Strong Enough(34)

As though sensing that I’m about to argue, he reaches out and cups the side of my head, right over my ear, like he’s done for as long as I can remember. “Trust me, right, my Muse?”

I exhale. There’s no use fighting. I’ll never be able to change his mind. I know an unwinnable battle when I see one and anything involving my father when he gets like this gets that unique distinction.

“One of these days maybe you’ll trust me as much as I trust you.”

“I already do, sweetheart. It’s not a matter of trust. It’s a matter of love. I love you too much to risk you.”

“I know, but—”

“No buts. Please, Muse.”

I want to debate the issue. I want to argue until I’m blue in the face. I want to stomp my foot in a fit of temper. But I know there’s no point. My father is a negotiating genius. At least with me he is. He has this way of making me feel like an ungrateful, difficult child for squabbling. I doubt he thinks that for one minute, but he can damn sure make me wonder about it.

I exhale loudly. “Fine, but, Dad, I’m a grown woman. I’ve made a lot of sacrifices because of secrets and I’m getting tired of being kept in the dark about things that somehow end up affecting me anyway. So I’ll go wait for you while you talk in private with someone I evidently don’t even know, but be prepared. I want answers and I don’t want to wait too long for them.”

With that, I pin Jasper with a glare thrown over my shoulder and I set out to find the kitchen, which is conveniently located about as far away from the entry as it’s possible to get in this small place. Not that I’m surprised. Nor am I surprised when I hear the click of a door closing and go to find both Dad and Jasper no longer standing where I left them.

I have no choice except to wait. Not really, anyway. Jasper is about as close-mouthed as they come and my father . . . well, he won’t tell me a thing until he’s good and ready. So I’ll wait, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to wait in the kitchen, like a dog afraid to get up when my master told me to sit. I get up and go make myself comfortable on the worn couch in the living room. Although a tiny act of rebellion (which is admittedly ridiculous at twenty-four years old), I feel better for having moved to anywhere but the kitchen.

I pick up a magazine from the shelf under the coffee table. It’s a medical journal dated three years ago. Weird. As I flip through it, something tickles my brain and I glance down at the couch cushion. The faded plaid pattern is oddly familiar and I think this might be the couch we had in our living room in Treeborn when I was still in middle school. Has my father had this place since way back then? Some secret bat cave for whatever he does that I don’t know about?

That thought bothers me. At times like this, I feel like I don’t even know the man who raised me, just like I don’t feel like I know the man who brought me here.

Jasper.

He was an enigma to begin with, but now? Now he’s . . . I don’t even know what he is. Or who he is. I have only questions, only curiosities. Questions and curiosities and a strange fascination that I worry could consume me.

My father is alive and well. Without that nugget of fear and doubt taking up space in my head, Jasper could take over. But now I have a different kind of unease to take its place, one also focused on Jasper.

Before, I didn’t have to care that I knew so little about him. It didn’t really matter because he was a means to an end. I didn’t need to know. But now he’s got history with my father. Dare I make the same mistake of getting involved with someone my father knows again? It didn’t work out so well with Matt. And Jasper has the potential to hurt me far worse. I never found Matt’s fatal flaw, but I feel sure he has one. All the men in my life do, it seems. But Jasper . . . I can’t even imagine what his fatal flaw might be. I have a feeling that he could end up being mine, though—the thing that destroys me. Compared to Jasper, loving men who don’t love me in return is child’s play. Loving him could be the end of me, the end of the only Muse I’ve ever known.

But it doesn’t look like that’s going to be a problem. Our arrangement has come to an end. Once money changes hands, I won’t ever have to see Jasper again. And if I can’t see him, I can’t love him. Right?

Can’t see him. Won’t ever see him. Never again.

Oh God!

The fact that thinking about that causes me great sadness is even more reason why I should be glad our association is over. I’m better off without Jasper in my life. That much I know.

Lost in thought, I jump when the door flies open and my father bellows, “Muse!”