Page 32 of Wicked Destiny

What she doesn’t know is Elodie isn’t someone I’m just sleeping with. Or how I promised never to hurt her and in the span of two minutes, relegated her to a sad fuck toy I’d taken pity on.

The pain of what I’ve done strips away the last lie. I love her. Crave her with the same force as I once did Yolanda. Beyond reason and beyond pretending I can live without her. Telling Billie the truth would have exposed me, so I made Elodie pay instead.

Now I’d burn every safe piece of my life to bring her back.

Except, I don’t get the chance to course correct. Billie isn’t finished with me.

She’s barely started.

“You’re fifty-six years old and I come in to find a twenty-two-year-old girl, who you’ve obviously railed all morning, drinking a smoothie in the kitchen. Is she your girlfriend? Some hot little plaything with big, moony eyes who sits there freshly fucked while you prance about our family home?” Her whole face crumples. “Oh my God. Does she call you Daddy? Please tell me she doesn’t call you Daddy, I’ll throw up.” No trace of a joke in it. “You’re the loneliest, richest, saddest target in the Pacific Northwest, and this chick walked up and rang the bell.”

Billie’s slicing me to shreds and I’m gonna let her. She’s my daughter and I’ve hurt her. I’m willing to take whatever she throws at me.

“Do you have the first idea what this does to me?” Her voice climbs. “My mother’s face is in my head while I picture, God, while I picture you with her. Classmate, my ass. I walked in on something humiliating, Dad.”

“It’s not like that.” My voice comes out rough. “You don’t know the first thing about her.”

“I don’t want to. That’s the whole point.” Her face twists. “I don’t want to know a twenty-two-year-old my father has sex with. I want to pour bleach on the thought. This isn’t a great love story, it’s you getting your dick wet with somebody young enough… It’s the grossest, saddest—” She catches herself. Breathes. “What’s the actual plan here? Are you going to marry her? Put a ring on it? Start over at sixty and give me a baby brother?”

She throws it out as a version of my life so absurd it’s supposed to slap the sense back into me. Marry her. A baby. A second family at my age.

God forgive me, something in my chest lifts.

I can see it. Elodie round and glowing. A kid with her freckles and my worst instincts. Billie lobs it at me like a live grenade, and instead of ducking for cover, I want to catch it with both hands. I want it so badly the air goes thin. My whole idiot heart says yes, please.

At the same time, what am I supposed to say to my daughter in this moment? How Elodie makes me feel alive for the first time since we buried her mother? How I’d marry her in a heartbeat if I didn’t think it would ruin my relationship with my kids?

No. I can’t say a word of it. Billie needs air, or distance, or both.

Except, she turns and bounds up the stairs, fast. I don’t stop her, because there’s no point.

I know what she’s gonna find. The guest room where Elodie and I sleep is at the top of the stairs. The door is open. Elodie’s bra and panties are strewn on the floor. The bed is a war zone.

She’s gonna learn soon enough, it’s not the aftermath of one reckless night. So, I follow behind her.

Might as well face it head-on.

Billie stands in the doorway as though she’s working something out. “I was right. You are fucking her, but you didn’t take her to your room. Mom’s bed.”

“No.” My voice is shot. “Never. I couldn’t.”

For half a second I think it might buy me some grace. One shred of decency left standing in this hellish morning.

But, no.

Billie paces around the guest suite and misses nothing. Her eyes scan the room from Elodie’s underthings on the floor to the toothbrush by the sink to our clothes hanging side by side in the closet. Seeing it through her eyes, I know there’s nothing up here that helps my cause.

A one-night mistake is easily concealed by a made bed and a closed door. Elodie’s living here, essentially, and Billie now knows it. Combining our things and moving into the guest room was never respect. It was a tidy little plan of a coward who’s fucking things up completely with everyone who means anything to me.

“It isn’t a one-night thing, is it, Dad?” Flat. Cold. “Her clothes are hanging in the closet like she lives here, because she does, doesn’t she?” Billie isn’t really asking. “This isn’t even a stupid one-time thing I could pretend I never saw. You moved a girl younger than me into our house, hid her and let me find her underwear on the floor.” Her chin shakes, but she refuses to cry. “End it. I mean it. I’m going to Europe and you’re going to dump the girl before you turn her into the saddest paragraph in your obituary. Do the decent thing for me. For Mom. For her.”

With this final pronouncement, Billie flies down the stairs and slams the front door behind her.

The second woman I love has walked out on me inside an hour and both times it was my doing.

What I can never tell Billie is Elodie is another once-in-a-lifetime love. Different than her mother in almost every way.

Both equally monumental.