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“You’ve known that for years! You knew that when you married me. But I never said it was okay for you to fuck other men. Maybe I should just fuck them out of your system. Is that what you need?”

“What I need is for you to calm down, please.” My mom’s request was more of a beseech. The pleading was at an all-time high. That meant she noticed the look in his eye. That scary, causes-chills-down-your-spine look.

“I’ll calm down when you say it.”

I gulped, pushing myself even further onto Eric, as if he was going to make everything disappear.

“Say what? Can we please go downstairs and talk? Or at least get out of our daughter’s bedroom.”

“Maybe I’ll just fuck you in here.”

Eric’s hands clamped down on my thighs, as if he couldn’t believe what my father had just said.

“Tom. Stop—” Slap.

I smashed my lips together, suddenly feeling very, very pissed. What was wrong with him?

“Say it. Say it now.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“That you’re mine. You’re mine even when Madeline turns eighteen. That you know I’ll still ruin you, even if I can’t take custody. I’ll turn her against you so fucking fast you won’t know what to do.”

Wait. What?

Shock replaced the anger and fear I’d been feeling. It had me slowly rising from Eric’s shoulder. My hands somehow found their way to his as they sat splayed on my thighs. I sat back on my heels, still straddling his lap. I had absolutely no idea what my father was talking about, and I was too shocked to make any sense of it.

“I’m yours, Tom. You know I’ll never leave you. I’m sorry I was out with another man. I just miss you.”

I knew what my mother’s submission meant. It meant that their fight was almost over. It meant that she was backing down and letting him get his way, as usual, but had she been staying with him this entire time because of me?

A choking sob was knocking at the back of my throat.

“Good girl,” my father purred, and just like that, my bedroom light was shut off, turning the closet into an abyss of endless black again.

And here I thought my mom was one of the most selfish people on this earth.

But I was wrong. So very wrong.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Eric

The closet that Madeline had stuffed me inside was dark and stuffy, filled with a soft scent that shouldn’t belong to a girl like her. Everything suddenly made sense. The way that she was willfully closed off and fearful if anyone got too close to her. My chest was cracking as she trembled on my lap. It surprised me how badly I wanted to wrap my arms around her and take her out of this stupid fucking closet and put her in the crook of my arm for the rest of eternity.

There was too much that was wrong with this entire situation.

The anger directed toward her father was lying nice and still underneath the pain I felt for her. She was cut open, yet I was the one bleeding.

The yells from earlier were gone now. We’d been cooped up in this small space for so long everything felt stagnant. Madeline hadn’t moved even an inch since her parents left her room. Not even a small twitch of her leg.

“So, this is why?” My hands were resting on her thighs, my back hard against the wall behind me. “This is why you’ve never let anyone get close to you? Why there has never been a single friend at your house. Why there has never been a guy here. Not even Christian.”

The admittance I was giving to her, the one that confessed how closely I’d watched her over the years, meant that I was calling a truce. I was done with my little charade of hating her. There were much bigger things at play than me blaming her for my parents’ rocky marriage. Fuck. Madeline said she was selfish, but she was the furthest thing from selfish.

“You noticed that?” Her voice cracked in spots that had me recoiling.

“Yes.” I paused. My hands were unmoving on her legs. I wished I could see her face, her expression. Was she still on the verge of breaking? Was she still afraid? “I know you much better than you think.”


Tags: S.J. Sylvis English Prep Romance