Page 8 of Thanksgiving Daddy's Girl
What the fuck did I just do? What the fuck did we just do? I fucked my best friend’s daughter. That’s just wrong on so many fucking levels. I pace my room, my hand pressed to my forehead, my mind spinning wildly.
“Fuck,” I mutter.
After our little tryst in the pool, the regrets immediately began to set in and I excused myself to shower. I’d hoped a soak in water hot enough to melt my skin off my bones would ease my conscience. She came on to me. She wanted it. She started it.
“You sound like a fucking child with your bloody excuses,” I mutter to myself. “You’re the bloody adult here. You let it happen. And you let it happen because you wanted it to happen.”
I pace the length of my room—back and forth, back and forth I go. Guilt is a heavy weight pressing down on me. If Howie ever found out I fucked Maeve, it would be the end of our friendship. He’s my oldest and closest friend. How in the fuck did I let this happen?
“Fuck!”
My throat is dry, so I slip out of my room, moving on quiet feet down the hall and dash to the kitchen, fully intending to grab a bottle of water from the refrigerator then barricade myself in my room until Howie comes home. And what then? Do I confess what happened? If he finds out any other way, the man might actually murder me. Of course, if I tell him myself, he might murder me anyway.
“Can you grab me a bottle?”
I freeze at the sound of her voice as pure ice clogs my veins. Maybe I’ll have a heart attack and drop dead right now and avoid the whole thing. That sounds like the preferred outcome. Grabbing a bottle of water, I turn and slide it across the island to her. Maeve is perched on one of the stools, eyeing me closely.
“What’s wrong?” she asks.
“Nothing.”
“Liar. What’s wrong?”
I sigh and take a drink from the bottle of water in my hand. Setting it down, I take a long, steadying breath and let it out slowly. When I feel composed, I raise my head and meet her hazel eyes. And as I do, I feel my heart lurch in my chest. It’s not just lust I feel for this girl. I can’t explain what it is exactly since I don’t know what it is myself, but there’s more there under the surface. Which only compounds the problem.
“What we did was wrong, love,” I tell her. “We shouldn’t have?—”
“Why not?”
It’s such a simple question, but it doesn’t have a simple answer. “Well… for one thing… you’re my best friend’s daughter,” I tell her. “I’ve known you since you were just a little girl.”
“I’m not a little girl now.”
“No,” I say with a rueful grin. “No, you are not.”
“Meaning, I’m an adult,” she says. “Capable of making my own choices. Including who I choose to sleep with.”
“But your father?—”
“Doesn’t get to dictate who I sleep with,” she says hotly. “And if I remember correctly, you weren’t objecting at the time.”
Her face is red, her eyes are narrow and shimmer with tears. I didn’t think it possible for me to feel like a bigger asshole than I did, but apparently, I was wrong.
“You’re right, I didn’t object. And maybe I should have,” I tell her. “It’s not that I didn’t want to, Maeve. It’s just that…”
My voice trails off. She stares at me, waiting but I don’t know how to finish that thought. She sniffs back her tears and sits up straighter, her back straight, anger and hurt etched into her soft, beautiful features.
“I wanted it to happen, Myles. And on some level, you must have wanted it to happen too,” she says. “I’ve been in love with you since I was a girl?—”
“Maeve, stop,” I plead. “We can’t do this. I’ve known you since, like you said, you were a girl. It’s just… it’s wrong. What happened between us can’t happen again.”
Her eyes grow wide, and she gapes at me. “Are you serious?”
“I care about you, Maeve. I truly do,” I tell her. “But I care about your father too. And if he finds out what happened…”
That’s a sentence I know how to finish, but I don’t. What I said is more than enough. She knows how awkward things will be if her father finds out we had sex and I have to believe on some level, she doesn’t want that smoke either.
“You felt something the same as I did, Myles. You can’t deny it. I felt it,” she says. “And I can see it in your eyes. Why are you denying it?”
