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I rinsed the towel and squeezed out the blood, then washed my hands with soap. I couldn’t get them clean enough, no matter how hot the water or how hard I scrubbed.
Steam wafted toward my face. He shut off the tap and held my raw, reddened hands between his.
“Did he hurt you?”
“Not as bad as you hurt him,” I said.
My father dried my hands on the robe and then pulled me tight against him. “I’m so sorry, Paige. Maddox likes to assume what’s mine is his because that’s how it’s always been.”
“I know,” I said. “Mom told me.”
“She did?” He drew back and the trepidation on his face was both unmistakable and tinged with knowing. He’d predicted this moment, possibly from the start. “You’re probably wondering why I’d let someone like Maddox back into my life. Try to understand, when I left you, I had no one. Maddox was someone I knew, and I guess I figured, better the devil you know. But I’ve made it clear that he’s no longer welcome in my home. You were drunk and he knew it. He had no right to touch you. I could’ve fucking killed him. If Jeff and Michelle hadn’t pulled me off, I just might have.”
“Is that why everyone left?”
He snickered. “They all cleared out pretty quick after that.”
Shame dug its icy fingers around in my abdomen. “I’m sorry, too, Dad. I shouldn’t have invited Maddox. It was selfish. And in any case, Mom showing up sort of defeated the whole purpose.”
He palmed my cheek and studied me like he was trying to read my mind. “What else did she tell you?”
I swallowed hard. “She told me about the ultimatum. She even brought your old drawings for me to look at, like seeing them would prove something, which is ridiculous.”
He closed his eyes and freed himself from my grasp. It was as if a sinkhole had opened between us, though he was still technically within reach.
“People hear the word love and automatically think sex,” he said. “You were my daughter and I loved you. You were beautiful, so I watched you. Photography wasn’t my forte, so I found other ways of capturing you. I would've sooner hurt myself than let anything harm you.”
He moved into the dining area. I felt him slipping away, like air leaking slowly from a balloon.
“I don’t know,” he continued. “Maybe it was for the best that I took off. Being scrutinized like that when you’re still growing into yourself, it’s got to be hard. At least you got to have a normal adolescence.”
If normal meant happy and well-adjusted, then there’d been nothing normal about my adolescence. I’d spent most of middle and high school bouncing from one town to the next, all the while feeling like half of me was living somewhere far away.
“You really think I was better off not knowing why you left or where you’d gone?”
“Compared to the alternative? Yes. Leaving you isn’t something I’m proud of. But it beats having to tell your daughter that her mom thinks you’re a sicko.” The pain in his gaze stung me as if it were my own. “I thought about sticking it out, fighting it. But then I imagined what that would’ve been like for you. Having to answer a bunch of disgusting questions about our relationship. Not to mention the possibility that other people would see what your mom saw in those sketches. I didn’t want to put you through that, and I sure as hell didn’t want you to have to carry that around.”
I went to him and took his face into my hands. He kept his arms at his sides. I kissed his cheek and tried to kiss his lips, but he jerked away at the last second. At first, I assumed it was because of my puke-breath, but when he shook me off completely to go stand by the window, I knew it was something more.
“Dad?” I said. He stared out at the night sky, his expression impassive. I stood beside him. “Dad, talk to me.”
He rubbed his eyes. “You should’ve gone home with your mom.”
“You can’t mean that.”
He returned to the kitchen to pour himself a glass of scotch and then downed the contents in a single gulp. “I’ve spent the last six years telling myself I was in the right and that your mom was just paranoid. Then you show up here and…I can’t even say it.”
“You think she was right about you?”
“I don’t know what to think anymore. When I saw you at the museum it was like waking up after having been asleep my whole life. Then later, in your room, when you asked for a hug and I was finally able to hold you, I couldn’t get close enough. I wanted to live inside that feeling. I chalked it up to missing you.”
My father poured another whisky but didn’t drink it.
“I got hard later that night just thinking about your mouth. That’s why I put on the video. I convinced myself I was projecting old feelings for Charlotte onto you.”
Gently, I pried the glass from his hand and then kissed his palm. The divot between his brows looked deeper than I was used to seeing it. I was giving him wrinkles. Good, I thought. Let me mark his outsides as permanently as he’d marked my insides. If he was going to make me leave, at least there’d be some physical evidence that I had been here.
He brushed his thumb over my cheekbone. “You know the saying, when something is so wrong it feels right? This wasn’t like that. It didn’t feel wrong, which tells you all you really need to know. I’m exactly what your mother thinks I am.”
