Page 14 of Waiting For Forever

"I remember, Daddy." Melissa's voice should have gotten lost in the back and forth between me and her father, but there was something so painfully calm in her words that both of us went quiet. Her voice, her body didn't shudder. She looked past me to her father, standing up a little taller. "Appearance is everything. Nothing else matters--including me."

"Now wait a minute," he began.

"Oh please," she snorted. "There's nothing more to say. The press will go away once the next inevitable scandal hits. I'll work remotely for a few days, and once they realize they're wasting their time, they'll move on. I apologize for any inconvenience I caused you." Her voice was cold. Strictly business. And as tough as he talked, I could see it hit him harder than any blow could.

She moved to the door, opening it and stepping out of his way. "Thanks for stopping by."

He didn't put up a fight, marching right out the door. He paused on the welcome mat. "We'll discuss this later. Alone."

She closed the door without another word then went to the window. She peeked in between the blinds, waiting until his car started and pulled away before she faced me.

There was no anger. No tears. No emotion.

"Still need to know what my dad is like?" she asked weakly. She didn’t wait for me to answer. “I’m ready to go, Logan.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Melissa

I thought that we'd hit peak madness already. The first instance of crazy was the point where I told him that I loved him when we barely knew each other. I'd only said that word to two other people--my dad and Jason. Dad was a given. We had our differences, and while his face made me want to rage at this moment, I still loved him. And Jason? That was years in the making. Slowly falling until I had no other choice but to admit that he had me.

The second wave crashed into me around the time that I realized that dating Logan Mason meant having a boyfriend worth more money than I could wrap my mind around and tangling with Delilah James. Oh, and he was going to be a father. I felt like any rational person would at least need a moment to catch their breath. Not me--I dove in headfirst.

But both of those things seemed like anthills to the mountain that was springing up in the middle of Logan's living room. Tiny bumps in the road, and here comes the crater to swallow me whole.

I'd made a dumb joke about wishing my father out of existence. I knew it was crass, and I didn't mean it of course, but saying it out loud seemed like a form of therapy--until Logan gave me the most chilling look I'd ever seen. He’d uttered the words that sliced me down to the bone.

Me too. It seemed like a fitting reaction, the perfect end for the man that raped my mother.

I didn't need a pen to connect the dots. It was in the undercurrent beneath his words. The ache in his eyes.

Logan was the product of rape.

I heard a buzzing sound in my ear, a painful clench in my chest. "Oh my god, Logan! And I was just making jokes about it, making light of it-"

"Babe, you didn't know. Now you do."

His words were indifferent and I took a step forward. My first thoughts were to throw my arms around him. I wanted to take away his pain, but I doubted my hug would even dull the agony. And his body language, shoulders angled away from me, eyes trained on the window, told me that he didn't really want to hug it out.

It would have been patronizing anyway. A flimsy band aid on a gushing, bloody wound. I stood there, scouring my mind for the right words to express how sorry I was. But I felt useless, my thoughts a muddled mess of good intentions and terror.

"I don't know what to say." I could feel the weight of this in the air, in the taut lines of his body. In the silence.

"I didn't, either," he answered. "My mother told me when I was six."

"Six years old? What the hell is wrong with her?" I gasped when I realized that I was outdoing myself in the foot and mouth department this afternoon. I had no idea what she had gone through, her reasons behind telling her awful story to her son.

I wouldn't have been surprised if Logan told me to get that hell out. I'd been talking crap about my father the whole ride back to San Francisco, how he didn't see me, and I didn't know him and he didn't know me. Logan didn't know his father either--except that he'd done something horrible to his mother.

"There's no good way to react to the bomb I just dropped." He gestured for me to join him on the couch. Even though I could see the hurt still burning in his eyes, it seemed he had whatever demons lying beneath the surface under wraps. I still hesitated before I followed him, mortified that I'd made light of death, about pain. In the face of what he had to endure, my issues with my father seemed pointless.

He leaned back into the cushion, and a flash of guilt cut through me when naughty thoughts raced through my head. Appropriate timing or not, the man made the most mundane things, even sitting, look sexy. Our eyes met and the smile returned to his lips, broadening and forcing out the darkness that cut his angular jaw.

"Is that a professionally honed skill, or are you just good at reading me like a book?" I said, trying to cool the heat in my cheeks.

"It's one of my many skills," he winked. The playfulness in his voice didn't linger. "With you, I have the pieces of the puzzle, I know how it all fits together. The pieces click together, but the picture is always changing. I keep finding out new things about you. Falling harder for you. And I want you to figure me out. I don't want any secrets between us. Secrets are like carrying around poison. Sure, it's easier to keep things to yourself, hide it away, but eventually, it'll bleed into everything."

I knew his words were true. I bit my tongue so often that I was surprised I could taste anything but blood. Even though I kicked my dad out, I managed to not tell him how much he'd hurt me over the years. And all the love in the world couldn't dull the secret I hid from Jason--that I worried he'd never love me as much as I loved him. It ended up being irrelevant in the end, but maybe if I hadn't carried it around like a stone in my gut, things would be different.

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