Chapter 19
Serenity
I MINDLESSLY GATHERED MY BELONGINGS as I finished work for the day, my thoughts constantly drifting back to this past weekend. Or more specifically, to Dante. I still felt him everywhere we’d touched and everywhere our bodies had lined up.
After he’d shown me what real pleasure was like, something had shifted between us. There was a sudden hunger to constantly touch, and for the first time in my life, I wanted to have sex. I wanted to kiss and touch and lose myself in lust with him. And he was happy to oblige.
I lost count of how many times we fooled around over the weekend, both at his house on Saturday night and at my apartment yesterday.
We didn’t stop until I was a shaking, breathless mess.
The memories made fire swoop low in my belly all over again, and I quickly shook my head to refocus on straightening up my office desk.
At least, until dark skin, a husky voice, and skilled hands rushed back into my thoughts.
“Get your head out of the gutter, Serenity,” I mumbled to myself.
A knock sounded on my office door. I looked up to find my dad standing in the doorway with Scarlett behind him. His business attire was perfectly pressed, and his graying hair was raked back. The lines around his eyes were tight, even as he tried to smile at me.
“Can we chat?” Dad asked and strolled into the room.
A pit opened up in my stomach. Dad never dropped in to “chat.” The phrasing of the question and my step-mother’s presence told me this wasn’t going to be a simple work visit where we discussed Addie’s house project.
I wasn’t talking to my boss and his assistant right now.
I was facing my disappointed father and hateful step-mom.
“S-Sure,” I managed to answer.
Dad adjusted his pristine dress shirt as he sat in the seat across from me.
Scarlett hovered in the doorway for a moment to survey my office with a lip curled in disgust. The little animal desk trinkets and fake flowers that I used to add a sprinkle of happiness to my space grated on her nerves.
When I’d been growing up under their roof, my bedroom had been like a prison cell with its thousand rules and lifeless aesthetic.
My step-mother hated anything I liked and didn’t try hiding her disagreement in my choice of clothes, decor, or preferences.
Scarlett’s platinum hair was pulled back in a flawless ponytail, and a designer pantsuit hugged her well-endowed figure.
She was my dad’s assistant here at work, yet she dressed as though she were the showrunner of the company.
Her ensemble wasn’t complete without her gold cross necklace, which she always wore around her slender throat.
The symbol didn’t match the poisonous smile she gave me as she finally came into the room and shut the door behind her.
I picked at my thumb, my heart constricting as I looked at Dad once more. “What’s up?”
Dad leaned back in his chair and folded his hands across his abdomen. “Sorry to barge in late in the day. I know you’re off the clock. Did you have plans after leaving here?”
I cleared my throat of the gravel residing there before speaking. “Just going home to write.”
“So no, then,” Scarlett concluded with a dismissive chuckle.
Anger burned through me, and it took every bit of willpower to refrain from lashing out at the woman who’d been in my life for thirteen years now. Even after all that time, our relationship had only managed to get worse, never better.
This was a prime example of why. Ever since I’d completed writing my trilogy, everything in my life had gone off the rails, taking my ability to write with it.
I was in a better place these days, so I had hoped to sit down and write something new when I left here.
Something so important to me was a joke to her.
Ignoring her comment, I held my dad’s stare. “Is everything okay?”
He leaned forward to rest his arms on my desk. “Well, I’m not really sure. That’s what I’m here to talk about.”
The pebbles in my gut turned into boulders, and my heart began to race with dread.
“Your mother says you’ve been avoiding Bradley at work.”
My hands shook, though it wasn’t just from nerves.
Dad always called Scarlett my mom when she was the furthest thing from it.
My mom was working in Japan as an English teacher, something she only had the courage to do after my dad destroyed her heart and our family by secretly pursuing the woman standing next to him.
And now I found out that Scarlett had been keeping tabs on me and Bradley while at work?
The news made anger mingle with the anxiety in my stomach, and it took me a few seconds to respond.
“He and I are taking a break. It’s not getting in the way of work, I promise.”
“A break?” Scarlett huffed. “I’ve never heard something so childish. Adults don’t do breaks.”
My eyes snapped to hers as the simmering rage in my chest grew. “I’d like to speak to my dad alone, if you don’t mind, please.”
“Serenity,” Dad warned, his voice turning colder while his eyes narrowed on me.
I pressed my lips together and forced my biting words down.
The feeling of disdain grew along with Scarlett’s smile.
She came up right behind my dad to place her french-tipped fingers on his shoulder, staking claim on him.
The message was clear and had been since day one—she was in charge.
My father would only hear what she wanted him to. He’d only see what she let him see.
She was more important than me.
It was a fact she’d aimed to establish early on.
I still remembered that first day when nine-year old me met her.
At the time, I knew Dad and Mom had stopped living together, even if I didn’t understand what that really meant.
Mom had moved out, and I was suddenly visiting her instead of living with her.
One day, I came home to a house that no longer looked like the one I knew.
Mom’s things were piled outside, and the inside had been transformed with all new furniture and decorations.
The family photos of me, Dad, and Mom had been swapped with images of Dad and some lady.
That same lady had stood in the entryway of the house as Dad ushered me in.
My dad had scooped me into his arms and beamed at me with more affection than a human should’ve been capable of as he’d introduced, “This is my most precious. My sweet Serenity.”
I’d smiled at the stranger, thinking I was getting a new friend around the house, but when she smiled back, I saw what no one else did.
I saw the cold, hardened edge in her hateful eyes as she faked her friendliness.
Even at nine-years old, I understood the promise she’d silently vowed in that moment—I would never again be Dad’s most precious.
Dad never looked at me that way again.
Dad cleared his throat, drawing me out of the painful memory. That sharp warning look remained as he addressed me. “Did something happen between you and Bradley?”
My fingers locked up in their fidgeting.
I wanted to list out all of the issues that had arisen as Bradley and I got older.
I wanted to bring up his recently formed drinking habit that had resulted in the bruise on my face that had since faded but not fully healed inside of me.
I wanted to tell my dad that Bradley didn’t make me feel the way someone else was starting to.
Instead, I shook my head. “We just grew apart, that’s all. We’ve changed, and I think we’re better people separate than together.”
“Better separate?” Scarlett gasped, staring at me like I’d lost my mind. “Do you understand how lucky you are to have someone like him? A man of his standing who works so hard and puts his all into everything he does? Meanwhile, you do the bare minimum here while playing make-believe in your head.”
It was always the same. I was always the lucky one to have Bradley.
Never was he lucky to have me. No, according to my step-mom—and by extension, my dad—Bradley was doing me a favor by “putting up with me and my quirks.” The star quarterback going for the introverted, artistic nerd?
What a blessing that he even gave me the time of day!
He could have a girl who wore designer clothes tailored to her slim body, but instead, he had me—a home-body who wrote silly romance stories in her spare time.
There was nothing about me to be proud of.
“Don’t look at her like that,” Dad ordered me.
It was only then that I realized I’d been staring at Scarlett with hard eyes and a tight jaw, willing my hatred for the woman to settle down.
“She only says all of this because she’s worried about you and your future,” Dad explained on his wife’s behalf. “We both are.”
Scarlett didn’t give a shit about my future. She didn’t say all she did as some tough love parenting tactic. She said it because she wanted to hurt me with any sort of dig that was subtle enough, no one else would notice the wickedness hiding amid her words.
Dad sighed and reached across my desk to place his hand on top of mine.
“Just … Work things out with Bradley. I have big hopes for him. And you. I intend to pass everything I’ve built here to the two of you.
He’s the only man I’d want for a son-in-law.
So figure things out with him. Okay, honey?
You know I wouldn’t ask you to do something if I thought it wasn’t good for you. ”
A tight lump filled my throat, and sand coated my tongue. I didn’t know how to talk to Dad anymore. He never understood me when I spoke, deaf to my wants and needs while in tune to the whisperings of Scarlett.
So I’d found over the years that it was easier to answer with, “Yes, sir.”
“Good. Thank you. I believe he’s just getting back after being at Ms. Parkland’s property all day. I’ll send him in, so wait for him here.”