I stand awkwardly in the foyer, waiting. She glances at her watch.
The clock is ticking.
“You can’t talk your way out of what you did, Griff. You can’t apologize. I know you love me…in your way. I love you. Unfortunately, that doesn’t change anything. I can’t trust you to trust me.” She meanders to the sofa and sits with a heavy sigh. “You’re broken. And if I stay, you’ll break me, as well.”
I follow and sit beside her on the couch, gripping my thighs so I don’t give in to the urge to touch her. “That’s what I want to talk to you about. I want you to understand why. Even if it doesn’t change anything between us, at least you’ll know the reason I broke us apart twice, and maybe you’ll see that I never meant to hurt you.”
She crosses her legs away from me, arms wrapped around her waist. Everything about her body language screams at me to keep my distance. I’m on my end of the sofa, doing my best to respect that.
“I’m listening,” she murmurs.
“I told you about Julia.”
She nods. “I know she hurt you but—”
“She wasn’t the problem, just the final straw.” I swallow, feeling like I’m going to choke on the boulder of my past. It’s stuck in my throat, suffocating me. “It started months before that. When I turned sixteen, my dad thought it would be a great rite of passage to get me laid, so he brought me to his office and set me up with his assistant and mistress, AnnaBeth. She was twenty-three. She couldn’t type at all…but my father hired her because he wanted her to bang out more than correspondence. I didn’t know her. I didn’t even like her.”
“He told you to have sex with her?”
“What he said was that he’d made the same offer to Maxon with his previous assistant, Danielle. My brother passed on the opportunity to ‘become a man.’ Dad mocked Maxon and made his life hell from that day forward. He constantly referred to my brother as a coward and a pussy. I didn’t want Dad’s needling and contempt. So I told myself losing my virginity was no big deal.” I shrug. “After all, I was sixteen and horny. Sex with her was better than randomly choosing some girl at school to deflower. I was happy to skip the blind-leading-the-blind thing. If not AnnaBeth, it would have been someone else. I had a lot of excuses for why this was okay. My dad always said relationships were a waste, and after seeing him and Mom constantly at each other’s throats, I didn’t want one.”
“They’re toxic together,” Britta agrees quietly.
I nod. “They feed each other’s worst tendencies. I’m glad they’re finally getting divorced and ending their thirty-five years of lying, cheating, and misery.”
“I can’t disagree.” Her face softens. “So you had sex with this woman?”
“A lot of it.”
Britta looks somewhere between stunned and horrified. “She just…let you?”
“She was happy to. She said having sex in the office was way better than working.”
My angel’s expression asks me if I’m kidding. She must know I’m not. “What a—”
“Yeah. But Dad was glad to have a ‘real man’ as a son, so he hired me to work after school. I thought I wanted to follow in his professional footsteps. According to him, I had the killer instinct. And the market was volatile that year. He claimed he wanted to train an analyst the ‘right way.’ What he really meant was that he was traveling a lot and wanted someone to keep AnnaBeth thoroughly occupied whom he could control.”
“You,” she says, her voice painfully quiet.
I’ve barely started, and she’s already nearly mute. Believe me, I’m not thrilled about my sordid sexual past, either. “Exactly.”
“Your dad wasn’t any sort of responsible father. You weren’t even old enough to consent. That woman raped you repeatedly.”
I give her an ugly scoff. “I never saw myself as a victim. Hell, guys at school thought I was downright lucky. Sex anytime I wanted it with a woman who knew how to please a man? They envied me.” I frown. “I won’t say the pleasure wasn’t great, especially at first, and I won’t lie and say I ever turned her down. I kept…” I reflect, trying to put that time of my life into words. “I kept thinking there had to be more. Physically, it was fine. Great. But every time we did it, I felt less for her and more… I don’t know. Empty is the word, I guess. I kept waiting for it to mean something. It never did.”
“How long did that go on?”
“About six months.”
“And all that time, your dad was still having sex with her?”
I really don’t want to answer that. I’m nauseated when I think of it now. “Yeah.”
Every time I think my angel can’t look more shaken by something I say, I open my mouth again.
“Oh, my god.” She lifts a trembling hand over her lips.
If she thinks that’s bad, I’m just getting started.
“And you weren’t having any sort of…relationship with her?” Britta is still having a hard time wrapping her brain around what I’m admitting.
“We didn’t date, if that’s what you mean.” Having a relationship with AnnaBeth would have been as cozy as cuddling up to an octopus. If she wasn’t bending herself over my desk or bobbing her head between my legs, I never saw her. “We didn’t even talk. In fact, I didn’t really attempt more than casual flirting with someone my age until I was almost nineteen.”
“So, you’re saying she warped you and that’s why you are…the way you are?”
“No. I had to explain AnnaBeth because, if I didn’t, you couldn’t comprehend what happened next. One day, I was too wrapped up in what she was doing to me orally to realize I should have been in a meeting. The firm lost a client. The pressure from other partners was too much and Dad had to fire me.”
“After letting his mistress abuse you, he threw you under the bus?” She blinks at me incredulously.
“Actually, I was relieved. I didn’t have to see AnnaBeth anymore. I didn’t have to have sex with the gossipy, catty, and vindictive shrew. It was for the best—or it should have been. Everything would have been all right—mostly—if she hadn’t decided she wanted to be the next Mrs. Barclay Reed. You see, when my mom asked why I got fired, I told her that I’d been goofing around. It was kind of true. Dad happily went along with it.”
“Of course he did.” Britta scoffs. “That way he didn’t have to take any of the blame.”
Precisely. “But AnnaBeth knocked on our front door one day while I was in school, just before the end of my junior year. She told my mother everything. Every. Single. Thing.”
Britta’s jaw drops wide. “What a heartless, horrible…”
Bitch? Yeah. “She was. When I got home, my mom confronted me. I thought she was going to be furious with my dad. I thought she would scold or ground me for not telling her sooner—or telling anyone who could put a stop to it. I had visions that she might even call the police. I expected something. But AnnaBeth went on and on about my prowess. And my dad’s, too. She was probably just looking for any blade in her arsenal that would stab my mom in the heart.”
Little did she know that Linda Reed had grown an iron shield around hers years ago. I discovered that ugly truth.
Easing to the edge of the sofa cushion, Britta leans closer. “What did she do?”
“My mom? First, she asked me what happened.”
“What did you say?”
“I confessed to everything. I knew she was already aware of my dad’s hookups, affairs, and mistresses. But I thought she would be shocked by what had happened to me. I thought she would make sure no one used me again.” I duck my head because I can’t look at Britta right now. I might not be able to look at her for the rest of this confession. “Instead, my mom cooed and awwed, like she was comforting me. Then, once I’d gotten my emotions under control, she asked me if I would help her get voted onto the country club’s social committee—a really prestigious honor in her eyes. According to her, she’d always been snubbed because she came from a dirt-poor Nebraska farm, and that made her blood
less blue.”
Britta drops her hand on my knee. I didn’t realize she’d come that close. I had no idea she was going to touch me again. I jolt when her warmth seeps into my skin. It’s as if I’m alive again.
I find the guts to lift my head and meet her stare. Is this the last time I’ll ever be this close to love—to her?