Page 1 of Without Judgment

CHAPTER ONE

Avery

“Did you make a sex tape with your ex?”

Not the question you’d expect to hear from anyone, ever, let alone your father, of all people.

Here I’d thought his first question would be ‘what do you feel like for lunch?’ I’d driven into downtown Houston to meet him at his office for just that. The fact he’d made a point of asking me to join him today meant a lot to me. He hardly ever had the time for something like a shared meal these days, between running a large company and announcing his bid to become mayor of Houston. Although I was living at home again after graduating college a few months ago, I didn’t see him often, what with all of his travel and his busy work schedule.

Now in his office, I heard his words but didn’t register them. Instead, my vision went beyond him, looking over the city from his enormous office on the top floor of the Newhall Oil and Gas building.

When my mind finally grasped his words, it became oddly stuck on the word tape. I supposed now wasn’t the time to get caught up in semantics, but it wasn’t as if someone in this day and age actually “taped” anything. I hadn’t seen an old VHS tape since I was little. Wouldn’t it be a video? Perhaps my fixation on the word was a defense mechanism because the very idea of me having a sex tape, video, or whatever you would call it was absolutely absurd.

How could a person who’d only been with one guy in her twenty-two years possibly have a sex tape? I simply stood there in shock while observing the unnatural pink tinge to my father’s face. Considering he’d mentioned the word ‘sex’ to me, his embarrassment was understandable. After all, he was a man who’d outsourced the birds-and-the-bees talk to my nanny when I’d been thirteen.

He took a deep breath and repeated himself. “Avery. Did you make a sex tape with Edward?”

He had that tone. The kind I remembered from when I was a kid, when your parents thought you’d done something wrong and were waiting for a confession. The problem here was I had nothing to offer up.

“Of course not.” I finally managed the words.

He didn’t appear to hear me. Straightening his tie, part of his pristine, thousand-dollar business suit, he said, “My PR team is working with a crisis specialist to try to craft the best response to this, but unfortunately, it’s already starting to hit the Internet.”

I knew my ex was shitty. After all, he’d cheated on me with my so-called best friend. But had he gone so far as to record our sex life—without my consent? Had there even been something worth recording? Not from my viewpoint. Besides, we’d broken up months ago. So why was this coming out now? And how had he managed to sneak in a camera without me being aware?

“How do you know it’s me? Where did this start?”

My father was a handsome man for, you know, being older and my dad, but at the moment his entire face looked pinched. “I received a copy of the video on a thumb drive mailed to my office from an anonymous source. My head of IT, campaign manager, and I began to view it. Obviously once I saw Edward’s face, I stopped.”

Oh, God. My dad and some strangers started watching the video? A sick feeling settled in my gut. And this was merely the beginning of people who would view it if it was being released on the Internet.

“It’s politics. And like I warned you when I decided to run for office, we’re all under scrutiny in the public eye. There will be people trying to find dirt on all of the candidates.”

In other words, I was the dirt. “Can I see the video?”

“Why? It wasn’t enough that you participate, now you—what? Want to relive the experience?” he snapped.

His sharp tone hit me hard. Ever since my mother had died ten years ago, he’d buried himself in work, making his attention, not to mention his affection, tough to obtain. But he’d never spoken harshly to me. And I’d never talked back. So the sarcastic retort of ‘yeah I’ll bring the popcorn’ wouldn’t go over well. Time and place. Hadn’t that been drilled into me on enough occasions? I channeled some patience.

“No. But what I’d like is to confirm it’s me. I never knowingly did a sex video with Edward.”

He flinched, this entire topic clearly making him beyond uncomfortable. “It doesn’t matter. We reached out to him and he’s come out publicly to say it was you. You two were engaged. It’s not rocket science to assume it’s you.”

“Dad, he can’t record me without consent. That’s illegal.”

“We’ll get our attorneys on that to see what we can do. But for now, we need to release a statement because it’s a matter of time before the video goes viral.”

In other words, damage control came before my feelings. It shouldn’t hurt, but it did. Newhall Oil and Gas was a household name. My father was the frontrunner for mayor of Houston. And right now, I was a giant scandal threatening his reputation.

“What do you need me to do?” I swallowed hard. He wasn’t asking what he could do for me. Wasn’t taking into consideration how very upsetting this would be for me.

“Keep a low profile. Do not under any circumstances contact Edward. And don’t make any statements to the press or anyone else. We’ll produce one for you.”

“Do I get to see the statement first?”

“For what? You’re all of twenty-two years old. Is crisis management suddenly your strong point? We pay good money to a lot of people who have the experience to handle these things. Let them do their job.”

So, he was taking my voice, too. No wonder he couldn’t look me in the eye. “I’ll head home.” So much for lunch. It seemed my own father didn’t want to be seen with me.

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