Page 47 of His Virgin Vessel

He kissed me, which was almost as good.

"I'm glad we talked about this."

I nodded. "Me too."

Why could I speak to him and not to my father? I might have had a very similar conversation with Dad, but, with him, it always degenerated into shouting, accusations, and door-slamming pretty early on, so we never reached the important bit. I found myself really hoping that I would get to say these things to him one day soon. With Dad and me, it was always a war, both of us fighting to win, and, as a result, we both walked away losers. We needed to break that cycle.

"You miss him, don't you?" Asa could damn near read my mind sometimes.

"Yeah," I said simply. "He's the only parent I have. And he's been a great one, I guess. A bit judgy. But if that's the worst you can say, then ... It's always so hard between dad and me. I guess because we're such different people."

"Perhaps because you're such similar people."

I almost choked on my own shock. "Are you insane? We're nothing alike. Dad is all about the law. I'm ..."

"Whose idea was it that I hand myself into the police?" Asa asked mildly.

"Hey!" I wasn't standing for this. "In my bad girl days there were plenty of times I broke the law."

"Were there, though?" asked Asa. "I'm guessing there were plenty of times you skirted around the edges of the law, but never actually broke it."

"Me and my friends used to get drunk, go out, and raise hell!" I said, hotly.

"Drinking, huh?" said Asa. "I'm guessing this was after you turned twenty-one?"

"Shut up." Of course it was after I turned twenty-one.

"What sort of hell were you raising specifically?"

"It was ... It was ..." I racked my brains for a believable lie, but, in the end, just gave up. "I'm the worst bad girl in the world."

"I prefer the good one anyway."

I looked up at Asa. "Am I really like my dad?"

"Well, you don't look like him."

"A relief for both of us."

Asa put an arm around me. "You know what your dad and you really have in common? You're both struggling to come to terms with who Corinne Dugas is."

"Does War Cry also do Psych 101?" I asked sarcastically.

"Every Tuesday," Asa replied. "Your dad hasn't had a handle on you for years. But I'm guessing the time he lost that sense of who you were, was around about the time you started pretending to be someone else. You lost a sense of yourself and reached out for your mother as someone to be. Which, maybe, wasn't the best choice. It confused him and probably scared him, I think it's fair to say that he didn't deal with the changes you were going through in the best way, but he keeps trying."

"You should really take that psych class. You're a natural."

"Well, while I'm on a roll, here's another insight. I think you lost a sense of yourself, because you lost a sense of your dad. Maybe he was busy with work, or maybe he favored Risa a bit. I don't know. But you got that thing in your mind that told you that if you couldn’t be him, then you had to be your mom."

"You're saying Dad and I could both do a better job of trying to understand each other?"

Asa nodded, and I was again struck by how easy it was to talk to him. What had started off as lust and a desire for the forbidden, had turned into something honest, loving, and with surprising depth. That Asa would be a good bedmate, someone exciting to lose my virginity to, had never been in doubt. But to find that he understood me and wanted to help me—that was surprising, wonderful, and special. I supposed, by the law of averages, there must have been other men out there who could make my toes curl in bed the way Asa did, but I had a hunch there were none who would understand me as he did, and none who would care so much. I almost felt like crying at how lucky I was.

"I'm going to give my dad a call. Just to let him know I'm okay. And that I'm happy."

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