Three Broken Promises (One Week Girlfriend #3)(53)
Author: Monica Murphy

“You think I didn’t want to be a part of your life? You think I stayed away from you because I wanted to?” He brushes his hands down his front, straightening his shirt that I wrinkled, then runs them through his hair, smoothing out the unruly strands. “Your mother did her best to keep me away from you.”

“Why?” I don’t believe him. I know she hates him, but she wouldn’t force him to stay away from me . . . would she?

I hid away and cried a lot when I was a kid, wishing my dad cared enough to want to spend time with me. She knew this after finding me more than once. I’d been jealous of what Danny had with his dad. A solid, loving father/son relationship. They would go out in the yard and toss a baseball or football back and forth to each other. They’d go fishing together. They included me all the time, always making me feel welcome, but deep down inside, I felt like an intruder. A jealous, unloved interloper.

“She was afraid I’d take you away from her, I think. I don’t know. Our getting together was nothing but a chance encounter gone completely out of control. When she told me she was pregnant with you, I tried to do the right thing and marry her. I looked forward to being a father.” He pauses and takes a deep breath, his shoulders slumping against the wall he’s still leaning against. “Within days of moving in with her, I knew we’d made a bad decision. We didn’t get along. We fought all the time. She hated me, resented that I’d impregnated her and took away her freedom.”

There’s that damn word again. Freedom. Jen constantly struggles for it and I constantly try to hold her down. Maybe I’m more like my father than I know.

“I always thought it was you who wanted to stay away,” I say, my voice surprisingly calm. Though my head is spinning with everything I’ve discovered. “Mom said you hated Shingletown and that you were desperate to get away.”

He laughs, but there’s not much humor in the sound. “Your mom is right. I hated that stupid little mountain town. There was nothing to do, no good jobs. I was struggling. My father had cut me off, was dying and I had no idea. Twenty-eight years old and I should’ve had my head on straight, you know? I should’ve had it all figured out by then. But I was nothing but a big kid who wanted to party. I had no real responsibilities. Until you came along.”

I had no freaking idea he felt this way. That he suffered with all of this. Of course, he’s never really explained himself to me, while my mother would bad-mouth him every chance she got. Still does. I could call her at this very minute and she would call Conrad Wilder the scum of the earth and whatever other horrible name she could come up with.

“So why didn’t you two divorce?” That’s the one thing that’s tripped me up my entire life. If they hated each other so much and couldn’t live together, why not get a divorce and be done with it?

“It sounds stupid, but I don’t want her out of my life. Crazy, right? Maybe we’re just lazy. I don’t know.” He sounds like he’s trying to convince himself. “We’ve always stayed in contact, your mom and I.”

I’m stunned. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah.” His chuckle deepens. “We fight most of the time when we talk, so . . .”

Okay, now I’m completely freaked out. “But . . . I thought you hated each other.”

“We do. We don’t. I don’t know. Don’t question it, son. Even I don’t get it.” Pushing away from the wall with a heavy sigh, he goes to a chair and plops down in it. “We may drive each other crazy, but we’ve always had a connection.”

I don’t even want to know about this connection. “Have you two seen each other since you . . . first left?”

He smiles ruefully. “We have. Never for long, though—we can’t be in the same room for more than a day or two before we start arguing.”

Sounds familiar. Though Jen and I argue more because we fight our feelings for each other.

I want more with her, but I need to hear the whole truth from her lips. Maybe what the bartender at Gold Diggers told my dad is a lie. I hope it is.

But if it’s not . . . then I can deal. I have to deal. She’s the only woman I want in my life.

I love her.

Jen

I find a taxi parked a few blocks down from The District and hop in the backseat, rattling off Colin’s address and demanding the driver take me there.

“I’m off duty, girlie,” he grumbles, starting up the car anyway and shifting into park. “I’m taking a break.”

“Please,” I say, not about to make a promise of a big tip. He’ll probably think I mean something sexual, and that’s the last thing I want to deal with.

“Fine.” He pulls out onto the street, turning up the radio, and I’m thankful for the sound of the mindless popular song filling the interior of the cab.

The song doesn’t chase away my depressing thoughts, though. I should be relieved Colin confronted me, not that I really told him anything. I need to get out of here quick.

And I need to make sure he never, ever finds out everything. I don’t like to think about it. It’s scary to face what you might do when you’re desperate enough. I hate that I let myself become so weak. But I’d been trying my best to earn back all the money I lost. Dancing every night, working for hours in the exclusive lap dance room, touching those men in the most intimate of places in the hopes they would give me extra-big tips, which they did . . .

When the first one propositioned me, I turned him down. I turned plenty of them down. But after everything was stolen and I needed money quick, I finally, reluctantly, agreed one night. At least that guy was handsome. Probably in his early thirties and lonely after a bitter divorce, he told me all about his problems when we met after I got off work. He was nice and kind and gentle, and so very, very nervous. He’d asked for sex at first, but I told him I would only give him oral, so . . . I did.

And felt like the lowest of the low when he pressed the hundred-dollar bill in my palm after I finished. What had I done? What had I become?

A prostitute. A common whore.

I couldn’t go back home. Couldn’t face my parents after everything I’d done. I was ashamed. Disgusted with myself because I didn’t stop after that first time. I did it again. And again.

“Here we are, girlie,” the taxi driver says. Interrupting my depressing thoughts, thank God. I didn’t want to go there and ended up doing it anyway. “That’ll be twenty-two dollars.”