“Well? I’m waiting. What friend?”
The anger mixed with the booze I smelled on him, and I knew dodging the question would only make things worse. “Just a friend from school—Kelly Prichard. You met him and his family last year on that ski trip we took.”
I spent the week skiing. He screwed some blond ski bunny bimbo with huge tits when he wasn’t campaigning and schmoozing with donors.
“That doesn’t explain why you ignored phone calls from my staff.”
Sighing silently, I explained, “His family has a cabin. We went up there for my birthday. We hiked for a bit, and then we stopped to do some fly fishing. The current was swifter than it looked, and I slipped on some rocks. My phone was in my pocket, so it took a swim, too.”
“Of course, you were fucking off when you had responsibilities here. You’ve been a selfish little prick since the moment you were conceived. If it weren’t for you…”
“What responsibilities?” I asked to cut off the blame game he played when pissed at me, while racking my brain and coming up empty.
“Like I said. Selfish little prick.”
Ice clinked, drawing my attention to the crystal highball glass holding just enough liquid to let me know he’d already cracked open the booze.
Bingo!
My mind screamed as my nose caught fire. The smell of alcohol washed over me when my father stepped close—our chests so close they would rub if either of us took a deep breath. His eyes burned with a barely banked rage. One that never failed to catch fire whenever his gaze met mine.
Waiting, my breath lodged in my throat, I stood stock still, silently beating the shit out of myself for being a chickenshit.
The glare darkened until I gulped, and he smirked. “Such a fucking pussy little faggot,” his finger tapped out the words as he spoke.
Five words shouldn’t have such an effect on me, especially not given the number of times I’d heard them throughout my life. I doubted he knew my sexuality. He used it to demean me. It hurt the first few hundred times. But not anymore. Well, not much anyway.
“If I didn’t know better…” he said, before turning away to walk back into the house.
On slightly unsteady legs, he stumbled into what was supposed to be a family room, only this room was devoid of family. No photos. No warm, fuzzy memories. No love. Only neglect, abandonment, hate, and violence, and the best furnishings that the most expensive, most elite interior designer could find. Even those were bereft. Not a speck of color anywhere. White on white on white. More sterile than a mental ward.
Watching him, my eyes locked on what I knew, with no evidence but the smell on his breath to back it up, I’d find across the open expanse of the open floor plan. A half-empty, red-wax-topped bottle sat open, in stark contrast to the sparkling white marble counters in a kitchen that held plenty of liquid courage but very little sustenance.
The red wax, a morbid reminder of the blood I’d cleaned off those counters the last time my night took just this sortof turn, glowed as if under stage lights. He only drank this stuff when the hateful motherfucker that my mother fell in love with and that he pretended didn’t exist surfaced. To the outside world, my father was a polished California politician. Inside our family’s gilded cage, that couldn’t have been further from the truth. With his only child, he was a mean, vindictive, controlling, child-abusing bastard who hated the world and everyone in it unless they were doing something for him. And even then, he demanded to be treated like a god. Failure to do so resulted in tirades that made me scurry for cover throughout my entire childhood. All that ended today—my birthday had never been a celebration. Ever. Until today.
Eighteen years old.
Fucking finally.
And no matter what the hell the old man planned to gift me with—fists or luxury—I had everything I needed and the opportunity to get everything I’ve ever wanted.
A college withdrawal letter.
A bank account filled with the money left to me by the mother I never met.
And, saving the best for last, the promise of a naval enlistment contract with a shot at a dream I’d had for as long as I could remember.
Better yet, I got it all on my own without a damn bit of help from the senator.
As soon as I could, I planned to walk out of this house, taking only my dignity.
And my car. And now that I’ve withdrawn from college, I’ll take the cash my father dropped on my first year. Call it payment for the pain and suffering I experienced in spades thanks to the old man.
The sound of the bottle rattling against his glass, yet another sign of how far gone he was and just how bad this night could go for me, followed by…
“Fuck!”
Liquor sloshed over his hands onto the marble, and that’s when I saw it—a second bottle of bourbon, his usual brand. The fancy ass crystal cut round bottle with the even fancier brass and cork topper. The memory forced my fingertips to my forehead, tracing over the scar left behind by the horse and jockey that sliced open my skin after my father slung the bottle at me a decade ago.
