Page 77 of More, Daddy
Nothing but my anger and desire for revenge.
“Okay,” she says quietly, nodding her head once. “West?”
I look at my bare feet because they deserve more attention than she does. I’ve already given her too much.
I don’t respond.
I still don’t know how she found me onVeiled. And I guess now I know who the Bluebell High thief is. I look up at her, finding her studying me, her eyes wet. My chest tightens at the sight of her, huddled against my wall in strappy white lingerie, watching me, waiting for me, hinging her entire existence on whatever leaves my mouth next.
I swallow, unsurprised to find confusion and anger thick in my throat. “Give the laptops back to the school.”
She nods a tiny bit. “I already did. A few days ago.”
Briar takes a step closer, and the sound of her heel on my floor makes my cock twitch. But I don’t look. I don’t take in the sight of her body, and I don’t let myself appreciate her beauty. I get to my feet, move around the room to collect her coat, then head to the front door.
“Leave. Do not message me on Instagram, do not email me at school, do not even look at me on campus. Delete anything I’ve ever sent you.” I finally bring my eyes off my feet, and meet hers. “Get out, and don’t come back.”
Tears stream down her cheeks, but she doesn’t move.
“Get out,” I say again, this time glancing out the open front door, to the street. Finally, she brushes past me, and clicks her way down the front steps, wrapped back up in the coat she lifted from my fingers. I close the door and twist the deadbolt, refusing to meet her eyes when she turns from her place on the sidewalk and looks back at me.
Feeling somewhat obligated to make sure she makes it to her car safely, I find myself in the laundry room, shoved between the wall and the dryer, peering out the tiny window facing the street.
A few houses down, she pulls a bicycle from behindgarbage cans, and in high heels and a trench coat, peddles off into darkness.
As angry as I am, I race to my truck and hop in, catching up with her a street away. I keep my lights off, idling in the street a couple hundred yards behind her, and I stay that way until she pulls into a driveway not far from my place, a few miles away. She leaves her bike in the lawn, and as soon as the front door is shut, and I know that she isn’t murdered or kidnapped on the streets between our houses, I go back home.
In bed, my brain goes the same place it’s been going the last few months.
Toher.My babygirl. My partner in crime. My future.
It hits me hard, right there in bed with my head on the pillow and my blanket loose around my hips, that there is no her.
I think of Cadence, and the way I grabbed her hand in the break room a few days back.West, you fucking idiot.
Rage floods my soul at the memory of me foolishly thinking I was sending Cadence some covert message. Cadence. The victim of all of this.
Tossing and turning, I can’t sleep, but I won’t let myself dream of a ghost.
Instead, I plan my revenge.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE
“You looklike someone just told you that you have a booger in your nose and you didn’t know,” Leah says, dropping a stack of manila folders onto my desk.
I’ve been staring at my computer for the better part of… fuck, I don’t even know. I thought maybe half an hour, but when I glance up at all the shit Leah’s just unloaded, I notice the sun shining brightly against the office doors—an afternoon kind of bright.
I lift my hand and shield my eyes. “Close my office door. It’s fucking bright out there.”
Eyeing me, Leah closes my office door but doesn’t sit. In a bubblegum pink pants suit, she holds onto the doorknob as she studies me.
“Okay, so either I was wrong about the booger, or you picked it.”
I have to look away, because her glare is way too intense for how I feel today, even with the joking. I can’t fight her, and equally, I’m too weak to hold up my shield, either. I remain silent.
“What could it be?” she questions rhetorically, enunciating the last letter of each word in a way that has me exercising my restraint.
