Series: Like Us Series by Krista Ritchie
Total pages in book: 241
Estimated words: 236417 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1182(@200wpm)___ 946(@250wpm)___ 788(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 236417 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1182(@200wpm)___ 946(@250wpm)___ 788(@300wpm)
My side? “Um,” I frown at the book. “Mom walked in on me and—”
“Your side of the story,” Dad emphasizes. “I know the facts.”
Stories aren’t police reports where the series of events are listed in dry factual detail. Stories contain emotion, feelings, and it dawns on me that he’s giving me a chance to share mine.
“I don’t know where to start,” I admit, brows scrunched.
“Start with him,” Dad tells me like he’s already found the culprit.
I take a deep breath. “I asked Donnelly out the night Grandfather died. Because when the world doesn’t make sense, my feelings for him have. So I went to him.” I stare at the book, gathering my thoughts. “We went out. We drank. We danced.” I smile a little at the remembrance. “When I’m with Donnelly, I’m no longer scared. I’m not afraid of the world. I’m not afraid of the past. Of any darkness. All the fears I have about myself are gone because I’m my most beautiful self in his eyes, and he sees her before even I do.” I wipe at an escaped tear. “He loves every version of me, and I love being with him, Dad. I love how he loves me completely. I love how uninhibited and mighty I feel when I’m with him. I could be a broken mess, and he’d still pick me up and try to love me back together. And he’s already done it. He’s already tried.” I blink away more tears. “Do you understand what that feels like?” My chin quakes, and I brave a glance at him.
His eyes have reddened, and he nods slowly. “I’ve loved your mom at her weakest, at her strongest, at her most broken. And she’s loved me at mine. There’s never been a day where I haven’t loved her.”
It pools into my heart. “I could say I found that too, but I have a feeling I never searched. Love like this feels inevitable. Like it has always existed and will always exist.” My temple thumps, but I push past the sensation and tell my dad, “That night, we talked about becoming official. Boyfriend. Girlfriend. We shared insecurities and thoughts of the future, and I felt normal. Like a twenty-one-year-old who wasn’t just kidnapped and beaten down. I felt a million feet tall, and I wanted him…all of him, in every way.” Heat swaths my cheeks as I refer to sex in front of my dad. “He’s been more careful with me than you even know. He’s always considering what happened and my health, even when I wish he would forget.”
“But the kitchen,” Dad says gently. “We eat there.”
I wince and try not to visualize Donnelly eating me out there, but the clear connection seems to hit my dad because he grimaces.
“Jesus Christ,” he mutters. “Never in a billion years…” He sighs heavily, then meets my gaze. We share the same amber eyes, the same light brown hair, but I have my mom’s soft, round face and not the sharp edges of Loren Hale. “Were you expecting to be caught?” He’s cringing as he asks.
“No.” I shake my head over and over. “He thought you might’ve set up nanny cams in the guest room to spy on him, and I guess I could’ve offered my bedroom—but it must not have crossed our heads in the moment.”
“Nanny cams?” He shakes his head now. “Jesus. Jesus.” He expels a short breath, his brows cinching in deeper thought. “Sometimes…I think this is all my fault.”
It hurts. “Why?”
“Because you’re an adult, and I’m still so goddamn scared I’m not doing enough to protect you that sometimes I think I’m hurting you by trying.” He pinches his eyes, then drops his hand. “I don’t like how Lily—your mom—felt like she couldn’t tell me about what happened. I don’t like how you felt like you couldn’t go back to your room because I was spying. I don’t like the person I’m close to becoming…or maybe, I’m already him.” He stares off at the bookshelf behind me.
I say what I feel again, and this time, I tell him, “I never want you to stop protecting me.”
His eyes shoot up to mine.
“You’re my dad, and I don’t want that to change with time.”
“It could never, Luna.” His eyes bore into mine. “I’ll always be your dad. I’ll always try my best…” He gets choked up, and he has to look away. I wonder if he’s thinking about the night I was taken. “…even when my best isn’t nearly enough.”
A pain wedges in my ribs. “That’s all we can do, right?” I ask quietly. “We do what we can, the best we can, when we can. And we hope that’s enough.”
It’s all the things he’s told me when I was a kid.
“That’s right,” he breathes, nodding. “And I’m going to try to ask before I react.” He sits up straighter and says, “I didn’t like Donnelly at first, honestly. I thought he was disrespectful.”