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“That’s my Goddamn daughter, you overgrown grease monkey!” he barked. “She’s barely legal and you came all in here, living off my charity and you stole her out of the fucking cradle!”
“I am not a child,” I whirled around on him, poking a finger right into my father’s chest. “You don’t always have to like what I do, but it’s your job to at least support me how you can.”
Tears pooled in my eyes and dropped, probably making a mess of my makeup.
“You weren’t there for me as a kid,” I breathed, the words landing a solid punch to his gut. “At least be here for me now.”
It was my turn to pull Ashton after me, right out the front door. I’d always been daddy’s little girl, but if he made me choose… God, I hoped he wouldn’t make me choose.
Within another minute we were back in the car, the engine purring as we blew down the street and back down to the freeway.
“So, that went well.” My sarcasm was thick.
“Not as bad as I thought it’d be,” was his only comeback.
“He tried to beat you up again!”
“And this time I didn’t let him.” His shrug of nonchalance was infuriating.
“Why did you let him get in all those licks? At any point you could have laid him out on his ass.”
I watched his impassive expression as he lifted one shoulder again.
“Because I felt like a royal asshole for what I did to you, and Tom gave me the perfect way to pay penance.”
“What do you mean ‘did to me’?” I demanded.
“I mean being a thirty-something and fucking a barely legal kid so many times her legs were bowed. A kid that belonged to my best friend. A kid who was completely off limits.”
“First of all, I don’t belong to my father,” I hissed.
“You know what I fucking mean. Don’t twist my words around.”
There I sulked, in the stained and torn up but still beautiful baby blue seats of one sexy car, with the man of my dreams in the seat beside me.
How in the hell did that make any sense at all?
We got on the highway heading west and I just stared out the window while trying to understand the rainbow of emotions flooding through me. There was still the lady boner that had me pressing my thighs together, but there was also hurt that he had considered me a mistake. Maybe he still did. Then there was guilt, because of course there was. Guilt for making Dad hurt, guilt for going behind their backs, and guilt for the mess I knew I’d left again for my mother to have to clean up.
Pressing my face to the cool window, I closed my eyes and tried to let it all just filter through without clinging to one particular thing. Eventually my tired eyes and mind gave in, letting me bask in the blissful nothingness of slumber, but just for a little bit.
Chapter 31
Ashton
She woke up as soon as the car started to slow down, once we hit midday traffic in Huntington Beach.
I’d originally planned on getting a room at the Triton in Vegas, because I knew Freya would’ve loved the mermaid stylization of the place, but shit, we needed more space from Karma and Tom than a dozen city blocks.
We’d been on the road for just over four hours, and Freya had slept through most of it. The silence was surprisingly welcome. I was satisfied just having her there, and trusting me enough that she would fall asleep so freely. Especially after the last time we were in this car together.
“Where are we?” she asked, voice gritty and low as she tried to open her eyes to the glare of the sun in front of us.
“The ocean,” was all I said, slowly pulling ahead as the evening traffic built up.
“What?” she yelped, wiggling to sit up and get a good look out the window. “Which ocean?”
She was obviously still half asleep, because that was a really ridiculous question.
