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“Pay attention.”
T
H
E
W
O
R
D
I stop at the last letter, and my heart gives one long, hard pump before it starts to race. I reach behind me to flip the switch on the porch light so I can see her eyes. Her pupils shrink and she squints, but she’s got a very pleased smile on her face.
“Don’t play with me. If you’re not ready, I can wait.”
“I ache… on the inside… for you,” she says with her sweet, closed-mouth smile that gives her lips a beautiful heart shape.
“You shouldn’t say shit like that. Not when I can’t put my dick where it needs to be.”
“Remi!” she exclaims and turns in my lap.
“What? You never heard the word dick before?” I raise an amused eyebrow at her.
“I’ve never heard you talk like that before… Well, except for at the wedding when you were drunk.”
“I wasn’t that drunk.”
She slaps my shoulder. “What? You were talking all of that… you were touching me…”
“I only said that because I was fucking miserable and I needed to hold you and say those things to you without you slapping me.”
“You are so crazy.” She giggles.
“About you, yes. And I have been since the day I saw you in that bookstore, Kal. I’ve been waiting a long fucking time. I’m an honorable man. I would have never done anything to disrupt your marriage. But I won’t lie, I prayed like hell you would.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispers.
I run a slow hand down her back “No, I am. When I think about the havoc my dad’s decision wreaked, I feel like an ass for the way I behaved last time I saw you. I was asking you to do what he did. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone’s child.”
“You were upset that night. You didn’t mean it.” She tries to console me. But I don’t want it.
“I did mean it. You just loved your daughter enough to say no. My father…”
Her previously relaxed brow wrinkles, and her mouth contracts like she’s had an unexpected bite of something sour.
“That’s not fair, Remi. He didn’t know he’d never see you again.”
“He did. My mother told him. My grandfather cut him off.”
“Your father came from a world where anything he wanted, he got. Where no one dared to say no. And he thought that when he left your mother, she’d calm down and you all would find a way to coexist.”
“Well, he was wrong.”
“We all think that sort of thing only happens to other people. I mean, do you think I imagined that my mother would go to jail, and I’d be in foster care? She was a shitty role model, but I lived a normal life. I went to school. Lamented my looks and had crushes on boys who weren’t always nice to me.”
