Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 79486 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 397(@200wpm)___ 318(@250wpm)___ 265(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79486 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 397(@200wpm)___ 318(@250wpm)___ 265(@300wpm)
The second Daddy saw me, though, his hand fell to his side and the anger drained from his features. He became the Daddy I knew again, the calm one, the normal one. The one who loved us. Without another word, he bent over and started to pick up the pieces of broken glass.
I ran to Lori’s. I cried as I explained the scene to her, and she calmed me down until I fell asleep in her bed, curled up with a teddy bear between my arms. She woke me up a little while later and told me my dad was outside.
I was so tentative walking out front where he was waiting on the back of his bike. I didn’t know what father would be there: the one who had raised me, or the one who’d screamed at my mother and looked at her with so much hate. He smiled sadly as I walked up. “Climb on, Carmen. Let’s go home.”
I was scared to touch him at first. But I climbed on like he asked and we wheeled quietly down the road, back to the house. Once we were inside and I’d showered and changed into pajamas, he tucked me into bed. It had been a long time since he’d done that. I was fifteen, after all. Not his little girl anymore, but almost a woman. In this moment, though, I needed my daddy to comfort me.
The lights in my bedroom were dark. “I’m sorry that happened today,” he whispered from where he sat next to me. “I lost my temper. I just want you to know I love you and your mother very much and I’d never do anything to hurt either of you.”
“It’s okay, Daddy,” I squeaked. I felt too tired to hold onto my fear or my suspicion. Besides, he seemed so normal. Like everything in the world was right again.
“Goodnight, princess.” He kissed me on the forehead and left the room.
For the few months between that incident and the day I was pulled out of class by an urgently whispering school secretary, I almost forgot about the fight and the broken vase. But when the secretary put a gentle hand on my lower back and guided me to the front foyer of the school, I saw Daddy standing there and I knew things weren’t right at all. They weren’t fixed. They were more broken than ever.
“Carmen,” Lori whispered. I looked up. I didn’t know how long I’d been sitting without moving while I reminisced. My leg had gone numb, circulation cut off by the edge of the chair I sat in. I stared at Lori dumbly. She jerked her head towards the door.
My father stood in the doorway, as massive and snowy as ever. He wore a trim navy suit and a white shirt, pressed crisply until it was completely free of wrinkles. “Lori, could you give me a moment with my daughter,” he said. It wasn’t really a question.
Lori murmured something and quickly left the room through another door. I swallowed. He walked slowly across the room to sit in the chair Lori had just vacated.
When his smell hit me—that familiar, fatherly smell, the clean scent of shaving cream and cologne and just a hint of oily steel that set him apart from almost every other man I knew—I felt the tears well up again.
“I can’t go through with this, Daddy. You can’t make me.”
It was hard to explain why I was so afraid. Hadn’t my night with Ben been otherworldly? I’d played it back so many times in my head, while falling asleep, or relived it in my dreams. Every time he’d texted or called me, I’d wanted so badly just to pick up the phone and hear his sexy rumble again.
Maybe it was because I started to associate Ben with my father’s wrath. The night I came home from the party was like the day of the vase all over again, except this time, I was in my mother’s shoes. I’d cowered against a wall. Begged. Sobbed. When he raised his hand above his head, I wanted so desperately for someone, anyone, to intervene.
But there was no one. Nothing to stop that hand from hurtling down from far above and striking me bluntly across the cheek. Nothing to stem the flow of blood from my split lip. It was just me and him. Not the Daddy I remembered, but the one I feared.
So yeah, maybe Ben was an angel in my memories. A dark angel with a tongue between my legs and a hand in my hair. But my father had been an angel, too. Until he wasn’t anymore.
“You’re going to do it, Carmen.” His voice was soft and hard at the same time, like velvet wrapped around steel. “I refuse to take care of some bastard grandchild. You made the mistake, and now you will do what it takes to fix it.”