Page 1 of Ignition

You’re doing it wrong,I thought as I watched the stranger living in my house load the dishwasher.

Forks clattered noisily as she tossed them into the utensil caddy prong side down, the unnecessary racket making it all the more difficult to pretend she didn’t exist—and entirely ruining the simple sandwich I’d thrown together for lunch.

Sure, it was the first time I’d seen the bottle-blonde, wannabe Real House Omegas of Miami, gold-digging beta lift a finger since she’d arrived, but Meredith, our housekeeper, was taking a well-deserved extended weekend, so it was about damn time she made a play at being a good little wife.

How else was she supposed to trick my father into thinking that she was here for anything other than the black AMEX and driver? Cosplaying basic domesticity was scraping the bottom of the barrel, right up with their nauseating pet names for each other, and still the old man was lapping it up.

She didn’t fucking fool me though, I saw right through the bitch.

As though he had a sixth sense for when the woman stopped online shopping long enough to actually do something useful, the front door swung open, my father’s booming voice following shortly after. “Family?”

The snap of the door and heavy, uneven footsteps—aholdover from a crash into the wall that ended my Dad’s F1 career—warned that I had few precious moments of peace left before I’d be subjected to another disgusting, teenager-like display of PDA.

“In here, babylove!” the stranger shouted back.

“Marco!” my father called playfully, and I had to physically restrain myself from gagging. This bit wasn’t funny the first time they did it, and it hadn’t grown on me since.

If anything, it aged like milk.

Fuckinggross.

“Polo!” she trilled, turning to bang through the cabinets.

It was one thing that he’d brought his human mid-life crisis to live in our house, sleeping beside him on my mother’s side of the bed; even worse was that he justhadto parade around his newfound affair, too.

Newsflash, old man. Bringing home some beta slut to pretend to be mom didn’t actually get things back to normal.

It just delayed the inevitable, with him realizing that it was his fault she left us in the first place. But that wasn’t how Dad saw things. It was so much easier to blame other people for his shortcomings.

Mom.

Leo.

Nick.

Me.

Dad loosened his tie, light blue with a subtle pattern of periwinkle squares, as he wandered in, pulling the stranger into his arms from behind with a kiss to her temple. She melted into him, and the rest of their conversation dulled into a low drone from the angry static in my ears.

I turned back to my sandwich, thumb scrolling through posts on my phone.

The entire display was… wrong.

Disgusting.

A leaden ball sat heavy in my gut as I attempted to ignore the sickening sounds of their kissing, focusing on the condensation from my glass pooling on the woven placemat protecting the wood of the breakfast nook’s round table.

How long was I expected to watch some fucking woman my dad met two months ago wrap herself around him like she knew anything about him?

Aboutus.

As days stretched into weeks, and weeks into months, I wondered if I should call someone to bring him in for a psych evaluation. But, like I’d told the boys, I’d save that for if he came home with a motorcycle.

There was no way that my overly careful old man would everwillinglyget on one of those death traps, not when he’d spent the better part of a year having his face put back together piece by piece.

Man, losing your career and your strong Braye nose in the same go? That shit must’ve beenbrutal.

“Caleb,” Dad called, pulling me back to the conversation as my thumb hovered over a photo of Marissa—my sometimes girlfriend, when I managed to remember that she existed—draped in some alpha dickhead’s lap, his face cut off from the photo.