Chapter 2
TWO
Layla
What am I doing?
What am I doing?
O. M. G.
What am I DOING?
My hands are shaking so bad I can’t even tie the bow on the strings of my bikini top.
My NEW bikini. The one I bought yesterday knowing Carter would never let me wear something so skimpy. Even if it is just to be around my best friend.
And her hunka-hunka-burnin-love father.
Gah.
My bathing suit bottoms are going to be soaking wet before I even get into the pool. I’ve been crushing on Jack from the first moment I saw him. We’d come to visit just after my eighteenth birthday. My dad is best friends with him, and even though it took us a couple years to meet in person, Jack had sort of introduced his daughter Arianna and me just after she’d come to live with him.
We were both sort of lost, and we started emailing and texting. We’re sort of kindred spirits. Opposites in some ways, but sisters in others. That initial online friendship blossomed and we are each other’s ride or die. Although, if she knew how I felt about her father, I’m pretty sure all of that would change. Except maybe the die part, because she would most likely kill me in some creative and fabulously painful way.
Death by nail polish remover.
Or, the mysterious case of the mummified body parts found covered in complex algorithms.
We talked about getting a place together after high school, but she’s been studying at a prestigious technical school in an accelerated program on her way to a Forensic Data Analyst degree, whatever that is.
Like I said, we’re opposites in so many ways.
Her brain is wired for numbers, equations, coding and things I can barely understand. Whereas I’m a dreamer with a princess’s soul. I’ve been taking ballet since I was a little girl, Carter continued supporting my dance after I came to live with him. He also enrolled me in martial arts classes, and in an odd way, the two aren’t much different and I’ve excelled in my new endeavor.
I’ve been taking online courses as well, since Carter couldn’t fathom letting me go away to school and there wasn’t a college within commuting distance of our place in Rogers. So, to say my world feels pretty small is an understatement. But there’s something else Carter doesn’t know.
Because if he did, he’d have me locked in the cellar.
There’s a banging on the door to the changing room in the pool house and I nearly have a heart attack.
“What are you doing?” The doorknob jiggles as Arianna’s voice comes through. “Why is the door locked?”
“S—Sorry,” I stammer. “Habit.”
I reach over and turn the knob, clicking the door open, and Arianna pushes it wide, stepping into the small room.
“Dahmmmmm gurl…” Her jaw falls open as she looks me up and down. “Your brother know about this?”
I shake my head. The intensity of my brother-slash-stand-in-father’s protectiveness is, and has been for a while, a source of many conversations with my friend. I know he loves me with everything he has, but at twenty years old I’ve been on two supervised dates—both before I met Jack—and never been kissed outside of some playground nonsense in fourth grade. He would prefer I dress in head-to-toe gray canvas six sizes too big, and overall thinks every XY heterosexual human is somehow going to hurt me.
My insides are trembling as well as my outsides. I’m pretty sure Carter is going to have a heart attack when he sees my suit.
But I know why I bought it. I knew it was beyond-belief skimpy, but I wanted to see if Jack would have any reaction. I know he just sees me as his daughter’s friend and his best friend’s sister. But to me, he’s the man of my fantasies. He’s the reason for my locked bedroom door and many nights filled with masturbatory activities.
He’s rugged with dark-chocolate brown hair, unruly as it curls behind his ears and down his neck. His face is mature and sexy beyond measure. He’s not slick, not symmetrical, not made to fit into the it crowd. He’s part neanderthal with a nose crooked from a life that came before Cherry Falls. His thick brow hangs over deep-set eyes the color of a tropical lagoon, rimmed in black and they look so deep into my soul, I can’t believe he doesn’t already know all of my secrets and fantasies.
I also know I’m pushing the envelope farther with my idea of playing cross-family chicken in the pool. In the next few minutes, I’m going to have my coochie pressed against the back of the neck of my best friend’s father.
The dreams I have about him…gahhhhh. They are everything perverted and wonderful. I could never tell Arianna. Certainly not Carter.
But Jack? Ten thousand times a day I think about him. Ten thousand times a day I imagine every aspect of what our life could be together. A life I know is impossible.
But, fortune favors the bold. I’m not sure I’ll be able to not turn into a jiggling, moaning, gyrating sex doll riding his shoulders, lost in orgasm after orgasm as I pull his hair and scream the name I call him in all my fantasies...
Daddy.
Oh God. This isn’t going to end well.
“Okay then.” Arianna shrugs, tugging at the elastic of her own not too modest red and pink polka-dot swimsuit as it rides up her rear end. “Come on, let’s have some fun. We don’t have much time together before Carter and I leave….”
“I know. I wanted to come sooner, I told Carter you would come pick me up but he always has to be in control. It’s like I’m thirteen, not twenty.”
“I know, I’m sorry. My dad isn’t much better.”
I roll my eyes on a snarl. “Really? Who is getting to go to Seattle for the summer?”
“I’m teaching.” She shakes her head. “At a STEM children’s camp.”
“Still.” I heave out a long breath. “Carter would never let me do something like that. I mean, I know I could. I’m not legally bound to obey his rules anymore, but I feel like I am. I wish he would just give me a little more rope…”
Arianna chuckles. “Yeah, to hang yourself. Isn’t that the saying?”
“I suppose it is.” My belly flutters, knowing tomorrow night both she and my brother will be gone, leaving me here alone with Jack. “I don’t know if Carter understands his oppression leaves me really lonely. And…I think he has a girlfriend.”
“What?” Arianna’s eyes widen then her brows draw together. “What makes you think that?”
I shrug a shoulder to my ear. “He’s been ‘out’ more than ever before. Just says he has a meeting or is going to the store. He hates going to the store, I have to practically force him to grocery shop with me once a week. But, that’s not everything…”
“What else?”
“Well, he either has a girlfriend…or a boyfriend. I saw him packing some lacy frilly stuff in his suitcase for this trip. I don’t think lingerie is part of the training. I don’t care either way, but you think maybe…he’s, like, cross-dressing? Or his gender identity isn’t…you know, as he shows?”
Arianna’s cheeks turn bright red. “I don’t think so…” She bites into her upper lip then gives me a tight smile. “He needs a personal life too, right? Whichever direction it goes?”
I nod pinching the bridge of my nose for a second.
“Speaking of hanging yourself…” She raises an eyebrow, lightening the moment. “How’s your TikTok doing? And your Insta? You’ve got a shit ton of followers.”
“Yeah.” A tense pride swells inside me. “It’s taken on a life of its own.”
“Who knew? But, I bet it’s saved some girls from a few bad situations. Some of the comments seem to say as much.”
I nod, wrapping my arms around my middle. “Ballet and martial arts combined for the modern young woman.”
In my boredom, I started a TikTok and Insta under the name TutuDanceFighter. I dress in my leotards, all decked out, hair pulled back, doing my most graceful pirouettes. Then, bam, I cut to me in my gi, punching or kicking a bag or a dummy in our home gym, showing the way the moves were similar. I got more confident, started adding in some banter and fun back and forth dialogue, and before I knew it, I had a hundred followers. Then a thousand, then ten thousand…
Last count, I was floating at about a hundred thousand on TikTok and forty thousand on Insta. TutuDanceFighter’s secret identify cannot be revealed, however, as her overprotective brother thinks any social media is dangerous—let alone one with a following like I’m amassing.
“What about that guy?” Arianna’s voice lowers. “Has he been back since you blocked him? Again.”
“He had another account a week or so ago. Sent me some weird messages, but I just blocked him. Again.”
“Don’t you think you should tell Carter?”
“No! He would shut the whole thing down. I like it. Love it, actually. It’s the me I never thought I could be. Uninhibited, outgoing, fun…”
“You can be all those things. We just are under the thumb of a couple warlords as fathers. Brothers…brother, I mean. Whatever…”
Social media does bring out the crazy, I will agree with Carter on that.
I will admit, my TutuDanceFighter alter ego and her followers and fans have saved me a bit these last couple years as my friends went out to pursue their dreams, and I felt a little left behind.
“Well, you should have fun working with Jack.” Arianna changes the subject, thank goodness. “The marina is fun, maybe you’ll meet some hot guy. A little summer romance…”
“Sure. You too, at camp I’m sure there’s lots of action going on after hours,” I say, knowing there’s no other hot guy I’d want besides her dad. My belly flutters, knowing we’re going to be spending nearly every moment together working or staying here for the next seven days. I’ve been playing out scenarios in my mind since Carter told me the plan and now that we’re here, all I want to do is play house with Jack. I wonder if I’ll have the guts to let him know finally how I feel, knowing I’ll probably lose my best friend in the process.
“Come on.” Arianna tips her head toward the door as she opens it. “I’ll grab a couple towels. Let the chicken fights begin!”