Page 138 of Charity's Redemption

“Love you too.” I lowered my gaze, unable to lie to his face. There’d be no reconciliation between my mother and I. I didn’t want it. “Bye, Dad.” Stepping out of his car, I walked to my front door and watched him back out of my drive like I’d done so many times before.

But this time, things were different. He wasn’t privy to my life before, but now he was and willfully wanted to keep me in his. I couldn’t have been more blessed with an understanding father.

I swung open the door as he disappeared down the road and stepped inside, shutting the door behind me, then waited for Cannoli to protest his displeasure with my disappearance.

Bounding down the hallway with his pudgy belly swinging back and forth, Cannoli meowed louder than ever, his head butting up against my legs. The familiarity brought a smile to my face.

Walking into my room, I groaned as I spotted my laundry basket overflowing in the corner of my room, with panties on the floor beside it. I go through a lot more of those, it seems.

I picked up my basket and dropped it in front of the laundry closet in the hallway, then shoved them inside the washer when the door burst open.

My heart skyrocketed into my throat as my hand went straight for my pistol.

“Charity?” Max hollered from the doorway.

I exhaled and leaned against the washer as I willed my heart to slow down. “I’m in here?”

“I told you she’d be fine. There was probably a glitch on the app or something.”

Luca and Max walked down my hallway towards me with an angry stroll.

“What’s wrong? Why are you here?”

Max wrapped his arms around me and held me tight while I held my dirty underwear in my hands, ready to throw inside the machine.

“Uh. Hi, big guy. Everything okay?”

I stood paralyzed as he pinned my arms to my sides in a massive bear hug.

“Just glad you’re okay.”

“Why wouldn’t I be? It’s not as though Luca left me in a park and forced me to walk without a cellphone,” I said sardonically.

Luca didn’t piss me off. I found it rather amusing until my feet began to hurt on the pavement, and then Elias found me. But if he hadn’t made me walk like some rebellious teenager, I wouldn’t have seen my dad, and we wouldn’t have had our conversation this soon, putting my mind at ease.

“I told him it was a bad idea. How did you get home so fast?” Max released me as Luca stepped around him to glance at me as though he were attempting to see if I was real.

“Wouldn’t you know it? I met this really nice man—”

“You hitchhiked?”

“Yeah, and I only had to pay him with a blow job. Can you believe that?” I paused as Max and Luca’s faces turned beet red, and I thought as though they might combust. “Rather a cheap ride if you ask me.”

“Charity,” Luca said with indignation dripping in his voice.

“Luca,” I repeated in the same tone. “Clearly, you don’t know a joke if it slapped you in the face.”

“Why were you stopped on the side of the road?” Luca said, his hands in his pockets. “We were concerned.”

Max gave him the side-eye. “We?”

Luca glared back at him, then leaned against the wall. “I thought you could take care of yourself.”

“Oh, now you do. Thanks for the vote of confidence…” I threw the rest of my clothes in the washer and dumped laundry detergent inside the contraption, then hit the button to start the cycle. “You guys really need to stop being little stalkers, or I’m taking this bracelet off.”

Luca held up his hands in mock surrender. “I didn’t. Max did.”

“Yet here you stand.”

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