Pretty, Dark and Dirty

“Jett, wait—” For a second, I thought he was going to kiss me. Please, I thought. Kiss me. Tell me to stay. I held my breath and waited for him to make the right choice.

He released me.

A sob shook my chest. There was no stanching the flow of tears now.

I wiped my eyes and stepped away from the man who’d been Daddy for so much of my life, the man who looked like he’d aged ten years in the last ten seconds.

“At least I got to say goodbye this time,” I said. “That should count for something.”

Chapter Sixteen

I cried in the shower, and while brushing my teeth, and then went to my room to cry some more. Not the master bedroom where Mason and I had slept together, but the guestroom he brought me to that first afternoon.

There wasn’t much point in shutting off the light, since I knew I wouldn’t be sleeping, but I welcomed the darkness anyway. Part of me wished I could crawl back into the dark, where my parents had put me. Had I known the truth would be this devastating, I wouldn’t have fought so hard to drag it into the light.

It was a lie I could almost believe.

When I promised Mason that I would stop asking questions, a part of me knew I could no more give up my desperate search for answers than I could command myself to stop breathing. The truth always had a way of unearthing itself, no matter how deeply you buried it. My mother knew that better than anyone.

The other lie I’d been feeding myself since the day I arrived was that I’d forgiven Mason for walking out of my life in the first place. In truth, I had only set aside my pain and anger. It wasn’t until I learned the real story, and saw the anguish on his face, that I was able to truly forgive him—not exactly the reaction my mother had hoped for in coming here, that much was obvious.

But my forgiveness was irrelevant as long as Mason refused to forgive himself. In my naiveté, I’d assumed that learning the truth would bring us together. Instead, it only served to wedge us further apart.

I pressed my face into the pillow to muffle the sounds of my mewling. My father was about to exit my life again, only this time, it would be me walking out the door.

As close as we were—which was admittedly closer than we would have been if he hadn't left in the first place—it wasn’t close enough to bridge the gap between the man he was and the monster he was terrified of becoming.

In the end, maybe we were both monsters for wanting what was forbidden.

I rolled onto my side and watched the lights flicker in the wi

ndows of distant apartment buildings. I almost didn’t hear the doorknob creak and click.

Footsteps padded softly all the way to the bed.

My pulse jumped.

Was he here to make one last drawing of his sleeping daughter before she erased herself from his life?

A slight draft hit my back as the covers lifted. The mattress dipped. Mason’s warm body spread out alongside mine, solid and consoling. I wanted to press against it, to align myself with the wall of hard muscle, but I was afraid I might not have the strength to crawl out of bed again if I did.

I had meant what I said about the pain of being loved 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.

He caressed my arm, the heat from his hand soaking into my skin. “Want to know the hardest part about being a parent?”

I shrugged one shoulder.

“Most of the time, you still feel like a kid yourself. You have no fucking clue what you’re doing, but you’re supposed to know what’s best for this tiny, fragile creature that’s hellbent on getting itself into all kinds of trouble.”

He tucked his leg between my calves and wrapped his arm around my middle. There was no telling where his body ended and mine began.

“Sometimes dads fuck up,” he said. “I know I’ve fucked up more times than I can count. You’ll always be my baby, Jetty. I’ll never stop looking out for you. But you’ve got a good head on your shoulders and a bold heart filled with love.”

He pressed a kiss to my shoulder. I swallowed the small stone in my throat.

“You’re the only one who can decide what’s right for you.” Though his tone was unquestionably sober, I couldn’t ignore the persistent ridge of his cock pressed against my backside.