Chapter 88
Chapter Eighty-Eight
Kit
The bell above the shop door rattles as Barret shoulders his way inside for the fifth or sixth time, arms cradling another box of vinyl like it might explode if jostled too hard. His SUV idles outside, trunk yawning open, two more boxes already stacked just inside the threshold.
The boxes are scuffed, tape barely hanging on, some marked with smudged Sharpie scribbles. He sets the sixth one down with a low grunt and exhales like he’s been holding his breath since he left wherever the hell he came from.
“That’s . . . a lot,” I murmur, staring at the tower of cardboard like it might tilt and collapse. My arms fold instinctively, defense or disbelief, I’m not sure which. “You’re selling them?”
Barret shakes his head and wipes sweat from his brow with the edge of his T-shirt. “Nope. They’re mostly Roderick’s. But since I’m not sure which are his and which are Alec’s . . .” He lets the sentence collapse into a shrug.
Of course. Why make anything easy?
“You want me to divide them?” I ask, voice tilting toward incredulous. “Because I’m not speaking to either one of them. Why don’t you take them to . . .” I cut myself off before I finish the sentence. Because I know where this is going. And I’m already fucking tired.
He smirks like he saw that thought crawl across my face. “Yeah, I was gonna give them to Cleo. She said, ‘Just leave them at the shop. Kit will know what to do until I get there.’”
My laugh comes out dry. “Obviously I don’t.” I eye the boxes again—some of them already buckling at the corners. “Maybe you can put them in the back?” I step forward, sliding my hands beneath one of the flimsier-looking ones. “I can help you carry them.”
He nods. “Sure.”
We fall into a rhythm for a beat, lifting, carrying, moving around each other like we’ve done this before. Like there’s something familiar here, buried under layers of things we never said.
“So,” I ask, my voice low, “when was the last time you spoke to Cleo?”
“A week ago,” he mumbles, his focus drifting as he lowers a box onto the stockroom counter. “I wish I had been able to stay with them, you know? They probably need lots of help with Julian.”
I swallow hard. “I know.” My throat catches around the words.
Their brother went missing. Then they found him in a hospital in San Diego after a car accident. He needs a lot of help, and all the siblings—Alfie included—are staying to help him.
“Things are tense among them. Eddie and I felt like we were part of the problem, not the solution.” Then he asks, “Have you checked on Cleo?”
“Yeah,” I state. “Not as often as I’d like. If Dad wasn’t sick and . . .” I press my lips together before I say, “It’s best if I stay here, you know?”
He nods a couple of times, as if he knows well enough why I can’t go to be with her.
“Roderick hasn’t made amends with you?”
Okay, we’re throwing his name around like it’s nothing. I simply shake my head. “Nope.”
“You’ll probably be next. I got my apology while we were in San Francisco,” he confesses. “And I apologized too. Because it was mutual, you know? We fucked up each other’s lives.”
His laugh is humorless.
“Well . . . not at the beginning. At the beginning, it was fucking Connor who screwed with us.”
My head jerks at the mention of my father. “Wait—what are you talking about?”
Barret shifts, scratching the back of his neck like the memory’s crawling just beneath his skin. “Never mind.”
“No. What did my father do to you?”
He looks at the wall behind me, like the words won't land so hard if he doesn’t meet my eyes.
“It doesn’t matter, Kit.”
“Oh, but I’m sure it does.” I cross my arms, one of the vinyl boxes wedged between us like a barrier. “What did Connor do? I know he’s never looked after his clients the way he should’ve. Actually, I feel like he screwed over several of them—just like he did with me.”
Barret raises an eyebrow. “How did he screw you over?”
“He made me work for all these musicians,” I say, voice thick with regret.
“Some of them . . . he was actually setting me up with because it was convenient for all parties. And I was so scorned by what happened with Roderick that I . . .” I let out a breath, tight and bitter.
“I didn’t even realize he was using me.”
Barret whistles, low and long. “Wow. His own daughter. Did your picture end up in a seedy magazine?”
I roll my eyes. “Yeah, a couple of times. Connor Dempsey’s Daughter: Half-Naked and Half-Sane in Hollywood’s Back Rooms. Not my best moment.”
His eyes darken. “What if I told you your father set that up?”
My stomach clenches. “Yeah, I told you—he would ask me to date those guys—”
“No. The paparazzi taking your picture,” he cuts in.
I blink at him, the words not quite landing. They circle me like wasps, stinging before I can even react.
“I was half-naked,” I mutter, confused, pissed, and nauseous all at once. “I doubt my father would be doing that.”
Barret’s eyes lock on mine—unblinking, haunted. “Your father hired escorts for a photoshoot that happened before a concert,” he says, voice razor-thin. “One blew Roderick while he was high—and another rode me, so it looked like we were in the middle of an orgy.”
The air leaves the room.
Sound warps. The low hum of whatever album’s spinning on the turntable blurs into static at the edge of my awareness. Bass thuds, distant and muffled, like it’s coming from underwater. I don’t breathe. I don’t blink. I just stare at him like he’s spoken in a language I don’t understand.
No. No, no, no.
He can’t mean that. That’s not what he’s saying.
But he is.
And the world tilts.
I stare at him, blinking, trying to reboot my brain. Trying to shove his words into the version of my father I’ve been dragging behind me like an old suitcase—too fucked-up to repair but too personal to throw away. My father was a manipulative bastard, sure. Ruthless. A career puppeteer.
But this? This isn’t controlling.
This is evil.
This is scorched-earth destruction.
I press my hand to my chest, leaning back against the counter to keep from sliding to the floor. Something rattles behind me—maybe glass—but I can’t turn to check. My pulse is everywhere. In my ears. In my throat. In the pit of my stomach, where everything is starting to unravel.
“Wait . . .” My voice catches, cracking like ice under pressure. “That’s how I found him—no.”
But I know.
I fucking know.
The puzzle pieces don’t fall together. They collide, explode into a thousand jagged truths.
My lungs pull at the air, trying to find enough to explain the way I felt that night.
How I showed up backstage and everything inside me shattered.
I thought it was just bad timing. A cruel coincidence. But it wasn’t. It was planned.
“Dad asked me to go that day,” I whisper. “To the concert. He said it was important . . . told me to get there right on time. He said it would bring Roderick good luck.”
Barret’s expression doesn’t change. Not even a flinch. “On time to see him cheating on you,” he says quietly, like it’s a fact he’s repeated to himself for years. “So you two would break up because that relationship wasn’t convenient for him.”
I shake my head, slowly, like maybe I can dislodge the memory trying to climb out of the dark. “He wasn’t even coherent when I found him. His eyes were—vacant. I thought he didn’t care.”
“He cared,” Barret says. “He just couldn’t fight anymore.”
My stomach flips.
“That wasn’t the first time your dad did something like that.
‘Just a kiss, Wilder. We need them to think you’re available,’” he mimics, voice hollow.
“It made him throw up. Every fucking time Connor made him do something like that, he would take a few shots, maybe a pill, just to numb himself enough to go through with it. Because he believed him.”
My knees go soft. I grip the edge of the counter like it might hold me together.
He believed him.
Roderick believed my father—trusted him.
Trusted me.
And I didn’t listen. I didn’t even try.
I let my anger drown out everything else. I turned my heartbreak into silence and punishment instead of questions. Instead of truth.
I let him walk away thinking I hated him.
“Oh, my God,” I whisper. “He was just a boy.” I mean, nineteen is a boy still, right? And who knows how long he was doing that for my dad?
Barret nods. “Yeah. A boy who was being used. A boy who was being sold for the image Connor wanted the world to see. That’s what he did with us, but Wilder . . . he exploited him more.”
Tears burn the corners of my eyes, but I won’t let them fall. Not yet. I don’t deserve that release. Not until I face the fact that I didn’t see it. I didn’t see him. I saw betrayal and scandal and humiliation, and I made him the villain. I didn’t listen to him.
“He begged me not to believe what I saw,” I say, the words barely audible. “And I didn’t believe him. I didn’t even ask. I walked out.”
“You weren’t supposed to believe him,” Barret says, softly now. “That was probably Connor’s plan all along.”
I stare down at my hands. They’re trembling.
My father didn’t just ruin Roderick’s life. He shattered him—and me.
He didn’t need a wrecking ball. Just control, access.
I inhale—slow, jagged. “How many times did he do it?” My voice breaks around the question. “How many times did he push him?”
Barret’s eyes dim. “Enough until it was a habit.”
A cold rush moves through me, like something inside has cracked wide open. A wall I didn’t even realize I’d built—built to survive, to justify, to keep loving a man who was never worthy of it—crumbles in silence. Guilt pours in like a flood, I can’t hold back.
“Fuck,” I whisper, dragging a hand down my face, as if I could erase the years I spent believing the wrong version of everything. “I didn’t protect him.”
Barret’s voice is soft. Not gentle—just true. “You were a kid too, Kit. Who protected you from your father?”
I don’t answer. I don’t have to.
Because the truth is a fist in my throat: no one did.
I let him convince me that love looked like sacrifice. That loyalty meant silence. That pain was a price you paid for proximity.
Now, all I feel is rage.
White-hot. Bone-deep. Personal.
I hate him.
Not with disappointment. Not with bitterness. But with the kind of hate that’s rooted in betrayal, in the violation of something sacred. I hate him for what he did to Roderick. For what he did to Barret. For what he did to me. For the pieces I still have to pick up all these years later.
And maybe I’m ready to stop pretending that hate has no place in healing. Some truths demand fire before they can be forgiven.