25. Vaughn
CHAPTER 25
VAUGHN
T hen
“I don’t want to talk!” I never yelled at my dad, but I couldn’t control the words or the volume they kept escalating to. “I love her!”
Dad circled the firepit. “Well, then, you’re an idiot.”
It wouldn’t be the first time he told me that.
“Give her up.” He crossed his arms over his stupid expensive green Gucci sweater. “Or I won’t pay for school, and you can say goodbye to the scholarship for football.”
Could he be any more dramatic? “You can’t just quit people you love, and who cares? She isn’t jeopardizing anything other than some of my time. What’s it to you?”
His eyes flickered to the fire. “Doesn’t’ matter. She’s an orphan, a foster kid. Imagine what that looks like to us?”
He was hiding something.
I frowned.
“I’ll give you a day.” He left me there, staring into the fire.
Something, again, wasn’t sitting right, so I followed him. I followed him all the way to his study, where feminine laughter that did not match my mom's trickled through the air.
The door was closed.
Was he cheating?
I slowly pushed it open and stumbled back.
It was her.
I stopped dead in my tracks. Instantly, the glass I had in my hand suddenly fell, shattering on the floor with shards and water spilling by my feet.
Everything played out in slow motion.
“Fuck!” Dad shouted, pulling out of her and yanking up his pants. She shrieked, jumping off the bed and running around to grab her scattered clothes.
The fucking bastard was doing the same.
I. Stopped. Breathing.
All I could see was my father as he fucked her from behind, gripping her hips as he slammed into her, both of them covered in sweat.
A woman…
A woman who wasn’t my mother.
Fuck, my mom.
That was when I lunged for him, shoving him up against the wall. “How could you do this to my mom?”
“Vaughan,” he roughly snapped, gripping my hands that were on his collared shirt.
“Answer me!” I demanded through clenched teeth.
“Let. Go. Now,” he ordered in a tone that I could never respect again.
I did, but not because I wanted to.
“I can’t believe you’re doing this,” I roared, ready to go at him again.
He put his hand out in front of him, knowing what I was thinking. “It’s not what you think.”
“It’s not? I didn’t just walk in on you screwing another woman?”
It was only then I realized who she was.
It wasn’t just some woman or his secretary or a friend of the family…
It was much worse.
“I can’t believe this,”
I jerked back like he had hit me with a sledgehammer.
“I don’t understand. What are you talking about?”
“I didn’t want to tell you like this. I never wanted you to find out this way.”
“What?”
He shook his head like he didn’t want to say it. “A few years ago. Oh God.” He looked up at the ceiling.
“Just say it!” I yelled at him, trying to keep my fists at my sides.
He looked deep into my eyes and spoke with conviction, “Your mother knows.”
I didn’t just stumble back. I fell. Almost falling to my ass from the impact of his words. “She knows about you two?”
I gestured back and forth between him and the last woman I ever expected to be in this situation. It made me physically sick to my stomach to be witnessing and experiencing what I was at that moment with them. I didn’t know who to keep my heated stare on the most.
Him…
Or Tru’s foster mom.
“Yes.” He nodded, desperately trying to reason with me.
“Bullshit,” I spewed.
“I swear to you she knows.”
“And I’m just supposed to believe you?”
“So does my husband.” She added insult to injury, and I couldn’t believe what they were unexpectedly throwing at me.
Before I could give it another thought, my father spit fire. “We’re in love, Vaughan.”
“How long has this been going on?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“The hell it doesn’t.”
“Why don’t you just tell him everything?”
“What?” I coaxed, hanging on by a thread.
“Stop it,” he stressed, shaking his head.
“Stop what? He deserves to know the truth.”
“Oh God…” I found myself saying. I was seriously going to throw up all over the place. My brain was having a hard time processing all the words they were saying, and what I was seeing with my own two eyes.
Dad reached for Sandra. “I mean it. Don’t?—”
She jerked away from him, a cruel smile spread across her face. “Don’t what? Tell him that you’re not his father!”
“NO!” Mom suddenly screamed from behind me, making us all look back at her. She stood in the door, face pale, hands shaking at her sides.
She pointed a shaky hand at my dad. “How could you do this? How could you do this to me ? You said you would never tell him! You promised me he would never know! How could you betray me like this!” she shouted, not moving from the door.
“Betrayal? Oh, come on, you want to start talking about betrayal?” he replied with a bitter laugh. Both of them were lost in their own conversation as my whole world came tumbling down on me.
Tears streamed down her cheeks. “That’s not what happened. I told you?—”
“I don’t believe you! I’ve never believed you! Why do you think I got a DNA test?”
I sat down on the edge of his desk. I had to. Bile was rising in my throat and my body was starting to give out on me.
“I never betrayed you, never.”
“What the fuck is going on? Someone needs to tell me before I lose it,” I murmured loud enough for them to hear.
My mom watched me with an expression that will forever haunt me as if she was collapsing right in front of me.
“Tell him, lie to your son like you have to me.”
I looked at her with pleading eyes, and she bowed her head not being able to… “I…I… I don’t know. I was young. We both were. I’m so ashamed…”
“You’re ashamed while my father cheats on you? What is this? Some sort of open marriage?”
Dad rolled his eyes. “Your mother spreading her legs?—”
I charged him.
Like a rubber band pulled too tight, I snapped, the sting of it fueling my rage.
I rammed my body as hard as I could into the man who raised me like I was his own but always treated me beneath him like I wasn’t good enough to be his son. It all made sense now. This was why he was always so hard on me.
To the man who I loved.
To the man who I knew as nothing but my father.
“You do not talk to her like that!” I yelled loud enough to shatter the windows.
His back hit the wall with so much force that he broke through the drywall. I moved away from him, hunching over and dry heaving from the adrenaline. My mom immediately came toward me, rubbing my back, apologizing profusely.
My dad stumbled from the wall, shaking drywall off his body from the impact of my blow. I stood, and we locked eyes.
I didn’t falter, the emotion taking over. “This still doesn’t excuse you for fucking someone in our house. In the home you built a family in. Now when I think of this place, all it’s going to make me feel is sick. So no, Dad, it doesn’t excuse that. You fucked up everything.”
“Vaughan, I?—”
“Leave.”
“Vaughan—”
“Leave.” I stepped toward him in a menacing way.
He shook his head, looking at me with disappointment in his eyes before he turned to leave.
At the last second, I asked, “Does Tru know?”
Her adoptive mom spun to look at me.
With a nod, she answered my question and sent me into a tailspin.
My legs gave out on me.
I was in a daze where I couldn’t feel.
I couldn’t see.
I couldn’t think.
My mom sat in front of me on the balls of her feet. “I’m so sorry, Vaughan.”
“My whole life is a lie. Mom, I can’t. I can’t right now. Please don’t ask me anything. Please…not now.”
She nodded in understanding.
I didn’t think about her.
I didn’t think about him.
I didn’t even think about her fosters.
All I thought about was Tru…
And how she already knew the truth of lies I didn’t know existed and still smiled at me like everything was okay.
I loved her.
And she lied.