And definitely not the fact my dick gets rock-hard in Riley’s presence. Or when I think of her.
Ignoring that tidbit, my mind drifts to Gran’s wide eyes and the way she trembled, thinking I was my dad when I visited her on Christmas Eve.
“Do you think I don’t know what you’re doing to my daughter? You’ve already taken her from me, what more can you possibly want? Haven’t you hurt my family enough?”
What the hell did she mean by that? When I visited her yesterday, she was back to herusualself, which means, for most of our visit she thought I was either my grandfather or the seventeen-year-old version of myself who went to live with her after Dad’s incarceration.
I didn’t want to bring it up and upset her or stress her out, so I left it, but the words have replayed constantly, along with the fear I saw in her eyes when she thought I was my father.
I’ve never seen that before. She’s always disliked him. Very rarely spoke of him in my presence, but she’s never spoken ill of him to me. Never expressed concern or fear.
So, her reaction just doesn’t make any sense to me.
But then, like I said, nothing makes sense to me anymore.
The world has become a strange and confusing place, and the only relief I get is when I’m burying myself in my work. I’ve got a Dad who I’m beginning to wonder if I truly know at all, bestfriends who hate my guts, and a woman I hate who I can’t stop thinking about. Envisioning. Dreaming of.
My life is truly and utterly fucked up.
I absently stretch the scrunchie around my fingers, recalling the day I stole it from her room. She’d only been living with us for a few weeks, and already I’d become obsessed with my new step-sister.
She was shiny and radiant and the complete opposite of what our house had been like before her presence. Before, it had been stilted and cold, but she breathed life into the building and brought about a warmth I’d long forgotten existed. My mother had died when I was eight, and along with her life, all happiness had been sucked out of our house. Out of my life.
It became stark and chilling, my father clueless as to how to deal with a grieving child. So he left me to figure it out for myself, really only interacting with me when it came to my grades and school.
Of course, he’d been struggling with his own grief at the time. Struggling to adapt to being a single parent. My mother had always been the comforting one. She was patient, nurturing, and sympathetic, whereas my father was more regimented. He had certain expectations and expected them to be met. That didn’t mean he didn’t care. I’d see the gleam of pride in his eyes when I’d come first in my year at school or win a trophy in an extracurricular.
In her absence, he was incapable of filling her shoes… and eventually, I learned to adapt to that. To accept it. To appreciate my new normal.
Except now… Now, I’m wracking my brain trying to recall a single interaction between my parents. Trying to remember how they looked at one another, how he spoke to her.
“Do you think I don’t know what you’re doing to my daughter?”
“You’ve already taken her from me, what more can you possibly want?
“Haven’t you hurt my family enough?”
Gran’s words echo deafeningly in my head as I scream internally for answers. For understanding.
She’s buried a seed of doubt in my chest, and with each passing day, it’s planting roots, growing sprouts.
Now, I don’t know who or what to believe.
I’m interrupted by a knock on my office door, and I barely have time to hide the scrunchie in my hand before David strides in as though he owns the place.
“What?” I snap irritably. The dickhead has his head so far up my dad’s ass that all he can taste is his shit, so I have absolutely no patience for him, especially today.
“Your dad’s lawyers have been trying to reach you. You’ve been ignoring their calls.”
And what, they reached out to Dad, who got his errand boy to come berate me into taking their call? I don’t bother to hide the rolling of my eyes.
“I’ve been busy,” I drawl. It’s not a total lie, even if I’ve mostly been busy thinking about a certain forbidden snake-woman. “I’ll get back to them when I get back to them.”
David huffs haughtily. “It’s almost as though you don’t want your father to be released.”
I arch a warning eyebrow, a casual reminder of exactly who he’s speaking to. He may be my father’s little bitch, but he worksfor me.
“You would be wise to remember your place,David,”I warn in a glacial tone that’s cold enough to make him straighten where he stands in front of my desk.“Andneverquestion my desire to see my father a free man. The only person who desires it more is my father.”
