Page 66 of Clean Slade
“Really? Since when do you do drop-offs?” Santiago persisted, and part of me was grateful for it because it was great to know my suspicions hadn’t been for nothing.
I wasn’t imagining things. I wasn’t hallucinating. Kingwashiding something.
“Oh, you know how the people at Bishop’s Point are. They…they didn’t have time to pick him up, so I offered to do it.”
Santiago frowned. He clearly wasn’t buying it.
“So, Joey, how are you finding the island? Are you enjoying your time here?” King asked in a voice on the verge of shrill and waited for an answer.
“Why are you acting all weird?” Santiago asked.
“I’m not.”
“You kinda are,” Nino said.
Why the fuck was he getting involved in this?
“Really? Am I, Nino? Am I?” King stared the man down.
“I think you are, Daddy,” Mac said, and King deflated when he glanced at her.
He pushed his chair and fled the dining room without another word, and everyone froze, staring at each other.
“If you’ll excuse me.” I pushed my chair back and left the room.
I had a reputation to uphold as King’s boyfriend, after all, but more than that, I wanted to check that he was okay.
Whatever he’d been doing at Bishop’s Point was clearly a sensitive matter, and he wasn’t ready to share.
That didn’t mean I couldn’t be there for him anyway.
SIXTEEN
KING
Icouldn’t do this.
Why did I think I could do this? I was only fooling myself.
I left the life of crime behind me when I was only twenty, and let’s be honest, I never got really good at it. I was just a stupid spoiled boy with a secret and a passion to please Daddy.
I hated who I used to be. I hated the insecure man who would do anything to impress his father only so he could prove he was worthy of the empire.
That wasn’t me. That was never me. It had been an impressionable young man who didn’t want to admit he was gay and didn’t want to be pushed around.
This was the man I was. The person I was now. The single dad with the dyed hair and the silly little business, living the white picket fence life in the middle of nowhere, having built a family out of friends and acquaintances, a network of support for my daughter and me.
That was who I was. I liked myself. Ilovedmyself.
Why did I ever think I could return to the life I’d hated with every fiber of my being and do it well?
I couldn’t even lie, for fuck’s sake. I used to be a master liar, and now I’d been caught with my pants around my ankles.
If I couldn’t handle that, how could I handle what inevitably came next? Becoming friends with a drug dealer only so I could get close to his boss. Because that’s what my father wanted from me. For me to become a pawn in his game and an enemy pawn simultaneously.
“I can’t do this. I can’t do this,” I muttered to myself, pacing my bedroom like a maniac, wracking my brain, trying to think of a way to escape my father’s claws yet again.
No matter how much time passed, how many years, I was still doing his bidding. I was still working under his thumb. Would I never be my own man?
