Page 88 of The Vow Thief
I stared at her, taking her in like she was a stranger. She was still beautiful. Chestnut hair, green eyes, a kind of elegance that never faded. But none of that softened the blow.
“Of all the men,” I whisper.“You picked him.”
Now I was pacing. The floor felt wrong under my feet.
Mom shook her head.“Lily, listen. I stepped out of the marriage. Yes. But not for the reasons you think. Your father did not flaunt those young women until years later. When I had the affair, he was faithful. Completely faithful. I broke something in him. I did try to fix it. I promised him I would never do anything like that again, and for a while, we were finding our footing. Then he grew colder. Distant. The women came after that.”
I stopped moving.
The realization hit clean and brutal.
All this time, I blamed him.
All this time, I built my identity around the belief that he was the one who shattered our family.
“My father never told me,” I say quietly.“He let me believe he ruined the marriage.”
Mom presses her palm on the island.“I made a mistake, a terrible one. But the strangest part is that he has never asked me for a divorce. Not once. I have even considered trying again, but too much happened between us.”
A long silence spread out between us.
I felt unmoored, as if someone pulled the floor out from under my childhood.
“My father carried that in silence,” I murmured.“All this time, I thought he ruined everything, but it was you. I’ve held so much anger toward him.”
Mom looked at me with soft regret.“You were a child trying to interpret an adult disaster. None of this is your fault.”
I laughed once, hollow.“I slept with Jim, too, Mom.”
Her eyes widened with horror.“I had no idea. Oh, Lily.”
“It’s disgusting,” I said.“But it happened, and now everything feels poisoned. We had a meeting every Tuesday where we…”
The truth sat heavily in my chest.
I turned away and stared out the window. The city moved below us, steady and bright. My reflection looked unfamiliar, like someone caught in the wrong life.
“I need air,” I said.
Mom nodded softly, but I saw the tears in her eyes.
I stepped onto the balcony and grabbed the railing. The wind circled around me, cool and grounding. That man has been circling my family for years, dipping his dick in the Thompson women like he owned us. And my father’s reaction to me filing a restraining order against him. Why would he be against that? What the fuck does Jim Holloway have on my family?
I sat on the edge of the balcony chair, my phone in my hand. I had stared at the power button long enough for the sun to shift across the buildings. Three days of silence. Three days of pretending the world was not hunting me.
I pressed the button.
The screen lit up.
The device vibrated once, then again, then again, as if waking from its own coma.
Notifications flooded the top of the screen in a starving rush. I braced myself as the messages populated, one after another, until the list stretched longer than I wanted to scroll through.
My father’s texts appeared first under the name King of Darkness.
King of Darkness:Lily, you cannot do this. Come home. We will talk.
King of Darkness:Your freedom depends on cooperation. Do not make this harder than it has to be.
