“Bullshit,” my father roars. “You think I don’t know manipulation when I see it? You think I haven’t seen menjust like you—older, richer, morepowerful—convince a young woman she wants something she doesn’t even understand? You’re fucking predators.”
“They’re not,” I nearly whisper, and then wish I hadn’t as his head snaps to me.
I swear the temperature in the room drops ten degrees as his icy eyes bore into mine.
“And you, Georgia.” He shakes his head, the disappointment so thick it makes me want to literally disappear. “I didn’t think you could humiliate yourself more than you did in Savannah, but here we are. You can’t just fuck one of my friends, you had to fuck three.”
My vision blurs at the edges. I grip the coffee mug in my hand harder to try and steady myself. The urge to scream, to throw something, to make him hurt the way I do is almost too much to bear. But lo and behold, my self-restraint holds strong.
“This is sick.” My dad stands in front of us, his expression contorted.
Emmett tries to inject levity. “I mean, in our defense, none of us are exactly conventional?—”
“Shut up, Emmett,” my father cuts him off, voice deadly calm. “This is not a joke. You’re all a disgrace. This is my daughter’s life that she’s fucking up.”
Brody steps forward, his jaw set in a way that makes me wince. “If you want to blame someone, blame me. Don’t take it out on her.”
“Oh, you think this is about blame? About some petty morality?” My father paces the length of the room, boots hammering a tempo into the floors. “This is about basic respect. About knowing when you’ve crossed a fucking line, Wilder. You don’t just fuck your best friend’s kid like she’s a goddamn trophy!”
The words hit me like an open-handed slap. My cheeks burn, my mouth goes dry, and I nearly spill my coffee onto my lap.
But Brody doesn’t back down. He stands square, shoulders broad, every inch the Navy man I remember from my childhood. “I care about Georgia,” he says. “That’s not going to change, no matter how much you yell at us. You can throw whatever fits you want, but you’re gonna run out of energy before I run out of patience.”
My father’s voice drops to a near whisper, but it’s more chilling than any scream. “You ruined her. You took something pure and made it ugly.” He rounds on me, eyes drilling into my soul. “Is this what you wanted, Georgia? To be passed around by men old enough to be your father? What’s next for you? Posting it to fucking PornHub for extra cash?”
The tears are close, but I grit my teeth and refuse to give him the satisfaction. I set the mug down on the end table. Miles reaches for my hand, and I let him.
“You don’t know anything about me,” I say, my voice terrified but steady. “You never have. You were too busy jetting off, chasing yet another opportunity.”
He sneers. “I know enough to see when you’re being used. When you’re being made a fool of. You think this is love?” He gestures to the guys. “You think any of these men care for you? When they get bored, when you get old, when you’re not some shiny new distraction, they’ll just toss you aside.”
His voice ramps up, volume building with every syllable. “And then you’ll come crawling back, broken and broke, and expect me to clean up the mess.”
I flinch at that, the potential truth of it a dagger straight through my heart.
Brody looks like he wants to punch a hole through the wall. “You need to leave,” he says. “You’re not helping anyone. You’renot here to actually talk this through like a real man. You just want to make a goddamn scene like the control freak you are.”
“You don’t get to tell me what to do,” my father snaps. “Not after this. Not after you’ve started fucking my daughter and then agreed to share her with these assholes.”
No one speaks after that for a few beats, and I think maybe he’ll just turn and leave, but he plants his feet and sets his sights back on me, as if it’s his mission to finish the what he started.
“Georgia. You have one chance. Walk away from this disgusting arrangement right now with me. Or don’t come crying to me when it all falls apart. Because it will. Men like this don’t stick around. They never do.”
My chest feels like it’s caving in, ribs crushing my lungs, but I refuse to let him see me break. I force myself to stand up, my knees feeling weak, and face him directly. My voice is barely more than a whisper, but I know I have to respond.
“I won’t stop,” I say. “This is my choice. Not yours. It was never yours to make, or to really have any say in it at all. I get to make my own decisions.”
Something shifts in his face, and it changes into something older, sadder, like all the wind has gone out of his sails.
He nods once and then turns. His boots hammer a path to the door, and without another word, he’s gone, slamming the door behind him.
The hatch slams shut, rattling the dishes in the cabinets. For a minute, none of us moves. The echo of his rage lingers in the air.
At first, I feel like it could’ve gone a lot worse than that, but as I sit back down, I suddenly feel an overwhelming sense of defeat.
He’s never going to approve.
Miles is next to me in a second, holding me upright. “You’re okay. You did great, baby. You did as well as anyone could be expected to in this kind of situation.”
