Her Collateral Bride: A Lesbian Age Gap Romance

were so many other options. You didn’t have to give people

bad food. Dad, you made them sick. You hurt people. You hurt

Claire most of all. You ruined her career.”

Her dad slapped his hand onto the countertop. Haley’s heart

pounded, but not with fear. That was basically an open

admission of the truth.

“Why?” Her voice was broken, but also hard. “How? How

could you have done that? To her? She was your friend. She

had every right to do what she did this time. To take me.”

“No!” Her dad’s eyes filled with horror, and she finally

realized the toll this whole thing had taken on him. “She had

no right to demand you. You did nothing wrong.”

“But I’m an extension of you.” She couldn’t stop thinking

about that. All last night. All this morning. It brought her so

much misery that this was the situation they’d found

themselves in. That there was no apparent way out of it. Tears

pooled in Haley’s eyes, but she’d had enough of crying. “You

need to tell her that you’re sorry and you need to mean it. You

need to fix this. You’ve let eleven years go by.”

“She had everything!” her dad hissed. “Old family money.

Something to fall back on. I had nothing. I had to claw my

way up from the gutter.”

Haley was temporarily struck silent, but that didn’t last

long. “But you built it together!” She was stunned by the fury

in her dad’s eyes. “It wasn’t just yours to take. You’ve built an

empire, and when it all came crashing down, she was there to

save you.”

“It wasn’t to save me! It was to humiliate me. She wanted

me to know that after all this time, she was always the one in

control. It wasn’t just revenge. She wants me to know that for