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It’s an endnote that almost impales me, and my nose flares. I swallow a fuck you for his last line, though I’m fucking brimming to just unleash hell. My hands curl into fists.
I’m too concerned about Willow and my brother—who are both tangled in this fucking news—to ignite a fire off something else. I want to ask if he’s sure that Willow is his daughter, but that’s something Jonathan would have already confirmed a hundred times over.
This really may be true, and if it is…
Willow is Lo’s full sibling.
Willow is my half-sister.
Right now, I just go for the most logical question. “What the fuck kind of advice do you need from me?” If he opened the door to anything, I’d start with stop degrading women. It makes me physically fucking sick. But it’s not like I haven’t screamed at him for saying that word before. I used to lay into him when I was seventeen for calling my mom that and worse.
There is worse. I’ve heard it.
He glares sinisterly, but I don’t cower. “You’ve been down this road before,” he says like we share something together. “You’ve had to reconnect with someone. You and Lo, you’re close now…”
“He’s my brother,” I snap. “Not my fucking child. It’s not the same thing.” I motion between us. “Don’t try to compare this. It’s not fucking comparable.”
He rolls his eyes, frustrated. “I came here to ask what you think I should do, not so you could piss all over me.”
A shrapnel of guilt lodges in my stomach. He’s trying. It seems like it, but for fuck’s sake, if I even take a moment to think about what Willow’s life will look like with Jonathan Hale in it—I go cold. His so-called “love” is layered in iron blades. He cut up his other son. I don’t want to see what he can do to a daughter.
I’m fucking afraid he’ll cannibalize Willow’s happiness.
“She’s doing fine without you,” I say quickly. “My advice: leave her the fuck alone.”
He guns me down with a sharpened scowl. “She’s my daughter. I want to be in her life. That’s not up for negotiation. I just need to know how to go about it. The only thing I have close to raising a daughter turned out to be a sex addict, so you can see, I’m willing to take some tips.”
Mention of Lily hurts more than he understands. “Fuck you,” I say, feeling my brother’s pain from that comment.
“I’ll let you think about it,” my dad says. “Like I said, I wanted this to be quick. You have company.” The girls on the porch. Fuck. He heads towards the back gate. “I won’t confront Willow until you come up with a plan. I just…” He pauses, his hand on the iron. “I want to do this right.”
Is he manipulating me into liking him again? Is that his ploy? He gives me all the cards because he knows what I think of his relationships with his children. They’re all tainted with something dark and black and maybe he thinks this is his apology to me. I’m not sure.
Before he leaves, I call out, “Wait!” He stops just outside the gate. “What about Lo? Did you tell him yet?”
“No.” Jonathan shakes his head. “Just you.”
Just me.
* * *
I change into a pair of jeans and a T-shirt before heading back outside. I hike around the house instead of opening the door. It gives me time to assess what the fuck I’m walking into.
When I reach the front stoop, I spot two girls, seated on the brick steps. A fairly short blonde stands and crosses her arms with hostility, impatience all over her long face.
I recognize her.
Only she was four years younger with less makeup, also tanner from lounging on a yacht. At Daisy’s sweet sixteen birthday party, years ago.
Cleo.
The other girl has darker, straighter hair and a more annoyed scowl. Her black dress contrasts Cleo’s preppy pastel sweater and white shorts.
Harper.
I never pictured confronting these two—never let myself construct an idea on what I’d do if I did. My nose flares again because everything that they did to Daisy scours my brain and my fucking heart.
I stand rigid, my blood blistering.
They terrorized her in a fucking elevator, for fuck’s sake. They demanded that she stick a dildo inside of her. Some of the guys wanted to know how many inches would fit inside of you. We told them we’d find out.
Cleo said that to her, and I hear Daisy recounting all of this to me, bawling. I see the girl I fucking love breaking down.
Daisy has PTSD. Not just from the Paris riot or because some shit photographer broke into her room during the reality show. Though all of those are reason enough to be fucked up.
Cleo and Harper told her that they’d make her final six months at prep school hell. Condoms in the locker. Fucking assholes coming up to her and trying to touch her breasts. Titty twisters. Code for sexual assault, you motherfuckers.
Watching someone you care about slowly and then rapidly become scared of the world around them is like being a passenger in a car crash. With no way to pump the brakes. It’s fucking hell.
And it’s exponentially worse for her.
They wait for me to approach them, their bodies bathed in the front porch lights. I move a few feet closer, stopping at the base of the brick stairs. I just know that I don’t want them anywhere near Daisy tonight, but I also know that I have to give her the choice.
I can’t make that decision for her.
“How the fuck did you get through the neighborhood gate?” I ask, my voice rougher.
Cleo is one stair below Harper and nearer to me, but I notice the small box in Harper’s hands. Wrapped with white paper and a blue bow.
The bottom of my stomach drops, thinking it can’t be good. Whatever that is.
“We have friends in the neighborhood,” Cleo says casually, like she owns this driveway and these stairs and the house behind her.
Fuck that. I walk past her, climbing up the fucking stairs. I stand right in front of the door. Both girls follow to the highest step, but they stay put.
Cleo has to crane her neck just to meet my eyes.
“What the fuck do you want?” I can’t soften my words. Not for them.
“We came to talk to Daisy,” Harper says. “We’re old friends. I don’t know if you remember us from her birthday party.”
“Yeah, and she’s told me a fucking lot about you two.”
Harper exchanges worry with Cleo, and then the strawberry blonde focuses back on me.
I continue, “Daisy is—”
“Actually”—Cleo motions to Harper—“maybe you could just give this to her. It’s late, and we’re supposed to be at my father’s dinner party in five minutes.”
Harper offers the small wrapped box to me.
I take it.
Cleo departs with a forced smile, and Harper whispers in her ear, hurriedly skipping down the brick steps.
“Fuck,” I mutter to myself and then retreat into the house.
I’m not that surprised when I see Daisy sitting on the staircase by herself, her chin in her hand. “Was it fairies coming to deliver chocolates?” she asks with the smallest, saddest smile, her eyes pinging to the box.
“More like two fucking devils,” I mumble, shaking the box but unable to hear much of anything. “Cleo and Harper.”
She’s expressionless, and she must take in my confusion because she says, “I saw them through the window. I figured it was them anyway.”
I raise the gift box. “We can throw it away.”
She pops up from the stairs. “No.” Nutty trails her heels, and she stops in the foyer, right in front of me. Her narrowed eyes pin to the box. “Let’s smell it first though.”
I frown. “Why?”
“There’s a good likelihood it’s crap.” Her mouth curves upward. “And I mean literal crap.”
I roll my eyes, but my body boils again. She shouldn’t have to even think that someone might gift her a box filled with shit.
The world is fucked up.
“I can
smell it if you don’t want…” Her words die off as I raise the box to my nose.
“It doesn’t smell like anything.”
She barely relaxes. “Okay, so what other terrible things could they give me? A dead hamster. Bloody tampons. Crusty toenails.”
“Stop.” I set a hand on her head.
“I just don’t want to be surprised.”
“I can look first,” I suggest.
