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Or maybe it’s better just to tear the band aid off in one skin-tearing rip
"Kiara." My dad's voice calls to me from his seat on the patio.
"Dad." I walk over like I’m five years old and he’s caught me playing marbles on his mahogany table. All the words I thought I had in my head fleeing. "Where's Nathan?"
"He's on the phone, talking to Lionel."
On with the family lawyer. They were calling in the big guns Unless they’re talking about a different matter, but something told me that was wishful thinking.
The chair next to my father is empty but I choose to sit in the one facing him instead.
He's looking tired, pallid, bags under his eyes. I wonder when he found out about the pictures.
"How long?" That’s all. That’s the most important thing to him about all this. How long have I been lying to him.
"It’s new. Just... since the other day at Amber."
"Two weeks ago."
Had it only been that long? It feels like I can't remember a time when I wasn't waking up with him next to me.
"And what were you doing outside that club?"
"I was working, Dad."
"With him?" He frowns, trying to make sense of what I’m saying.
"Well, he comes with me sometimes, to keep me safe."
"He should hire bodyguards,” he says, as if he thinks Kylian wouldn’t have thought of that. And it grates. Kylian is the only one who actually knows what I need.
"He does. But he wouldn’t be able to see with his own eyes that I’m okay.
"Kiara!"
Nathan's angry voice booms through the house.
I stand up, arms immediately crossing, defiant. Against my brother my whole life.
"What the fuck are you and Kylian doing? How long have you been"— he waves angrily in the air, trying to conjure the right word— "fucking?"
I flinch. Then I get angry. "Don't you dare talk to me like that. Don't you fucking dare. "
He storms at me, like he's not going to stop and intends to barrel me right over.
"Nathan," Dad says, once he's only a step away and he stops.
Instead, he reaches over and grabs my shoulders and shakes me. "I told you to be careful. Didn't I tell you to be fucking careful? Didn’t I warn you something like this would happen?"
"Something like what? What do you think is happening, Nathan? You haven't asked me a single question. You have no idea what is going on between Kylian and me."
His best friend's name breaks whatever it is that's restraining him and he yells. "Don't you ever say that name in my presence again. He is fucking dead to me. And you..."
"What? I'm dead to you, too? Why don't you think about that for a little bit. Are you mad because Kylian has hurt me in some way< Which, by the way, he hasn't. He has been nothing but kind and supporting and... loving."
Nathan spits on the ground, and wipes his mouth on the back of his hand, eyes raging. "He's never loved a woman in his life. He just fucks them and uses them."
"There's a first for everything. Or are you mad because we hid it from you? While we were still trying to figure everything out for ourselves, without you, because we were afraid you were going to act like you are now."
