I watched him fuck a woman who wasn’t my mother, too stunned to speak.
The scent of it, their sex, it makes me want to vomit when I think back.
“What was it her family did to us?” I try another question, my heart thrumming painfully inside my chest. My fingers are clinched on my thighs and I’m worried about Sloane and Remi and Cortland and Lyle and I’m worried about Grey, who didn’t come with us, and how he will fair in trying to be silent about it all. I’m worried I’ll have to silence him myself.
I’m worried about the texts and the logical conclusion is that they’re from Lydia, but the motive doesn’t make sense to me, nor do the details. The person doesn’t seem to speak like her, but how do I even know what she sounds like? I met her for a moment. Both of us must have been desperate, running from something.
Her, her uncle most likely.
The thought of him makes me want to snap my father’s neck. All this time she was nearby? Was she here when I was at the hotel over the summer with her uncle and my father? Did she watch me with that woman?
I asked when I saw Lynx, after everything horrible happened. But Dad said he only came down for my initiation; some twisted requirement I was never to tell my mother about. Another secret wedged between me and her.
It doesn’t make sense, of course, that Lydia would’ve been there.
I was alone in the room. But my mind feels full of the worst possibilities.
“And why was it that Lynx was there? Over…the summer?” My voice cracks with the last part of my question and my face burns, but if I don’t open my eyes, none of this really matters.
It’s exactly what Dad told me that weekend. The one before Sloane in the hallway andParadise Lost.
“Close your eyes, son.”There was no panic in his voice. He knew then I was good at taking his secrets to the grave.
“Has she been here all along?” I keep asking the questions, and I know he can hear the desperation in my voice. But maybe he’s the only one who really knows me at all, so why not let him see my worst? “Do you still speak to him even though I’m forbidden? How many double standards do you have, Dad?” I open my eyes then and turn to his.
With gray irises, icy and detached, he is staring right at me but he doesn’t trulyseeme. “Stop acting like a child.” He speaks calmly. Coldly. But there is no hint of his temper. This is what happens when you’re trained in death. “There are certain liaisons I must have with Lynx Flynn which do not concern you?—”
“They concerned me in the hotel, or else why the fuck was I there?”
He smiles, dimples forming in his face. The picture of ease, but I know he’s despised me since high school. “That was a test of your legitimacy, as you know.”
“And who, exactly, was I proving it to? You, or him? I thought you had no leash, Dad, except Mom’s when you want to pretend.”
At the mention of my mother, his own eyes close.
I nearly feel guilt.Nearly.
“I know you think you keep that secret from your mom, too.” He doesn’t open his eyes as he speaks. “But if you hadn’t proven you’d do what it takes, you would have broken her heart in ways you can’t begin to understand.”
“So Lynx Flynn owns us? And her too? Is that what you’re telling me?” I keep my tone even. I try to be just like him. But I’ve always felt too much.
“I didn’t tell you about Lydia because she does not matter. You were never supposed to cross paths.”
“Why is she following me?” I want the answer, even if it’s from him. He knows everything now, except he knows nothing of Sloane’s involvement, as far as I know. If I told him, she’d be on his radar, and right now, I think that’s a dangerous place for her to be.
My dad shakes his head a fraction of an inch. “You tell me.”
“I’ve done nothing to her.”
He doesn’t look at me, and he doesn’t argue. “I’ll see what I can find out.”
“And in the meantime, if she tries to murder me again, do I just let her do it?” Maybe I wouldn’t mind.
Dad’s eyes flash, and we’re staring at one another once more. “Even Lynx can acknowledge self-defense, don’t be dense, son. You don’t want to break your mother’s heart.”
And I say, oh-so-softly, “But you don’t seem to mind, do you?”
A muscle in his jaw twitches, just over the collar of his pristine black dress shirt.
