Chapter 12
LIZZY
Lizzy couldn’t remember a time in her life when she’d felt better rested.
She woke up on a cloud. Her mind was clear, and she was so calm and, honestly, well-fucked.
Her muscles were deliciously liquid as she stretched in the bed, rolling around and wishing she’d had the forethought to ask him to stay last night.
The only thing that could have made this morning better would have been a postcoital cuddle.
Judging by the sun in the sky, it was well past noon.
Given how chaotic her sleep schedule had been, it shouldn’t have been surprising, and yet she had struggled until now to properly sleep in.
Maybe exhaustion was overtaking her at last, or maybe it was the way her chest felt lighter.
Either way, she practically bounded over to the bathroom to take a steamy shower.
When she finished, she went to the kitchen to scrounge up brunch, but when she opened the fridge, she discovered a Tupperware container with a folded-over note and her name written on it.
She took out the Tupperware, set it on the counter, and unfolded the note.
Good morning beautiful, I had to cover at the diner, or I would have been here to greet you. Enjoy your lunch and the rest of your day. See you tonight.
A storm of butterflies swarmed in her stomach.
Victor was too good to be true. Charming, an excellent fuck, and caring.
Which was exactly why she shouldn’t get too attached.
She was falling back into her old habits again.
Getting swept up in the anticipation, the excitement of the first blush of romance.
It’d been like that with Steven too. He’d been charming on their first date, which he’d organized at the park.
He’d brought food that he claimed to make himself.
Turned out it was all store-bought, and he’d borrowed the idea from a social media post. It hadn’t been long before he stopped putting in an effort. Right after they moved in together.
Lizzy frowned down at the note and the lunch Victor had prepared for her. This was a fling, a fun-for-the-season entanglement. After Halloween, she’d go live with her mom again, start over on her own. Find another soul-sucking job. Like she wanted. Didn’t she?
Right now, she was loving working at the diner. It was a new and exciting challenge. But how long before the fun wore off, and she started to feel burned out and miserable as she had at every other job?
She sat down and ate her brunch and then decided, rather than mope around the house all day or give into her impulse to go flirt with Victor at the diner in front of their employees, she’d do what she’d set out to do this whole time—take care of herself.
She put on her favorite A-line polka-dot dress, red pumps, and red buckle belt and headed out onto Main Street towards the bookstore at the end of the road.
The exterior of the building was brick and dripping with violet flowers, and inside was cozy and cluttered.
A table by the entrance had the newest bestsellers, and the shelves were lined with new books and older titles.
The bookstore smell hit her with a wave of nostalgia.
It’d been years since she’d stepped into a bookstore, and she realized how much she’d missed it.
“Welcome!” the cute violet-haired bookseller behind the counter greeted her. “Let me know if you need help finding anything.”
“Thank you,” Lizzy replied before drifting over to the fantasy section.
She’d seen recommendations for romantasy novels often on her social media, and she picked up one with a blue cover and was reading the blurb about the were-dragon and a princess faking their engagement when the bookshop’s tuxedo cat startled her by jumping down from the top of the shelf she was in front of.
The shelf shifted a bit, and a book fell with a loud thump.
Lizzy gasped, and the bookshop owner came running.
“Are you alright?” she asked.
“I’m okay, the cat surprised me is all.”
“Bramble!” she shouted.
The cat licked its paw and gave Lizzy a smug look.
“It’s really fine,” Lizzy assured her.
The bookstore owner scooped him up, scolding him as she walked away.
Lizzy could have sworn she heard him reply.
After that brief scare, Lizzy remembered the cat had knocked a book off the shelf.
She stooped down to pick it up and froze in place.
It was the classic hero with long hair and rippling muscles, his sword thrust towards the sky.
Blood of the Gods was Frank’s favorite old-school fantasy novel.
She remembered him reading chapters to her nightly in middle school.
After she’d moved away, he’d sent her a complete set of the series for her graduation.
At the time, the gift had felt selfish, as if he were thrusting his interests on her.
Maybe he’d been trying to connect with her in the only way he knew how. Tears pricked at her eyes.
They’d had a good relationship once. She used to proudly declare herself a daddy’s girl. Things shifted when she moved away. She felt as if he had shut her out for betraying him. But maybe she was equally as guilty. She’d sided with her mom and never given him a chance.
She took the book and the romantasy novel to the front counter and checked out.
The bookseller wanted to ask her what was wrong.
Lizzy’s eyes were red-rimmed. And the other woman’s emotions were swirling with concern and pity.
It took everything Lizzy had to keep her composure.
As soon as she stepped outside, the tears started to fall.
She headed back home, but seeing her childhood home and remembering what her father had left her made her cry harder, rooted to the spot.
She wished her dad were here so she could thank him for the books and apologize for not trying harder. For not being there at the end.
She was so wrapped up in her own grief that she didn’t hear Victor approach until he was standing in front of her.
“Lizzy?”
She glanced up at him, tears streaming down her face and snot running from her nose. She hated letting people see her cry. Other people’s feelings could be such a burden, and she didn’t want hers to weigh down on them.
“He died, and I wasn’t even here,” she sobbed.
“No one could have predicted he would die when he did. Let alone Frank. He seemed perfectly healthy.”
“But we never called. He stopped calling me, and I stopped chasing after him. If I hadn’t…”
He pulled her into a tight embrace. His body enveloped her as he rubbed circles into her back with his large hands. The steady rhythm soothed her. She hiccupped and then sniffled.
“Let’s go inside,” he murmured against the top of her head.
He opened the door for her, one broad hand against the small of her back, and led her indoors.
Inside, he took her bag of books and started the coffee pot as she stood in the living room, staring off into the middle distance, past Igor, who shuffled back and forth on his perch.
She wanted to sink into that numb feeling and escape this crushing grief, but she couldn’t seem to find it. Just depthless grief.
Victor sat on the couch and pulled her into the gap between his legs. Her back was against his chest, and his steady heartbeat an anchor to reality. His arms cocooned her, and she relaxed against him.
“I’m so embarrassed, crying like this in front of you,” she said.
“Cry all you need. Don’t hold back. I’m here,” he murmured against her ear.
That was when the dam broke, and she let go of the ugly cries she’d been holding back since she’d first learned her dad died. Victor didn’t once rush her or ask her if she was finished. He held her until her crying had faded to small hiccups, then nothing at all. She scrubbed away her tears.
In the quiet that followed, she felt compelled to confess, “I know why he left me his half of the diner. We used to be close, Frank and I. I used to tell him I’d take over the family business.
I loved it in high school. I forgot how much.
But then things started going sour between him and Mom.
Dad just sort of shut me out, and it was either stay with the emotionally distant parent, or leave everything behind to follow Mom. I chose Mom.”
“I understand,” Victor said.
“That’s what Frank said too. But I was convinced he resented me after. Maybe he just felt guilty. He sent cards on my birthday and holidays. But that was it. Our conversations got shorter and shorter. I felt like he stopped caring, so I did too.”
“That must have been hard.”
“It was.” She choked on the words. “I didn’t realize that he actually gave a shit until I came back and saw all this evidence that he felt differently. I feel awful for thinking he didn’t care.”
“You were trying to survive too. It can’t have been easy. He understood. He loved you unconditionally.”
“Were you close with him?”
“Very. I’d say he was like a father to me, but that’d make us siblings and that’s… weird given what we did last night.”
She laughed. “Yeah, don’t say that…” She squeezed her thighs together, trying to ignore the way her pussy clenched at the thought of his thick, ridged dick thrusting into her.
Last night had been incredible. But it had to have been a onetime occurrence, or she’d risk getting too attached.
She was already more invested than she should be.
“He was my mentor. I didn’t have an easy childhood.
My creator… he made me to be the perfect son—athlete, valedictorian, and future Harvard Law graduate all rolled into one.
” He sighed, his warm breath fanning against the back of her neck and raising the hairs there.
She wanted to turn and look at him, to read his expression since she couldn’t feel his emotions.
But together in the dark living room, sharing secrets felt more like a confessional and less like deepening intimacy.
So she stayed still and let him continue.
“Even though I was made, I still aged and grew like a human. He wanted me to be this emotionless robot, but I am human and I wanted things… A normal life, to hang out with friends, to make my own choices. He didn’t like that.
And then, like many teens, I started to rebel.
We fought over my small rebellions, my defiance.
“Then the pressure got to be too much for me. I dropped out of high school a month before graduation, got my GED, and told him I wanted to cook for a living. He was livid, as you can imagine, and tore me apart before kicking me out. Frank took me in and gave me a job and a place to stay until I could get back on my feet and rebuild myself—literally.”
She was silent for a beat. “I never knew,” she said. But there were a lot of things she didn’t know about her father apparently. In a small way, it made her resent Victor for getting that version of her father that she never got to meet.
“I wanted you to see that side of him, but he hid it from most everyone. He would never take credit for it, but he and that diner saved me. I found something just for me that I was passionate about, and he nurtured that in a way no one else had. It’s why I put my life savings into buying half the diner.
Why I keep fighting for it even now. I know he made mistakes, but he was genuinely a good guy who loved you more than anything, Lizzy. When he did talk, it was about you.”
And as much as she wanted to be angry. She knew he meant it. Victor was kind and sincere.
“I wish he’d shown that side to me more.” She sighed.
“Me too,” Victor said.
“This time of year is especially hard without him. Everywhere I look, I’m reminded of him. He loved Halloween. We always watched cheesy horror movies, a different campy one every night leading up to Halloween. He’d do up the diner in those fake cobwebs and stuff. He loved all that.” She sighed.
“Would it help to watch those movies?” he asked.
She sniffled. “I dunno, maybe?”
“We could do it in a couple days when we’re both off. Stream a couple films, make popcorn. Think of it like a memorial to him.”
That sounded nice. She hadn’t properly mourned her dad since his death. It’d just been this locked box at the back of her mind.
“You don’t have to do all that for me,” she said.
“But I want to. It’ll be your day off, and you’ve helped me a ton. We could do anything you wanted.”
“Even go thrifting?” she asked. Steven hated thrift stores, said they smelled moldy.
“We could definitely go thrifting. Maybe even get a sweet treat from the bakery.”
“You had me at sweet treat,” she said.
“It’s a date.” He grinned.
She didn’t correct him, though she knew she should. Because it wasn’t just her who’d get hurt when she left after Halloween, it was him.