Page 56 of Never Kiss the Bad Boy

“She was telling someone about how when Cole and Kayla were kids, my dad was traveling all the time for work, and she needed help. So they hired someone. A guy named Anders. Shortly after that, surprise… here I come.”

Dani lifts up again, her eyes suspicious when they land on me. “Are you saying you think your dad’s not your dad?”

I swallow. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

Even that much of an acknowledgement opens a hole in my gut that I’m not sure I can recover from. I’ve been considering it, trying to look at it from another angle… any other angle that might make it not true. But it makes so much sense.

Dani sits upright, turning around to face me and crossing her legs. Her right knee rests on my side, and the sheet puddles in her lap where she pulls it around herself. Her eyes are dark, filled with the sympathy I don’t want or need. “I’m so sorry, Kyle.”

“Me too,” I say, laying my hand on her knee. Slowly, I add, “I’ve always felt like I was a mistake baby. My parents had my brothers, boy after boy after boy, and then they finally got their girl with Kayla, so why have another kid? I’m the living proof of diminishing returns.” I laugh bitterly as I tell her, “That’s something Dad would say. Don’t invest more when less will net the same or better result.”

My whole childhood plays out in flashes in my mind as I hollowly tell her, “I guess now I know why he’s never given a shit about me the way he did the older kids. I hear them talk about Dad going to their games and helping with their homework… like he did ‘Dad stuff’ with them when they were little, which is why they’re closer, I guess. Cameron is basically his right-hand man, like a mini-version of Dad, and the rest of my brothers—other than Cole—and Kayla are like Dad in a lot of ways, so they talk business and stuff. I just never got that with him. By the time I was born, he was too busy at work to do any of that stuff with me.” An even darker thought comes rushing forward, at the ready from my teen years of angry rebelliousness and loneliness. “Or at least that’s what I always told myself because the alternatives—that he didn’t love me, that I wasn’t good enough, that I wasn’t worth his time—were worse than his having a packed schedule. Guess work wasn’t the reason after all.”

“You think he knows?”

I draw nonsense shapes on her leg as I think, the words tumbling off my tongue before I can even make sense of them. “I don’t always understand him, and definitely don’t always like him, but my dad is a man of pride, of morals and ethics, who expects nothing less than the best from everyone. If he knew I wasn’t his, I can’t imagine him reacting with anything less than nuclear fallout. But that hasn’t happened, which makes me think he doesn’t know. But then there’s the way he’s always treated me, which makes me think he does.” I shake my head. “I don’t know. I’m lost.”

I meet her eyes, which are dark with concern. I feel like mine must be full of the confusion I feel because either option is awful. If Dad knows and treated me like shit because I’m not his, I selfishly wish he would’ve just bombed our family and set me free. If he doesn’t know and still treated me like shit, then all those teenage thoughts get louder and there’s some other reason he doesn’t love me the way he does my siblings. Like maybe I’m just unlovable.

I’m someone people use to serve their own needs, someone good for a laugh or a bit of fun, or a good fuck. Not someone worth more… worth loving.

“My parents love each other, like love each other. They’re not perfect, but even when I’ve been furious at Dad, cursing his existence, raging about my own existence, and damning the entirety of the world, there’s one thing I’ve always known without a doubt. He loves my mom. It’s like his one redeeming quality because if she can see something good in him, it must be there, even if it’s not there for me, you know? But I can’t help thinking it’d explain a lot of how he treats me.”

“What are you going to do?”

“That’s the million-dollar question that I don’t have an answer to. I can’t ask my mom, sure as fuck can’t ask my dad. Cameron’s the oldest and might remember something, but he would protect my parents at any cost, even mine. Kayla’s probably my best bet because she somehow always knows everything about everything, but she’s as tight-lipped as they come, especially if telling me the truth wouldn’t serve the greater good, as in the family’s greater good, not mine.” I close my eyes, sighing heavily. “I don’t think I can just live in la-la-land, though, not knowing the truth.”

“What about doing a DNA test? Swipe a hair or something from your dad and send it off for a paternity thing.”

“It’s not a Maury Povich ‘you are not the father’ moment,” I joke dryly, but it falls flat. And when she glares at me ruthlessly, I concede, “I might have to do that.”

“Family shit sucks,” she says finally.

I gather her back to me, and she lies against me, throwing her leg over mine. “Feeling better about your forced date now?” I tease.

“Is it awful if I say yes? I mean, the worst part was that after I almost fell asleep because he was droning on and on about himself, he thought we were actually going out again.”

“He probably thought you were a good listener.” My heart stutters. “And fuck, I just did the same thing, didn’t I?”

She squeezes me with her leg and the arm she’s laid on my chest, keeping me from running away at that thought. “No, not the same thing at all. I want to hear about you, even the messed-up stuff. I did not want to hear about Nick’s plans for upgrading his SUV after he’s making manager-level money.”

“Don’t say his name when you’re lying in bed with me.” A beat later, I correct, “Scratch that, don’t ever say his name.”

“Whose name?” she teases, and I can hear the smile in her voice. “Nick’s, the guy who took me on a date tonight?”

I pull her on top of me until we’re nose to nose. “And who was the guy after that, the one who had you coming so hard you forgot everyone’s name but his?”

“Hmm,” she hums, her eyes bright as she taps her lip. “I forget. Maybe I need another reminder?”

“Jesus fuck, Dani. Get on my dick then,” I say on a fake sigh, already lifting her hips and guiding her back onto my hardening cock.

The feel of her pussy teasing over my tip raw for a moment is all the distraction I need, and by the time she hops up to grab another condom, all thoughts are wiped from my mind except for one…

Daniela.

CHAPTER 19

DANI

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