, but maybe you’re more grown up than I think you are. You really know how to take care of yourself lately.”
Nope, still a complete idiot.
“I mean, life is hard, and I know I’ve made things harder for you recently. I shouldn’t be doing that. You worked your whole career for that job at the school. You don’t owe me anything anymore. It was wrong of me to ask for as much as I have, and I’d like to offer you some grace.”
I narrow my brows, and I swear to high heaven I’m about to throw up. She definitely knows something. My sister has never apologized a day in her life. She once got caught takingmoney directly from my piggy bank, and she blamed me for leaving it unlocked.
“It’s what sisters do,” I say, desperate to diffuse whatever bomb it is she’s lit.
She stands from the table and walks toward me slowly, her gaze never leaving mine in the dim light of the kitchen. “The thing is, I’ve always seen you as competition. You’re young, you’re pretty, and you’ve got this femininity that I don’t have. I get jealous of that sometimes.”
Okay, I’m totally creeped out.
“Anyway,” she sighs, leaning in for the first hug she’s taken in ten years, “I’m too tired to go home. I think I’ll stay here tonight. We should do a big family breakfast in the morning.” She winks and offers me a grin. “Maybe then you’ll feel like telling us all your secrets.”
My secrets.
Right… because she knows I’m a whore that’s totally sleeping with her ex-fiancé.
“Your sister is nicer than I am,” my mother adds. “I think you’re rude and disrespectful for making us worry about you all night. Don’t pull that shit again. I’m too old for this nonsense.” She stands from the table with a wobble and turns toward the back bedroom as my sister hops up to her old room at the top of the stairs next to mine.
That’s it? How can that be it?
I almost wish she’d called me out. Then at least the truth would be out in the open. I mean, who the hell am I, and what am I doing?
What kind of decent human being does the things I’ve done, and why, in this moment, after everything, do I still crave the arms of the man I’ve been calling Daddy?
My stomach tightens and my thighs ache just thinking about him. The way he touches me. The way he talks to me.The way he was with me tonight at the bar, so feral and hungry. The way he was with me, picking flowers and painting, so sweet and patient. The way he was with me in the lake, so caring and protective.
Chest tight, I click off the kitchen light and climb the stairs up to my bedroom, the one in the center of the hall with the pale pink walls I haven’t bothered painting since I was a kid. Except when I step into the room, the man I ran from is standing in the center of the space.
My head goes light, my mouth goes dry, and my body moves on instinct, pushing the door closed behind me. “What the hell? How did you get in here?”
He nods back toward the window. “Climbed up the trellis. Couldn’t walk through the front door, given the circumstances.”
