Page 16 of Purity

I’m thinking about her again.

Why did I have to find another short, curvy brunette? I should have forced myself to only approach women who look nothing like her.

Sophia presses a trail of soft kisses from my neck to my jaw. When she licks my ear, I hold back a groan. “Do that again,” I whisper.

She smiles against my skin. This time I can’t help but groan as her slippery tongue heats the inside of my ear. I pull her close and place a kiss on her collarbone. “Good girl,” I say quietly.

“Mmm,” she hums. “I’m going to be a bad girl for you soon.”

A pleasant shiver runs through my body. I work my mouth down lower until I’m flush with her cleavage. God, these tits are perfect, and the belly under my hand is soft, just like Livvy’s.

I’m forced to pull away from her when the Uber driver stops in front of the gate at the entrance to my parents’ property. I tell him to drive up to the post so I can punch in the code. I’m just about to roll down the window when Sophia jerks in my arms. “Holy shit!”

I turn to her, frowning. “What?”

“This house. That ‘W’…” She stares at the curling letter on the iron gate.

“For Walker. It’s my last name.”

She stares at it for several seconds with an unreadable expression. “Are you related to Mark Walker?”

A buzzing sounds in my ears, pulling me back to that moment long ago when I opened that hotel room door. “He’s my dad.” My voice is somehow coming from outside of myself. “Why?”

She doesn’t answer, and she doesn’t have to.

“I need to go home,” she eventually says, her voice tight.

She tells the Uber driver we need to make another stop, or at least, I think she does. I hardly hear her.

Oh my God, he fucked her.

And not just fucked her… He fucked her somewhere in our family home. Maybe even in my parents’ bed. He actually had the audacity to bring one of his women into my mom’s private space.

How could he do that to her?

I should be disgusted, like I always am when I hear whispers of his affairs from people who don’t know he’s my dad.

What is this strange aura settling over my body and making my teeth chatter? It’s faraway because I’m drunk, but I think it’s panic.

This feels eerily similar to that night five years ago. I couldn’t even move after I caught him fucking that woman. I must have sensed that my life was about to change.

Nothing felt the same after my dad and I came home from that trip. It was like the world had become a shade dimmer, and only I noticed. It left me disoriented and off-kilter. Inside jokes with my friends weren’t funny anymore. High school drama suddenly seemed so stupid and insignificant. I couldn’t even remember why I ever cared about it before. Even baseball, which meant everything to me back then, seemed like a silly remnant from my childhood that I refused to let go, like a grungy stuffed animal.

But why am I feeling it all now? My mom is going to be fine. Pretty soon, she’ll be free of him. He won’t be able to hurt her with his recklessness.

Or maybe years of mistreatment has permanently damaged her.

It seems like only seconds later we’re pulling up in front of an apartment complex. Thank God.

I turn to Sophia but can’t find the right words. She waits for me silently.

When I’m finally able to speak, the words are clipped. “I’m sorry.”

She frowns. “For what?”

My mind goes blank. “I’m not sure.”

Just as she sets her hand on the door handle, I grip her forearm gently, and she turns to me. “I don’t know how well you know him,” I say, “but he’s a piece of shit, and you deserve better.”

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