Page 8 of Indebted

Her eyes got big. “What? Why?”

I pushed aside my guilt. It’s not that I’d lied to Zoe all this time, I just hadn’t shared with her much about my family. I didn’t have one. End of story. No one wanted to hear a sob story about a father I never knew, and a mother that was never around. At eighteen I was on my own. Then I met Zoe in college, and I’d been given a taste of what a family might have been like.

I took a deep breath and steeled myself. “He’s my stepdad.”

“Shut the front fucking door.”

A woman with diamonds dripping from her ears scoffed at us and turned the other way.

I fought a grin, because now was not the time to find anything amusing. “I’m serious, Zoe, and keep your voice down.”

“Sorry. But he’s like…hot. Like, really, really—”

“I get it,” I pinched the bridge of my nose. I did not need this devil on my shoulder right now. My moral compass was spinning enough as it was. “I don’t care how hot he is, he doesn’t give a shit about me, and this is all some twisted way of manipulating me.”

Zoe frowned. “You’ve never mentioned him once to me. How do you know him so well?”

“I know enough.”

She didn’t look convinced. “Care to elaborate?”

No. “My mom left me for him.”

“And that’s his fault, how?”

It was like pushing on a bruise. Fine if I left it alone, but bringing this up, pushing on the injury, brought pain. “Because for two years I tried to be a part of their lives and they wanted nothing to do with me, okay? I was stupid and in high school when my mom met Justin. She’d introduced me once.” I’d been so overjoyed, stars in my eyes. I thought I’d finally get a family, that Justin would be someone who wouldn’t ignore me. Hell, he’d even seemed like a decent guy when I first met him. But appearances could be faked. “When I asked if she’d bring him over more, for dinner or movie nights, she said he didn’t like the fact that she had a child.” It’d stung, almost as much as watching my mom slip away from her life with me to spend more time with him. “I even wrote him a letter—a letter, Zoe,” like a lovesick girl, “asking if he’d please bring my mom to my high school graduation. Asking for both of them to be there.”

Zoe’s gaze dropped. “I’m so sorry, Katie. What a bastard.”

It wasn’t even the worse part. “One time I went to their house, not this place, mind you, but a nicer place than my mom and I ever had. I rang the doorbell and asked the maid that answered if my letter had been delivered.” It’d been humiliating. I’d taken a bus and then walked a few miles in the heat. I still remembered the itch between my shoulder blades as people watched me from their windows. I was a street urchin, disturbing their perfect little neighborhood.

“What happened?” Zoe pulled me from my memories.

“She shrugged and disappeared for a while. She came back with the opened envelope, my letter stained with black coffee. My mom didn’t drink black coffee. He’d read it and threw it away.” I stared deep into the bubbling soda in my hands. “I tried for a whole year after that, sending holiday cards—texting my mom if they wanted to do dinner, then they moved without telling me. I gave up after my first year in college.”

Message received. They didn’t want me. Mom changed her number and I wasn’t going to search her or Justin up for their contact information. Why bother? So they could hurt me more?

Then mom’s socialite lifestyle had gotten the better of her and barely a year later she’d wrapped herself around a tree under the influence. My mom and I weren’t bred for high society, I could only image what trying to fit in had done to her already messed up psyche.

All the more reason to steer clear of Justin. He’d taken the only family I’d had from me, twice. And yet, even now, my heart picked up speed when I thought about being in that cellar with him. It was like that first meeting all over again. My chest filling with hope until it squeezed my lungs and I couldn’t get any air. Like all the time before now had been erased.

God, what was wrong with me? Was I that desperate for any kind of attention, affection?

I needed to login to my cybersex chatroom and soon.

“So, what’re you going to do?” Zoe asked around a mouthful of cheese.

I stole a slice and popped it in my mouth before anyone could see. “Avoid him. After today, I never have to see him again.” And the strange energy between us would be nothing but a bad memory. One I’d wash off at the end of the day with a cold shower.

“Not today, I mean the whole fairy godfather act he’s been doing.”

The cheese stuck in my throat. “I don’t want his guilt money, or charity, or whatever the hell this is. I’m going to call the office on Monday and take myself off his payroll, by whatever means necessary.”

Concern etched itself on Zoe’s face. “You know I 100% believe in and support you, right?”

“Why do I feel some kind of ‘but’ coming on?”

Zoe held her hand up, palm out. “No buts, just a gentle nudge, a reminder if you will, that if you stop the influx of cash, you’re going to be up a creek. A brown one, filled with shit, if I wasn’t clear enough.”