Page 108 of My Big Fat Daddy Issues

Who is HE, they always ask online. Her grandfather, someone will answer. Step-grandfather, someone else will correct. And then a thousand comments about how they'd call me Pawpaw too. Billie thinks that's hilarious. I think it's nobody's goddamn business, but I show up anyway. There isn't much I won't do for that woman.

The family knows now. Has for two years.

Rudolph didn't speak to me for three months. My daughter just sighed and told me if I was happy, she'd support me and help Rudolph come around.

He did. He shook my hand at the wedding. Didn't have to say much. Her friends got drunk at the reception and told everyone I was the hottest grandfather in Montana.

The line thins out. Billie signs the last book, takes the last photo, and finds me across the room. She's wearing a black dress that cost more than my first truck and heels that put her chin at my chest instead of my stomach. She crosses the ballroom like she's coming home.

She leans into my arm. "Hey, Pawpaw. Ready to go upstairs?"

"Been ready for two hours."

She grins and takes my arm and we walk through the lobby. Marble and perfume and slot machines pinging somewhere past the atrium. The elevator doors close and she turns to me with that look.

"You know," she says, smoothing my shirt collar, "you've been on your feet all day. Long flight. Three-hour signing. You sure you don't need a little blue pill to get through the evening? I won't judge. You're sixty. It's natural."

I hit the emergency stop.

The elevator jolts and she stumbles and I catch her by the throat.

"Say that again."

She swallows against my palm. "I said—"

I press my hips into her so she can feel exactly how hard I am. Have been since she put that dress on four hours ago. "Does that feel like a man who needs help?"

"No, sir," she whispers, and the flush is already climbing her neck.

I release the stop. The elevator hums back to life.

Our room is on the thirty-second floor. Floor-to-ceiling windows. Past midnight, the strip is nothing but neon bleeding into the dark.

I don't turn on the lights. The city does it for me, neon sliding across the bed and the carpet and her skin as she walks to the window.

She presses her palms to the glass. The strip is thirty-two floors straight down, headlights and taxi cabs the size of cigarette embers. I come up behind her and unzip her dress in one slow pull. It drops and pools at her heels. Nothing underneath just like I ordered.

"Hands on the glass."

She spreads her fingers against the window. Tits pressed to the glass, my hands already on her hips.

I pull my knife from my belt. She hears the sheath and her shoulders tighten.

I drag the flat of the blade down her spine, one vertebra at a time. She shivers and her breath fogs the glass.

"Every woman in that ballroom tonight wanted to know what I do to you." I bring the knife around to her front, tracing the edge along the underside of her breast. "They read your books. They think they know."

"They don't," she breathes.

"No, they don't."

I press the tip into the soft skin below her navel. Her stomach hollows.

"They don't know that my little girl gets wet the second Pawpaw pulls this knife." I slide the flat down to her pussy and press it against her clit. She moans, forehead dropping to the glass. "They don't know you beg for it. They don't know what you sound like when I make you come with a blade against your throat."

"Rhett—"

"That's not what you call me."