Badd Motherf*cker(25)

I could shoot a gun better than most rookies, knew a dozen different ways to break someone’s wrist, and owned my own Taser. Which I’d once used on a guy on a bus who was trying to cop a feel on fourteen-year-old me.

My dad was big, gruff, cynical, tough, intimidating. He once arrested a boy I’d been fooling around with—the kid had wanted me to blow him and I’d said no, and he’d gotten a little handsy in his teenage displeasure. Unfortunately for Billy Price we’d been in his car outside my house, and Dad had been watching. Honestly, Billy had been lucky Dad hadn’t pepper sprayed him. He’d been cuffed, booked for assault, and had spent the night in the holding cell with the drunks before Dad let him out. I hadn’t needed Dad’s intervention, but I hadn’t been upset about it either.

Then along came Michael and his normal family and his affectionate-but-not-clingy ways, his not-impressive-but-decent cock, his not-impressive-but-decent ability to last for more than five seconds in bed, and the fact that he’d claimed to love me. He’d pick me up from work at the law firm, take me to dinner, buy me roses, take me to the movies or a concert, and we’d have sex and wake up and have breakfast, and he’d go to work in the marketing division of Amazon and I’d go to work in the small but intense firm where I was a law clerk, and that was life. He seemed happy. I’d thought I was happy.

He proposed over dinner at a swanky restaurant, and we planned the wedding. We’d planned it to be small, just his family and closest friends. Dad and I didn’t really have anyone except Dad’s cop buddies since we didn’t give a shit about Mom’s family, and Dad was the only child of long-dead parents.

I never questioned Michael. He didn’t stay late at work, didn’t keep his phone under his pillow or text at odd hours or take secretive phone calls. There was no lipstick on his collars, no perfume I didn’t recognize on his body.

The lipstick on the collar thing, though—does that actually happen? How do you get lipstick on a guy’s collar? Are you kissing his shirt?

Point is, there weren’t any warning signs.

We had regular sex. He never acted weird. He wasn’t super possessive or jealous, never obviously checked out other chicks…

Then…on our wedding day, he fucked Tawny Howard in his dressing room.

If I hadn’t caught him, would he have married me? Taken me to bed on our honeymoon with Tawny’s pussy juice all over his dick?

I shuddered, since now I had no clue what else he’d been up to—or, rather, who else he’d been up in. We never had sex without protection, since I wasn’t on birth control—I had regular, not-very heavy periods and hated the way birth control messed with my hormones. I was glad for that, now, because it meant I was clean even if he was a cheating bastard whore.

I felt another tear trickle down my cheek, and then another. He’d probably been cheating on me the whole time, I’d just been too stupid to see it. I’d made the conscious effort to trust him after he’d told me he loved me. He’d said it first, without any pressure from me. It hadn’t even felt forced, or unnatural, or fake. I’d believed him. And I’d let myself feel like I was in love with him, too. I’d put blind faith in him, which had gone against every instinct I’d ever had. I hadn’t wanted to trust him, hadn’t wanted to fall in love with him. But I’d made myself trust him because, as I told myself, if I didn’t choose to trust someone eventually, I’d go through life alone, like Dad. Who was sad, lonely, and difficult, except where I was concerned.

Speaking of Dad…I opened our iMessage thread and started reading through the backlog.

Dru? Where the shit are you, girl?

Seriously. Call me. NOW.

WHErE THE fUCk DID YOU GO?!

DRU EMMALINE CONNOLLY CALL YOUR FATHER FUCKING PRONTO!

The texts got increasingly angry and frightened, until the last few were nearly unintelligible. The voicemails were worse. He sounded absolutely terrified, and for a guy who’d done a tour in Iraq and patrolled the worst parts of Seattle every night, that said something.

Shit.

SHITSHITSHIT.

I’d fucked up.

Mom had left him for no reason, and now I had, too, or at least I was assuming it must have felt like that. I mean, I’d told Rolando to tell him I’d call him, but for someone who’d already had his wife abandon him, it had to have felt like a betrayal. Like a knife to the heart.

I wiped my eyes, tried to swallow the lump in my throat, and hit Dad’s speed dial in my phone, and he picked up before it finished the first ring.

He sounded groggy, scratchy. “Dru?”

“Yeah, Daddy. It’s me.”