I grab a handful of crackers from the cabinet in the kitchen, munching on them as I pace into the living room. The microwave clock has to be stuck. I check my phone. Nope. Same time shows on both. Damn.
Finally, my timer goes off. I race to the bathroom, grabbing the doorframe before I trip onto the tile from the carpet in the hallway. I suck in a deep breath and swallow the trepidation trying to choke me.
It will be negative. God is not this cruel.
Right?
My foot hits the cold floor. The next step lands on the plush rug in front of the sink. I stare into my reflection, avoiding the results that’ll either free me or land me in a special kind of hell. I’m pale beneath my tan, bottom lip tucked between my teeth.
I straighten up. “Whatever happens; it’s all right. I can handle it.”
I pick up the stick, gripping it in my trembling hand.
“Mo?”
Fuck.
My eyes dart around the bathroom. Shit. Where do I put it?
Not the trash, he’ll see that.
The conch shell on the back of the counter has a space under it. I grab it.
I’m just about to set the shell over the stick when his arms slide around my waist and his chin lands on my shoulder. “Hey, babe. What’s up?”
I droop in defeat.
Caught. The test stick in one hand, the shell in the other.
“What’s this?” He reaches for the white plastic in my hand.
I twist away from him. “Just get out.”
“What’s wrong?” He frowns, his eyes darting from the shell to the stick and back.
I can’t help but look at what he’s staring at. See what he sees. How incriminating is it?
I pull my hands in close to my body as my eyes fall to the two items in my grasp. The underside of the shell is pink, with—“What the hell?”
Turning the shell to a better angle, I stare into it. A small black device is lodged inside.
Danny lets out a groan.
I slap the stick onto the counter and pluck the mechanism from the pink encasing it, holding it up between us. “What is this?”
Turning it this way and that, I study it. An even darker gloom creeps over my day. Then a rush of anger floods me. “A camera? Is this a fucking camera?”
CH. TWELVE
Her face changes color. Not the pretty pink I love, but red, like I-will-cut-yo-ass red.
I throw up my hands. “Fuck! Yes.”
That shithead. I thought I found them all. Do I tell her it was him? Will she inform my mom? Will Mom spiral into a drinking binge she’ll never crawl out of? What happens when Rachel finds out?
Holy shit.
She spins on her heel as she shoves the camera into my chest. “You are un-fucking-believable.”
Wait. What? “You think I put that there?”
She storms into the closet and throws my clothes out, hangers clattering as she rips shirts and jeans off them. A pile grows on the bedroom floor.
What the hell? “Why would I need a camera? I get to see you naked every day.”
She leans out of the closet, glaring at me like I just lit the house on fire. “Who else would do something like this, Danny?”
I clench my fists at my sides. “I didn’t do this, Mo. I can’t believe you’d think I would.”
She stands with one foot in and one foot out of the closet, arms crossed. “Then who? You tell me and I’ll take it up with them.”
Fuck yeah, she would. And the rest of my family would fall the fuck apart. I should’ve grabbed the cock sucker and choked him out when I had him by the throat.
I grind my teeth as my stomach hardens. I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place, screwed no matter what happens.
If I tell her, she’ll still hate me—it’s my fucking father, after all. Plus, my mom will probably go on the bender to end all benders. And I’m not even sure how this would affect Rachel.
Shit. Mo might even quit talking to Rach, considering it’s also her dad who’s the perv responsible for this—this—cluster fuck of epic proportions. How did I get stuck in the middle of this?
I push my fingers through my hair.
She tromps over my clothes to the dresser where she pulls open the two drawers my things are stashed in. Mo dumps each of them over the growing pile of my shit. “I can’t believe I actually started to think you weren’t as bad as I thought. That maybe—just maybe, I was wrong. I’m so stupid for letting you into my life like this.”
There are no words to fix this, not without creating another mess.
I try to grab her around the waist, but she swings away from me. “No. Don’t you—don’t touch me. Ever.”
“Mo. Please. I wouldn’t do this. You have to believe me. I love you. I’d never do something like this.”
She lets out a huff of a breath. “Right. And you’d never fuck a girl in the hallway of your parents’ house, or on the hood of your car, in the driveway where God and everybody can witness it. You would never ever do anything so perverted.”