I turn off the water and stand there dripping, staring at my reflection in the fogged mirror. The bite is visible even through the steam. A dark bruise is already forming around the indentations of his teeth. I'll be wearing high collars for the next week.
I should be angry. I should be furious. At him, for treating me like a convenient hole to fuck. At myself, for letting him.
Instead, all I can think about is whether he'll text me again.
Akari is waiting in the living room with two cups of tea. She's changed into her pajamas, her hair pulled back in a messy bun, and she looks tired. She was waiting up for me. She wanted to tell me something.
"Before I grill you on Carter Crane, there's something you need to see," she says as I sit down. "I was going to show you the moment you walked in, but then..." She gestures vaguely at me. "The alpha smell. If you haven’t seen it yet, I wanted you to hear about it from me. Not someone else."
My stomach drops.
"What is it?"
She picks up her phone from the coffee table and swipes through something. Then she hands it to me.
It's a clip from a talk show, the kind that trades in celebrity gossip and manufactured outrage. The host is a blonde woman with too-white teeth and a fake sympathetic expression.
"...reached out for comment on his son's incredible success," she's saying. "And Ray Dean had this to say."
The camera cuts to a man I haven't seen in twelve years.
My father looks old. His hair has gone grey and thin, and his face has that weathered quality that comes from too many nightssleeping rough. But he's cleaned up for the camera. He’s shaved and wearing a shirt that looks new.
"Jamie was always ambitious," he says, and his voice is the same. It’s that gravelly tone I used to hear through my bedroom wall, raised in anger or slurred with drink. "Always chasing something bigger. Too good for his family, I guess."
The interviewer makes a sympathetic noise. "That must have been hard."
"I tried to reach out over the years. Wanted to be part of his life." Ray shakes his head sadly. "But he never had time for his old man. Always too busy with his career and making money. I used to tell him, family comes first. But Jamie..." He trails off with a shrug that's meant to look heartbroken.
I watch my father lie on national television, and something cold settles in my chest.
"I don't blame him," Ray continues. "I know I wasn't perfect. But I'm proud of him. What he's accomplished. I just wish we could have been closer, you know?"
The video ends.
I sit there, staring at the frozen frame of my father's face.
"Jamie?" Akari's voice is gentle. "Are you okay?"
"He never reached out. Not once."
"I know."
"He was supposed to have visitation every other weekend. He showed up the first couple of times and then he was drunk. He stopped bothering after that." The words are coming out flat, factual. Like I'm reading a report. "He stole money from my mother. Took it right out of her purse while she was sleeping. She caught him once and he called her a paranoid bitch."
"Jamie—"
"He called her the day after her diagnosis. Not to see how she was. To ask for money." I set the phone down on the coffee table."She was dying of cancer and he wanted to borrow five hundred dollars."
Akari doesn't say anything. She just moves closer on the couch and puts her hand on my arm.
"I haven't seen him in years," I say. "People are going to believe him."
"People who matter won't."
"People who matter don't watch shows like that." I lean back against the cushions and close my eyes. My mother would have hated this. She never said a bad word about Ray to me—let me figure out what he was on my own—but she would have hated seeing him profit off my work.
She should be the one who’s here. Instead, she's been gone for three years and my father is giving interviews about what a disappointment I am.
