Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 82973 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 415(@200wpm)___ 332(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82973 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 415(@200wpm)___ 332(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
“I did. I was alone for two weeks after you’d gone.”
“Two whole weeks?”
“I don’t need your sarcasm.” Dad frowned. “You have to understand… Nicole seemed stronger. I thought she was.”
Matt grappled for patience. “She’s eighteen years younger than you. From everything I’ve heard over the last week, she was emotional, needy, and fragile.”
Just the way Dad liked his women.
“Aren’t most of them?”
“No.” He’d met plenty of women who had backbone and grit. Trees’s bride, Laila, came to mind. She was a realist and a survivor. A fighter. “You have a type.”
After Madison, isn’t it clear you do, too?
Not that she was weak, but during their days together, her emotions constantly bubbled just under her surface. Once he’d dug and hit the wellspring, he’d felt how much she needed him—his attention, his praise, his touch. After he’d ripped away the barrier of her clothes and torn down the walls between them, he’d found her beautiful heart. Because she’d been hurt, it was fragile, like a foal testing its legs for the first time. And he’d enjoyed the power of knowing that, in their moments together, he alone had kept her upright.
“Maybe, but that doesn’t make me a bad person,” his dad argued. “We fought, sure, but—”
“A lot, from what I hear.”
“You know when I go all-in on something, I go hard. I thought Nicole was special. I saw us having a future together.”
“So what happened, really? Not the BS you told the police.”
Dad sighed. “Her sister was trying to convince her to move back home to Denver. Apparently, they’d been talking about it for a while, she said.”
Matt understood now. “And when she talked about leaving, you couldn’t stand the thought she might do you like Mom, so you crawled inside her head and tore her down—”
“I reminded her of all the reasons she left Denver and her manipulative sister in the first place. Then we argued. I walked away before either of us said things we couldn’t take back to give her time to think—”
“Meaning you used her feelings against her to get what you wanted. When she resisted, you withheld attention and affection because you knew it would make her weak. Am I wrong?”
He shifted in his seat. “It’s not like that.”
Matt leaned in. “It’s exactly like that. I’ve seen you work women over my whole life. I know how you operate.”
“That’s not true,” his dad blustered.
“Yeah? Was Nicole crying the last time you saw her?”
“Women do that.”
“Because you drive them to it. This is your MO, Dad. You find a pretty face, one who’s younger and vulnerable. You charm her and take her to bed. You undo her with sex. You crawl in her head, and you start digging for her weaknesses. Once you find them, you exploit every single one unmercifully until she’s willing to do anything to prove herself to you—bow, scrape, kiss your feet, suck your cock in public—”
“You heard about that?” He paled.
“With both Andrea and Laurel, yeah. You make these women crazy and desperate for your love and approval. Of course, you give them enough to keep them hooked while you turn them inside out until they beg and plead and cry and—”
“They like it.”
“Yeah, Nicole obviously did,” he snapped back. “You’ll be fifty in two months. Grow up and stop playing head games. Settle down. Find some peace.”
“I know what you think of me, son. You’ve made it clear. But can you look me in the eye and tell me you’re any better?”
Before his weekend with Madison, absolutely. Now… He wasn’t proud of the way he’d treated her, but he’d give almost anything to have her in his grip again—except risk her. “As usual, you’ve made a ton of excuses and taken zero accountability. I’ll be leaving shortly after dawn to catch my flight back to Louisiana. If you need anything before then, I’ll be in my room. But I think we’ve already said it all. You’re just not listening.”
Matt emptied the last of his coffee, plunked his cup in the sink, then headed down the hall, shutting the door behind him. The urge to call Madison and tell her he was returning to Lafayette was overwhelming. He harnessed the impulse by unloading on the punching bag that had been dangling in the corner of his room since high school. But a sweaty hour later, he still wasn’t sure how to curb his compulsions to pleasure her in the most deviantly delicious ways he could think of—and how not to turn into his dad.
Until he did, he had no business even talking to her. It nearly killed him, but when she texted him again that night, asking if everything was all right and if he was still speaking to her, he darkened his phone without reply, showered while drowning in regret, then fell into a fitful sleep, praying he’d think of a miracle cure tomorrow.