Total pages in book: 44
Estimated words: 41577 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 208(@200wpm)___ 166(@250wpm)___ 139(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 41577 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 208(@200wpm)___ 166(@250wpm)___ 139(@300wpm)
Chapter Nineteen
I cried in the shower and while brushing my teeth and then went to my room to cry some more. Not my father’s bedroom, but the guestroom he’d brought me to the day I arrived in New York.
I couldn’t have been asleep for more than a few hours before I was awoken by nightmares of roasting to death in a hot car like a forgotten dog. The sheets felt cold against my legs, a startling contrast considering I’d been burning in my sleep. I stared at the ceiling and flinched as the night came rushing back.
My father was exiting my life again, only this time, I was the one walking out the door.
I had tricked myself into believing I’d forgiven him on the first day of my visit, when in truth, I had only set my pain and anger aside. Yet, in doing so, I’d made room for other things, like hunger and curiosity. Admiration and desire.
And love, so much love.
It wasn’t until I heard the real story that I was able to truly forgive him, which was undoubtedly the opposite of what my mother had intended by coming here. But my forgiveness was irrelevant as long as he refused to forgive himself. In my naiveté, I’d assumed that learning the truth would bring us together. When instead, it became the wedge that ultimately tore us apart.
Had I been patient and waited until I’d started college to visit my father, my mother wouldn’t have shown up at his door with a bag of old drawings and accusations. He wouldn’t have had to confront the awfulness she saw in him.
Rolling onto my side, I pressed my cheek to the pillow, still damp with tears. As close as we were—which was closer than we would have been if he hadn't left—it wasn’t close enough to bridge the gap between the man he thought he was and the monster he was terrified of becoming.
In the end, maybe we were both monsters for wanting what was forbidden.
The doorknob creaked and clicked in the darkness. Footsteps padded softly all the way to the bed.
My pulse spiked. Was he here to make one last contour line drawing of his sleeping daughter before she erased herself from his life?
A draft of tepid air hit my back as the covers lifted. The mattress dipped. A warm body spread out alongside me, solid and consoling. I wanted to press against it, to align myself with the wall of hard muscle, but I was afraid I might never get up again if I did. I had meant what I said about the pain of loving him halfway. Maybe I could’ve settled for a normal father-daughter relationship before, but now that I knew how it felt to be kissed and touched and desired by him, there was no pretending that normal would ever be enough.
“Sweetheart?” He caressed my back, the heat from his hand sinking through my thin tank top. “You awake?”
I turned my face to the ceiling but said nothing. He slid his arm under my neck then pulled me against him, tucking his leg between my calves. There was no telling where he ended and I began.
“No one will ever love you like I do, Paige.” He didn’t say it like a threat. Just a fact. Most girls had a father and a lover, two distinct streams of affection. One paternal, one romantic. Somehow, I had managed to tap into both streams from the same man. It wouldn’t matter if I had a thousand lovers after him, none could ever love me quite the same as that.
“So, love me,” I said.
He kissed my earlobe, his breath washing over my cheek in gentle gusts. I felt his cock harden through his boxer briefs, and I loved that I could do that to him just by being there. My father had captured me from every angle, awake and asleep, naked and clothed. He loved me for the woman I was, not for who or what I was supposed to be.
“This should feel wrong,” he said. “Why doesn’t it feel wrong to us?”
I swallowed the stone in my throat. “Supposedly there’s this thing, this condition or whatever, called genetic sexual attraction.”
“Trust me, I know what GSA is. I looked it up as soon as you got here.” He slid his hand under my tank top to stroke my bare skin. “I swear, I never wanted anything like this when you were little. I need to know you believe me.”
“I believe you.”
He pressed his teeth to my shoulder but didn’t bite down. “The day you were born was the second-happiest day of my life.”
“What was the first?”
His lips brushed my neck. “The day you came back to me.”
And there it was, the sense of safety and comfort I feared had been lost for good.