Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 82883 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 414(@200wpm)___ 332(@250wpm)___ 276(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82883 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 414(@200wpm)___ 332(@250wpm)___ 276(@300wpm)
It’s a confession, but it doesn’t land the way he thinks it will. I almost laugh. “You lied to get a handjob?” I say, eyebrows up.
He smiles, but it’s a bare thing, all teeth. “Yes. I lied to get your attention, and the rest came later.” He pauses, breathing through the shame. “So yes, the massages—those were for me. Not medical at all.”
The air thins. I think about all the times I stroked his balls, the way he’d close his eyes, the growl in his chest. I should be mad, but instead I’m just… relieved. “I suspected,” I say in a slow tone.
He shoots me a half-smile. “How? Because I enjoyed your massages so much?”
I smile back at him. “Yes, but other things too. You don’t flinch when you sit down. You lift weights and are mobile in the gym. You fucked me like you were trying to break the bed, which takes flexibility, durability, and stamina. No one with chronic pain can do that.”
He blinks. “So you knew.”
I shrug. “Maybe not at first. But it made you happy. So I did it.”
There’s a beat of silence, and the shame in his face softens, replaced by a wild, feral joy. He shakes his head, a little stunned, but then suddenly remembers there’s another item on the list, and his face drops.
“That’s not the worst of it,” he says, and suddenly the air is cold again.
I brace myself, fingers wrapping tight around the edge of the table.
He’s slow, surgical, like he’s peeling back a dressing. “My marriage to your mother has been on the rocks for a while. For a long time, actually. If we’re being honest, since the very beginning.”
This, I wasn’t expecting and I stare at him with confusion.
“What?”
Kent nods, his expression stolid but also ashamed at the same time.
“When I married Jeannine, it wasn’t for love. I didn’t even want a wife. What I wanted was you.”
This is going too fast for me to compute. “What are you talking about?”
Again, that shame-faced expression on his face. Yet he swallows and presses ahead.
“I saw your picture on Jeannine’s desk at the country club the first time we talked,” he says, and the words come out fast, unstoppable. “You were gorgeous, baby, and probably not a day over sixteen. You were dressed in a plaid skirt, white shirt, Mary Janes, with long, golden legs. You looked like an angel, and I couldn’t get you out of my head. I know it’s fucked up, and I felt bad even feeling the things that I felt. But I asked Jeannine about you, and she said you were her daughter.”
The world tilts a little. I remember that picture. I remember how embarrassed I was when Mom made me pose for it, the way my hair wouldn’t stay put and the way my chest looked huge and ridiculous in the starched white shirt. I remember how she used to brag about me to anyone who would listen.
“I thought the attraction would go away,” he says. “You were only a girl! I was a grown man, divorced already. But it didn’t, and I started going by the nurse’s office for all sorts of bullshit. To get my tennis elbow looked at, which isn’t even a medical condition. Because I was feeling faint from the heat. Sick from food poisoning in the cafe. And Jeannine was nice. She always took care of me, and soon, we were so-called dating, except that there was never any pretense. Your mother’s a smart cookie, and she knew what I was really after.”
I stare at him, flummoxed. “Which was?”
He pauses a moment, and then says, “You. I wanted access to you, sweetheart. It’s fucked up and wrong because you were so young, but I was a desperate man.”
My heart’s practically pounding out of my chest now.
“So what happened?”
Kent shrugs.
“So I proposed to your mother. She needed a provider, someone who was stable with loads of money. I wanted access to her daughter. We both got what we wanted.”
He’s trembling now, the words spilling out in a rush. “It was a deal, Mary Kate. She got life in the lap of luxury, with unlimited credit cards, glamorous international travel, and private jets. I got you. But Jeannine was smart. She wanted to wait until you were a little older, so I agreed to wait until you turned eighteen. I signed a prenup, even, so she’d get everything if I crossed the line.”
My mind spins, cycling through the years of fake holidays, fake family dinners, the way Mom would leave for “girls’ trips” and not come back for weeks. How my handsome stepfather was always there, always watching, always just a little too careful. Suddenly, everything clicks. The world rearranges itself, and I’m standing outside my own life, looking in.
“So you’re a pedo,” I state in a flat voice.