“What do you think of your new sisters? I know you’re all grown adults, but maybe you can all try to spend a little time together after we leave? You’re family now. You should know each other. Be there for each other.”
“I don’t know about Coco. She seems to have a stick up her ass,” I said. “But that Addison. What a looker, am I right?”
I tested him, though he was so dense he’d never know it. His face turned a shade of crimson, his smile washing away. “Wilder, don’t speak that way about your sister.”
“Kind of hard to be sitting across the table from one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen and think of her as my sister,” I said, taking a careful sip of coffee. “I’m an adult. She’s an adult. Things happen…”
My father went to speak, but the words appeared to all jumble before they had a chance to make it out of his mouth. He was flustered, and Vince Van Cleef never got flustered. He was a smooth-talking salesman. A guy’s guy and a lady’s man all rolled into one. He had a comment for everything and could talk his way out of any situation. But me talking about the hotness of my new stepsister got him all kinds of flustered.
“You won’t speak about Addison that way,” Vince growled like he did when I was a troubled teenager. I knew that tone all too well. My mother shipped me off to stay with him every summer until I turned eighteen, hoping I’d come back a reformed man. It never worked. It wasn’t until she died, that I was forced to grow up and change my trouble-seeking ways. “Do you understand me?”
I shook my head and stared out the window. The city was one giant all-you-could-eat buffet of beautiful women, many of them passing by in their Burberry coats and Manolo heels with their exotic good looks. But none of them held a candle to Addison.
It was only a matter of time before Tammy Lynn was ancient history, a blip on the timeline of Vince Van Cleef’s life. And yet I had to suffer. I had to let the woman I loved go so that my love-addicted father could stick his dick in something that made him feel special for a year of his pathetic life.
My mind wandered to dark corners, imagining what could happen in a year from now. I imagined bumping into Addison out and about, seeing her on the arm of some new guy. I imagined his hands cupping her face and his cock buried in her tight pussy. The one that belonged to me. The one she let me own. The one I never intended on letting go of, no matter how hard things got.
Addison was my one in seven fucking billion.
“Wilder, I’m talking to you,” my father’s voice boomed. “I said, do you understand me?”
I nodded in an attempt to pacify him, though I didn’t understand him at all. No one did. All I understood, and all I’d ever understood, was that Vince Van Cleef was a selfish asshole.
“Anyway,” he said. “I was going to talk to you about this little real estate venture I’ve been working on. There’s a network of timeshares in Boca Raton that I think will…”
I let him drone on about some surefire timeshare deal. It would “only” cost two million dollars and he’d do all the legwork. All I had to do was plunk down a bit of cold hard cash, which he insisted was pocket change for me.
I stared down into the bottom of my coffee cup as he continued. It seemed he only ever contacted me when he wanted money or some kind of assistance anymore anyway. At fifty-five years old, Vince Van Cleef had lived a dozen different lives and had not a damn thing to show for himself. He strolled around town, cruising from showing to showing in his 1998 Boston green BMW Z-3 like he was reliving his glory days when the market was hot and women threw themselves at him.
It was all a façade.
I didn’t know much about Tammy Lynn other than the fact that Addison didn’t say a whole lot about her. I knew she’d been married just as often as my dad, and that she didn’t seem too involved in Addison’s life, but I was certain she deserved better than Vince. Most women did.
“So, what do you say, son?” My dad used his best loving father voice. “About the investment?”
I yanked the door open to the day spa Coco had picked and was immediately ushered to a changing room and outfitted with a robe and slippers. Moments later, I was escorted to a private room where my mother and sister were already sipping cucumber-infused waters as attendants kneaded and tugged their hands like bread dough.
“This is the life,” my mother sighed. “Oh, gosh, I needed this.”
Coco and I exchanged looks, quietly amused at my mother pretending to have a stressful life. Her simple, small town life in Darlington, Kentucky working in a real estate office paled in comparison to the stress we put ourselves through to make something of ourselves. But we said nothing, like the good daughters we were.
“So, how exciting is it that you have a brother now?” My mom beamed. “And he lives here in the city! I mean, if you ever wanted to spend time with him, catch a bite to eat, need help hanging a picture—whatever—I’m sure Wilder would be there in an instant. He seems like a good boy.”
I hated that she talked about him as if he were a child, like the friendly neighborhood boy scout always willing to lend a helping hand or help an old lady carry her groceries inside.
Wilder was so much more than she knew, and he was so much more than I could ever explain. The pain of separating myself from him and attempting to drown out the thickness of the emotions that weighed heavily on my heart only served as fuel to the fire of resentment that’d burned in me for so long.