Bad Seed

“I need to go get cleaned up.”

“We both do,” I said. “But you can go first.”

“You sure?”

I leaned my head over to hers and kissed the top of it before I sat up.

“Yep. I’m sure. You first, then me.”

I turned around and watched as her beautifully naked body sauntered to the bathroom. Her skin held several new marks, but none of them were left in anger or violence. They’d been left in lust, in passion, in love.

I got up and shut the balcony door, but not before I took one last whiff of the salted air. Theresa was humming in the shower, completely oblivious to the tension filling the room. Or maybe that was her way of attempting to dissipate it. I didn’t know. But the longer her shower dragged on, the quicker I wanted to get out of there.

It was easier to rip off a band-aid than it was to slowly peel it back.

I hopped into the shower after her and was in there less than five minutes. I washed up quickly then toweled off my hair and got dressed so I could get the fuck out of there. I wasn’t good with goodbyes. I didn’t like them at all. I didn’t want to say goodbye to Theresa. I wanted to pack up her things and take her with me. I wanted to be by her side forever.

But I had to play this her way or it would get me nowhere.

CHAPTER 27

THERESA

I kissed Grant in front of the hotel and then set off for my car. I didn’t want to watch him leave. It was too painful. It hurt the first time around, but this one was worse. I knew I was doing the right thing, making him leave town. I had to brace for the worst with my brother and Dad. I didn’t want him reaping any of the backlash from this because this was my fight with them. They were using Grant as a scapegoat for the issues that were coming to the forefront.

I got into my car and drove off before I had a chance to look back. The hotel was beautiful, but I couldn't stay. We couldn't stay. It wasn’t reality, and it wasn’t what adults did. We could whisk ourselves away for a weekend, but a lifetime? It wasn’t possible. It was a teenager’s mentality, and I understood why Grant felt that way. His childhood had a lot to do with his need to escape from time to time. But I needed to take my own life by the reins and handle my own business once and for all.

Which was why I was heading to my father’s house.

I pulled into his driveway and took a deep breath. The conversation was long overdue between the two of us, and no matter what I had to do, this ended today. Whatever this control issue was that he had with me, it ended now. I had nipped it in the bud with Ike, but it had taken me eight years and a concussion to do so. Grant had given me a fabulous few days to recuperate and get back on my feet again, and now I had to make sure his efforts didn’t go to waste.

I walked straight into my father’s house without even knocking. I didn’t want to give him a chance to mount any defense. I walked around the lower level of the house and found him in the kitchen, hunched over some paperwork with his head in his hands.

I cleared my throat, and he looked up, seemingly startled that someone was in the house

“Theresa?”

“Hey, Dad.”

He looked surprised, but his face immediately morphed. I knew he was about to give me a lecture, about leaving the hospital with Grant or kissing Grant or hopping from guy to guy or whatever it was he had been preparing in that head of his. But I was having none of that. He wasn’t going to get the upper hand this time. My voice was back, and he was going to listen.

Whether he liked it or not.

“Before you start, I have something I want to say. And don’t interrupt me until I’ve finished talking.”

I watched my father nod, and I took a step into the kitchen.

“What you did to Grant was wrong,” I said. “Blatantly and purposefully wrong. He needed us. That teenage boy with parents who didn’t give a shit about him needed us, Dad. And at the first sign of him spoiling whatever plan it was you had for my life, you threw him out like he meant nothing. Grant loved you and Mom, respected you and Mom. He would never have acted on any crush I might’ve had toward him as a teenager. Ever.”

I drew in a deep breath and took another step forward.

“And that little stunt you and Hollis pulled in the hospital? Completely uncalled for. Ike attacked me, Dad. Almost raped me in my own damn apartment, and you’re angry because Grant was there comforting me? Grant would never hurt me. How you could think he would is beyond me, and it shows me that you never gave a damn about getting to know him. The real him. Because despite you throwing him away like a piece of trash stuck to the bottom of your shoe, he made something of himself. He made something pretty damn big of himself. He started his own multi-million-dollar construction company with no help from anyone else. Did you know that? No, you didn’t, because you didn’t give a shit about anyone but yourself. And don’t try and tell me that you were doing what was best for me. You were doing what you thought would make you look like a good upstanding father.”

I saw my father wilt a bit, and I knew I was finally getting through to him.

“From now on, I make the decisions in my own life. I’m twenty-six years old, and I’m capable of succeeding or failing on my own. You and Hollis? This control thing the two of you have going on with me? It stops now. That blatant display of anger in the hospital made you no better than Ike. And I don’t know if this is surfacing because you didn’t cope with Mom’s death, or because Hollis and I grew up, and you can’t handle that, or from any other insane reason that could possibly be the cause of this. But I can tell you one thing. I’ll cut you out of my life before I let you control me anymore.”

I was panting, shaking, my jaw clenched from the overwhelming emotion, and my eyes were boring into my father. His eyes filled with guilt as he stood from his chair, and I saw the tired look in his eyes. The bags underneath them. The dark circles that came to light as he walked across the kitchen. He stretched out his arms and engulfed me in a massive bear hug, and it took me a few seconds to digest what was going on.