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Fear settles in her eyes, and I loosen my grip on her arm, but don’t let her go.
“Why did you take off your clothes and sneak over to my room? You set that whole thing up.”
“Let me go,” she says, her voice shaking. “And stop yelling at me. You’re not my father.”
“You’re fucking lucky I’m not. No daughter of mine would ever do something like that. Did your father put you up to this?”
“No,” she says, looking at her feet. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I can’t remember anything other than touching you.”
Fury takes over, and I see red. “Why are you doing this, Macy? I thought we were friends. I thought you cared about your mother.”
“I do. I guess this just happened.”
“No!” I yell, shaking my head. “This didn’t just happen. You did this shit on purpose, and I want you to tell me why right fucking now.”
“Leave me alone!” she yells back at me, and I remind myself that she’s only eighteen. She’s also obviously messed up, and she’s supposed to be my stepdaughter some day.
I take a deep breath and try to calm myself before I do or say something that I can’t fix. “Macy, please, just tell me what’s going on, all right? I promise I’ll calm down, and I won’t be mad at you anymore. Just tell the truth so I can fix this with your mother, okay?”
“I don’t remember anything,” she says. “I remember that asshole leaving me at the party and you coming to get me, and us kissing.”
I grab her shoulders and shake her. “I did not kiss you. You tried to kiss me. I pushed you away, and you know it. Why are you doing this?”
Suddenly, Vandal is standing in the doorway, looking from Macy to me. “Dude, I’ve been ringing your bell for ten minutes and heard you screaming from the lot. What the fuck is going on?”
I throw my hands up. “I don’t know. She set me up to make it look like I slept with her, and Ivy believes her.”
He narrows his eyes at her. “The fuck did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything.” She cowers away from him and looks toward the door. “Stop looking at me.”
“You’re lying. It’s all over your face,” he accuses, towering over her. She cringes back from his menacing look.
“Leave me alone,” she says.
He backs her into a corner, his six-foot-four frame building a wall in front of her. “If you did something to hurt my brother, I will make you regret it, little girl. Trust me.”
“Vandal, she’s just a kid,” I remind him.
He stares her down. “She’s eighteen, old enough to know better and old enough to deal with the repercussions of fucking with people’s lives.”
She starts to shake at Vandal’s threat. “I just want to go home. I don’t remember what happened.”
“I can make you remember.” He puts his hand to her throat, barely touching her, but I can see she’s petrified. And she should be. Vandal is a psychopath and not someone to be fucked with. I don’t think he’d really hurt her, but since Katie died, he’s been even more mentally imbalanced than usual.
“Vandal . . .” I warn.
“You wanna go a round with me?” he says to her, his voice dark and nasty, like I imagine Satan would sound like. “You want to play games? I’ll show you what that’s really like, baby, and you’ll need a wheelchair to get out of here.”
Holy shit. My brother is off the rails. “Vandal, stop. Just call her a cab and get her out of here.”
“No. She’s going to remember. Aren’t you, Macy?”
She cringes against the wall, tears streaming down her face.
“Talk. Now,” he commands, his huge frame towering over her. “You want to know what it’s like to fuck with a man? I will show you if you don’t fucking spill it right now.”
“Vandal!” I yell, grabbing his shoulder. “Enough. She’s family.”
He glares at her. “Family doesn’t hurt each other.” He pulls out his wallet and throws a fifty at her. “Get the fuck out of here and get a cab.”
I watch as she picks up the cash and runs downstairs, the door slamming, shaking the house as she leaves.
Vandal turns to me, his eyes still dark and wild like an animal. “You look like shit, man. Did you—?”
I stop him dead. “No. Absolutely not. She called me, drunk from a party. I went and got her, and brought her back here. She was acting weird and kept trying to touch me. I pushed her away and slept alone in my room. I would never touch her. She’s the daughter of the woman I love. She’s family to me. You’re a father, Van. Could you do something like that?”
He stares out the window, his jaw muscles twitching. “I was a father. And I think I could pretty much do anything.”
I grimace at my bad choice of words. “I’m sorry. I’m not thinking.”
He crosses the room and slaps my back. “Don’t worry about it. What are you going to do?”
“Well, obviously, I have to somehow get her to admit that she set this up and get Ivy to believe me.” I pull all the sheets off the bed and throw them in a pile on the floor, wanting all traces of her gone. “She threw my ring at me, Van. It fucking gutted me.”
He leans against the doorframe and crosses huge arms, his jet black hair flowing down his chest. His looks freak me out most of the time, so I can only imagine the fear Macy felt at being his target.
“I think the ex had something to do with this, fiddles.”
Smirking at his sarcastic nickname, I nod in agreement. “I think so, too. That guy fucking hates me and can’t stand that we’re together. I think, when he found out we got engaged, it threw him over the edge.”
“Want me to go talk to him?”
Vandal’s method of talking scares me. “Not yet. I need to talk to Ivy, and Macy again when she calms down.”
He cracks his knuckles. “Just say the word, bro, and I will fuck his shit up.”
“You really like to hurt people, don’t you?”
An evil grin crosses his face. “Not all people, but yes, I enjoy a good amount of pain infliction in any form I can give it.”
I’m glad that gene skipped me.
After Vandal leaves, I take a quick shower and drive over to Ivy’s house. I take another hit to the gut when I see Paul’s car in the driveway.
I bang on the door in a fury until she opens the door, teary-eyed and red-faced.
“What are you doing here?” she asks.
“What the hell is he doing here?” I shoot back.
Paul appears behind Ivy in the doorway. “Where the hell is my daughter?” he demands.
I can’t believe this shit. I’m engaged to her. I’ve fucked her on the kitchen table. Now, I’m standing outside their door while they block the doorway. Together. “She left my house over an hour a
go. My brother gave her money for a cab.”
Paul pushes Ivy out of the way. “You slept with my daughter then sent her home in a fucking cab?”
I lose my shit. “I did not sleep with her, and you fucking know it. What the hell is going on? I know you did this, Paul. You did something to Macy to make her lie like this about me.”
Ivy ramps up, shock all over her face. “Lukas! He would never do anything like that to one of our kids!” she says, defending him. Him. Not me.
“Neither would I! You know how much I love your kids.”
Paul gets back in my face, and my fists clench, wanting to punch him right in his smug face. “You’re not their father. Macy is a pretty girl. You took advantage of her when she was vulnerable. You’re lucky I don’t call the cops,” Paul threatens.
“No one is calling the cops!” Ivy cries. “Lukas, please, just leave.”
Leave. She wants me to leave. And he’s still here.
“I need to talk to you. Alone. Please, Ivy.”
She peers up at Paul. “Give me a minute,” she says to him, and I don’t understand why he’s here, why she’s not telling him to leave. He sneers at me from behind her back and walks away, into her house. Their house.
I try to put my arms around her, but she backs away from me and crosses her arms. “Ivy, I don’t know what’s going on here. I did not touch Macy in any way, other than to push her off me. Why are you believing all this crap? What is he doing to you? What kind of warped circle of hell is this?”
Her eyes are red and puffy as she looks up at me. “Macy would never lie to me about something like this, Lukas. She knows how much I love you. I think she was drunk and maybe flirted with you, and you just got caught up in the moment.”
Her words are like a knife in my chest, stopping my heart for a moment.
“What?! You think I’m that weak? I have women throwing themselves at me all the time, Ivy. Adult women, not drunk teenagers that have no idea what they’re doing. Do you honestly think I’d risk what we have for a quick fuck with a drunk kid, who’s also the daughter of my fiancée?”
