I itch to taste it, but I focus more on Lil, and any ache for alcohol subsides. For once, I truly feel strong enough to help her. “She has to complete all the tasks before her trust fund is returned. Does that mean she’ll have it again when she agrees to the wedding?”
“She gets it when you’re married.”
My stomach caves.A year?She’ll be broke for a whole fucking year even if she does everything they say. Lily can’t hold down a job while she’s going through recovery. I remember how I found her hiding underneath her desk in Rose’s office, afraid of the male models. She’s not ready to handle the stress of a workplace environment with her addiction at bay. That anxiety is what causes her to go crazy.
“We’ll get married sooner,” I offer. Why prolong the wait? She’ll have money. The cameras will stop hounding us. She won’t be gossiped about in blogs anymore. All will be right again.
“Really?” Lily asks, her eyes big and glassy.
I wipe a fallen tear with my thumb. “Two weeks or one year, it doesn’t make a difference to me, Lil. I’d marry you tomorrow if it’d make you happy.”
She nods once and lets me hold her close.
“It actually does make a difference,” my father cuts in, chilling my bones. “It can’t look like a shotgun wedding designed to coax the media. It has to look real. One year. No sooner and no later.”
He strangled my only alternative.
My father closes a file and opens another. “Now for you, Loren,” he says, “the media has modeled you as the pathetic boyfriend, cheated on and discarded. You will publicly release a statement about how you and Lily have had an open relationship, somethingnew age. You have been sleeping around with other women, and you knew she was sleeping with other men. But since yourromanticengagement, you both have decided to commit to each other fully.”
Lily holds in a breath, probably believing I’ll refuse this stipulation. She wants this to be easy, for us to agree and move on. I’m accustomed to lies. If this one helps, I’ll gladly carry it. I nod in acceptance and my father closes the file.
“That’s it?” I ask.
“You’re not the sex addict,” he reminds me with a dry smile and the raise of his glass. He takes a long swig, and my mind lapses back to the money issue.
I have to ask him.
For Lily.
For me.
So we have one less problem to solve. So we can stop taking handouts from our siblings.
“About my trust fund…”
Lily bristles beside me. “Lo, you don’t have to?—”
“I want to.” Whatever the repercussions, whatever I have to do to please my father, I’ll work out. A part of me screamsfailure. I’m giving up by crawling back to this man. But the other part saysthis is the right way.And I’m listening to that side of my brain. Whether it’s the dumb fucking side—that’s to be seen.
“What about it?” He swirls the scotch in his glass, creating a small whirlpool.
He’ll make me ask. Beg. Plead and grovel. I’m not about to drop to my knees, but I’m close. I’m almost there. “You told me I could have it back,” I remind him, but I’m not an idiot. I know there are strings attached. “What do you want me to do?”Not college. Not college.Not college. I cannot go back to school, surrounded by booze, surrounded by fully functioning twenty-somethings. It drives me to a bottle more than Lily knows. It’s a reason why I opted not to return.
Every sane, happy person is like a reflection of what I could have been, like being met with Christmas Future every day. I don’t want to be haunted by my problems like that.
“What I want you to do,” he says, “is be a fucking man.”
I glare. “Last time I checked, I was one.”
“Having a dick doesn’t make you a man,” he replies. “You’ve been an irresponsible little boyall your life. I give you things and you shit on them. If you want your trust fund, you have to use the money to make something of yourself. You can’t fuck it away.”
“I’m not going back to college.”
“Did I say anything about college? You’re not evenlisteningto me.” He throws back the rest of the liquor into his mouth and smacks the glass on the desk.
I flinch.
And he stays silent, not about to divulge the details. Apparently I’m supposed to know what being a man really entails. In my father’s head, that could mean anything.
