PROLOGUE
If I were a bird, I know who I would shit on.
-Sabrina to her father
SABRINA
“I’m sorry, what?”
Surely, I hadn’t heard him correctly.
Surely.
“I want my dad to check to make sure that you’re still pure,” Cole repeated, confirming that I had, in fact, heard him correctly. I wasn’t hearing things. “I know that this is rather… odd. But this is something that every single female in the history of my family has done on the night before her wedding.”
I blinked.
Then I burst out laughing.
Because surely he had to be joking.
He had to be.
Right?
But nope, the moment that I burst out laughing, Cole’s lips went all pinchy—which usually indicated that he was about to lose his shit.
But, I kept laughing.
Because how could I not?
I mean, when I’d met Cole at the age of eighteen, I’d found his vow of celibacy until marriage quite annoying, but doable.
I mean, we were meant to have sex, and I didn’t believe in all that hullabaloo like he did.
But since Cole meant something to me, I was more than willing to give him everything he asked for.
And I did.
I gave him six years, as well as my promise of waiting until marriage.
“Only if you let my dad look at your asshole,” I found myself saying, hoping yet again for him to joke right back with me.
Except, he got offended. “What does my butthole have to do with this?”
I literally almost burst out laughing again.
Because he was so offended, in fact, that he had that little line between his eyebrows, indicating that he was even closer to blowing.
I’d been on the receiving end of Cole’s temper before, and I didn’t like it.
He knew this.
I knew this.
My dad even knew this.
Yeah, speaking of my dad…
“I guess I’ll see you later,” I said stiffly.
I stormed out of the house, the only thing on my mind was my father, and what he would do now that I’d called the wedding off.
Probably celebrate.
My dad hadn’t much liked Cole since the moment that I’d met him.
He’d tolerated him, sure, but he hadn’t liked him.
Which was quite surprising, because everyone liked Cole.
Only my dad?
He hadn’t much liked him.
“If you leave, you won’t be welcomed back.”
I looked over my shoulder at my now ex-fiancé.
What I saw were his brothers, his dad, and him watching me go. Cole looked as if he couldn’t quite believe I was walking away.
His father and brothers were looking on as if their favorite plaything was disappearing right out of their lives.
Gross.
I got in my car and plugged my phone into my dash, because I still needed the fucking GPS to lead me out of the hellhole where Cole lived with his backwoods family.
Pressing Dad on my favorites, I started heading toward his house, shaking my head and muttering to myself the entire way.
I got home—and yes, I still thought of my dad’s place as home even though I’d moved out four years ago when I’d started college—and slammed my car door a little too hard.
Causing my grandfather to startle from the nap he’d been taking on the front porch.
“Whoa there, darlin’,” Gramps called in his frail voice. “What on Earth has your knickers in a twist?”
I gritted my teeth as I all but stomped up the walkway to the porch.
“I’ll only be able to repeat this once,” I said. “Let me go get Dad and a beer, he’s gonna need one. Do you want one?”
“Of course,” Gramps supplied.
The moment I breached the door to the house, my father looked up from the table, where he was crushing peanut shells with his fingers and tossing the nuts into his mouth.
He had a massive mess of shells and stuff all over his lap and the floor around him—something that would’ve made my mother apoplectic if she were still around—and he was looking at me with surprise.
“You’re early,” he said.
I’d intended on staying the night with him tonight, as was the usual for a bride on the night before her wedding.
I sighed. “I need a beer, STAT. I also want to talk to you. Gramps wants to know, too, so we have to go out to the porch.”
Dad stood up and snatched two beers out of the fridge door and jerked his head toward me.
I took the beer, and he seized the bag of peanuts as he followed close behind.
Only when we were all situated, and I exacted a promise out of my dad, did I start the story of how my night had gone.
When I was finished explaining what had happened, my dad was looking at me as if I’d grown a second head.
“Let me get this straight,” Dad gaped. “Your fiancé, and his dad, as well as his brothers, wanted to check to make sure you were still a virgin?”
I swallowed hard. “Yes.”
“And he does know that hymens are practically a myth nowadays, correct?” he challenged.