Daddy's Stepstalker (Daddy's Little Deviants)

He walked over to the car and opened the door for me. He didn’t say anything. Just left the decision up to me, and I made it. My shoulders slumped, I shuffled toward him. I ignored the smile on his lips, but it was a relief to rest my aching feet. He closed the door and got in.

“Do you want me to take you home?” he asked as he pulled out.

The memories crashed down on me like a flood. I wrapped my arms around myself and stared out the window.

“I don’t have a home.”

“What? That’s not…” His silence was telling, but I didn’t want to look at him and see the pity on his face. He seemed like a nice guy, like someone I should be all over instead of my stepdad, but my heart was already set on Shaw.

“That’s your house I passed back there,” he said in a low voice. “I didn’t put two and two together. I’m so sorry. Now everything makes sense.”

“Yeah.”

“But that’s not a good enough reason to want to die. You have so much going for you.”

I finally turned to him. “You don’t understand. I think I just lost everything that’s ever mattered to me.” My art. How far I’d come with Shaw.

“But you’re alive, which means things can get better. The only time they can’t is when there’s no life.”

“Usually, I’d agree with you, but I don’t know if I can make this one better. Not when the man I love blames me for everything that happened.”

“Well, did you burn the house down?”

“No.”

“Then he’s talking shit.”

“Please don’t talk about him.”

“Well, if you didn’t and he—”

“Seriously, if I’m going to stay in this car with you, don’t talk about him. Pretend I said nothing.”

No one could badmouth Shaw. He was a good man. I was the evil monster. The one who destroyed everything I touched.

“Is there somewhere you want me to take you?”

Anywhere Judd was. I needed to see him, to tell him I knew what he had done and he was going to regret it. I reached for the comfort of my knife. Fuck. I’d given it to Shaw, and he’d placed it in his desk in his office. If that nosy bitch Julieta searched his desk, and I didn’t put it past her, then she would find it and hand it over to the police. If that happened, Shaw would be in real trouble, and then he would hate me even more.

“Take me to the school,” I told him.

“What? Are you sure?”

“Yes. There’s something I need to do.” I placed a hand on his thigh, which hardened under my touch. “You don’t have anywhere urgent to be, right?”

“Uh-um, no, not right now, but I was thinking of getting something to eat. Maybe you’d like to join me?”

“How about after you take me to the school? I just need to collect something real quick, I promise.”

He glanced over at me, and I smiled. His face turned red, and he looked away, coughing. “All right. A quick stop.”

“Thank you. You’re a nice guy.”

I always had a thing for nice guys, but he wouldn’t begin to know how to handle me. Not the way Shaw did. He was the perfect blend of nice but also naughty as fuck. Even I hadn’t known how perfect he was going to turn out to be. Nor how intense it would be in bed when we fucked. He was the perfect Daddy, and I would deserve to call him that again by righting all these wrongs. The next time he saw me, I would have taken care of Judd.

“By the way, I’m Howard,” the driver said as he pulled up at the school. “What’s your name?”

“Ari,” I replied truthfully, and because he had been nice and concerned, I’d tell him the truth. “I’m going to be honest with you. I’m deeply in love with someone else and I would never fuck around with another guy. I can sense you’re interested, and I want you to know that nothing’s ever going to happen between us. You don’t have to stick around hoping I’ll change my mind. I won’t, but I could use a friend.”