Page 232 of The Villain We Tempt

“Yeah,” I grumble. “Things were good, then we had this fight.”

Translation: I let some lying waitress get to me because I’m an insecure jealous psycho. She must have recognized me as the daughter of the guy who chewed her out about hitting on my Papa and wanted to get back at me for it.

Dad frowns deeper. “Go on.”

“We made up. I thought we were fine. And then I found out he'd?— ”

Note to self: don’t tell Dad about the tracker or spy cameras, unless I want to be indirectly responsible for one or both of my fathers tying cement blocks to Lochlan's feet tonight and dumping him in the ocean.

I clear my throat. “There was…something I told him not to do, and he agreed. Then he accidentally did it.”

Shit.

Dad’s face turns downright feral as his lips pull into a snarl.

“Whoa!” I exclaim, turning scarlet. “That sounds way worse than I mean.”

“Yeah,a bit,” Dad hisses through clenched teeth. “Did this fucking prick touch you or do something intimate that you’d told him not?—”

“It’s nothing like that, promise. It’s just…” I groan and drop my head back against the headboard again as I blow air through my lips. “I trusted him, and then he did something which Idobelieve was accidental, but it may have destroyed that trust. And now I feel lost and crazy, and I can’t tell if it’s because I don’t truly trust him or because I’m scared that the problem might be that I can’t handle real relationships. I mean,he’s shownmewho he is. But I’m realizing that I don’t think I’ve been able to do the same, and I think I might be way more fucked up than I thought or am prepared to deal with?—”

Yikes.

Talk about a dam giving way.

Dad’s brow furrows as the seconds tick by, then he slowly nods his head.

“When you were two, I found a bottle of eighty-year-old scotch in your Papa’s desk drawer.”

My brows shoot up.

Papa’s been sober since around the time he and Dad met. Dad's actually the one whogot himto stop drinking, and stayed by his side when he was going through a brutal detox. Dadwilloccasionally have a drink here and there now, and I don’t think Papa finds it triggering. Still, Dad’s always been adamant about there never being alcohol in our house.

Dad chuckles quietly, shaking his head. “I wentballistic. Like, completely lost my shit on him. I mean we had two kids underfive, your Papa’s job had beenreallygrinding for months, we were exhausted, we weren’t having?—”

He stops talking abruptly, but I make barfing noises anyway.

“Yeah,waytoo much info there,” I groan.

Dad grins sheepishly. “I mean, we were in this rocky place. And when I found that bottle, I went off the deep end. I said horrible things, accused him of being a liar and breaking his sobriety…I think I even said he was a bad father?”

Dad winces and rubs the bridge of his nose.

“Your Papa, being who he is, hit back, andalsosaid some pretty terrible shit that was obviously meant to hurt me, which it did, and I probably deserved it.” He exhales. “It was probably the worst moment of our relationship. It wasbad.”

My brows knit. “So…what happened?”

He smiles wryly. “We eventually calmed the hell down and went back to speaking like civilized humans instead of rabid grizzly bears, and it turned out that the scotch was for Cora’s father, who was turning eighty.”

I wince. “Oof.”

“Yeah,” Dad sighs. “Big, goddamn oof.”

“So, how did you guys move past that?”

He smiles. “We sat and talked. I apologized for not trusting him, he apologized for hiding it. He saidhedidn’t trust thatIwould trusthim. But in the end, it was okay because we love each other, and that’s more important than any dumb fight.”

He winks as I take all that in.