CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Candy
I’m sleeping in late this morning, knowing I don’t have any classes until the afternoon – and because I need some time to recover from last night. Even though we didn’t stay out too late, I ended up coming home feeling exhausted. And, more than that – feeling like I’d had the night of my life. I can’t imagine how good the weekend will be, two full days of uninterrupted Finn – it makes my mouth water.
I was sleeping in late because when I do wake up, it’s not to the sound of my alarm. It’s to the voice of my roommate, Alex, standing over me and calling my name until I open my eyes and look at her.
“What?” I ask, blearily. I am only half-awake, but when I take in the fact that Alex’s face is bright red and there are tears rolling down it, I’m suddenly as alert as if I’d been up for hours already.
“How could you do this to me?” Alex asks, her voice shrill and taut.
I sit up in bed, wiping a hand over my face to try to wipe the sleep from it. My heart starts thumping in my chest. I don’t know what Alex is talking about, but there’s no way this could be good. “What? What’s happening?” I ask, trying to get a handle on the situation.
“You’re supposed to be my friend,” she says, beginning to sob, and shaking her head. Her voice is getting louder and louder with every word.
“Alex,” I start, concerned, about to ask her what the hell’s going on. I have a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that I might know. I just don’t want it to be true.
“He’s my father!” she cries, and that sinking feeling goes right to the pit of my stomach and down through to my feet. I feel frozen in place. I can’t move. I can only stare at her in horror.
“You know,” I say, hearing my voice come as if from far away, somewhere inside me that is numb and in shock.
“Of course, I know!” she yells, furious tears following her words. “The whole town knows. Pretty soon, the whole art world is going to know – and you! You couldn’t even tell me – you had to do this behind my back.”
“What?” I ask, struggling to keep up. I hold the sheets of my bed against my chest, feeling totally vulnerable alone here in bed as she yells at me. If I’d had the time to wake up and get dressed, maybe I might feel better equipped to deal with this conversation. As it is, I’m on the back foot, trying to catch up.
“Here,” Alex screams, thrusting her phone towards my face. I only have a moment to take it in, to see that it’s a photograph of Finn and me together that she’s showing me before she whips it around again and pulls it back.
“Wait,” I say, scrambling after the phone, my hand dropping to the sheets when I realize I can’t reach it. “Who sent you that?”
“No one sent it to me,” she says, raging, her hands making sharp motions in the air. “It’s on the local newspaper’s site. Online. For everyone to see. They’re saying my Dad’s with an underage girl because of you! This will ruin his reputation!”
Oh, god. Everyone can see it. Everyone, with his hands on my body, and my skirt hiked up so high like that. And she hates me now – I can see it. It’s in her face, in her eyes, as they fix on me with such pain and loathing I can’t quantify it. She hates me so much, I’m surprised she hasn’t already tried to throw me out on the street.
Right now, the only thing that I can think of is that I want my best friend’s comfort. But that’s the one person right now who is definitely not going to be there for me at all. And it’s not even like I can blame her.
This is all my own fault. I should have come clean from the beginning that I was seeing Finn. I shouldn’t have avoided her all day yesterday so I didn’t need to lie – I shouldn’t have agreed with him to keep it quiet. I couldn’t help myself – but that’s no excuse.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her, but Alex just makes a disgusted noise and storms out.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Finn
I throw the car into park and jump out, too busy to worry about anything else. I still haven’t been able to get a hold of Candy, and I’m not going to wait. I have to go to her.
But now I’m faced with a problem. The fact that Candy shares a room with my daughter means I can’t see one without seeing the other. And if Lexie sees me there, she’s going to wonder what on earth I’m doing visiting her roommate instead of her.
It’s all out in the open now, and it’s only a matter of time before I will have to talk to Lexie about this. I’ll have to come clean. But if I can talk to Candy first… I have to. She needs to know. I’ll have to make some kind of excuse, tell Lexie I can explain everything later, and get Candy out of there. Then we can talk it over first before coming to Lexie as a united front.
It’s the only thing I can do. Since Candy isn’t answering her phone, I just have to go over there. It’s the only choice.
I stride over to the place where I know her dorm is – I’ve always known, I just didn’t realize who she shared it with – and hesitate one more time outside the building. This is it. My last chance to back out.
But I can’t back out. I’m not letting go of Candy, and if I’m going to be with her, then I will also make a commitment to look after her, protect her, do the right thing by her. That means I can’t leave her to deal with this – or even find out about it – on her own.
I have to do this.
I grip my hands into fists and head inside, jogging up the stairs to where I know I will find their shared dorm room.
I hear them before I see them, which isn’t a good sign. Students are gathered around the halls, some peering out of doorways and some just openly standing around to listen. A few of them nudge one another and whisper as I pass by, none too subtly. I grit my teeth. The news is out here, then. I was hoping to avoid this, but it sounds like the damage is already done. Now I just need to do absolutely everything that I can to mitigate it.
“No!” I hear her voice, my daughter. “No, you betrayed me. You broke my trust.”
“Please!” That’s Candy. I break into a jog to clear the last of the distance to their room and reach for the door handle. Thankfully, it isn’t locked, and I walk right in, shutting it behind me.
Silence reigns for just one moment. Both of the girls turn their heads to look at me, and I’m struck by what I’m seeing. The two people in the world who I care about the most at this moment, almost two halves of the same whole. The same age, the same major, the same dorm room at the same college. It’s no wonder that I was able to hit it off with Candy so quickly; my daughter learned her tastes from me, and Candy’s are almost the same.
The two people I care about the most. And both of them are crying.
A panic I can’t describe catches hold of my chest. As a man, there’s nothing more terrifying than seeing a woman that you care for with tears rolling down her face. The caveman in me instantly wants to go out and fix whatever it is that made them feel this way – with my fists if need be. But I can’t do a thing in this case – because the person who caused them to feel this way is me.
“Lexie,” I breathe, looking first at my daughter and then across the room. “Candy.”
“God!” Lexie bursts out. Her face is red, and I can tell already that she’s the one who’s been doing most of the shouting. “I can’t believe this. Who are you here for? Me or her?”
“I…” I look between them helplessly. “Both… I just came right over here as soon as I saw.”
“You make me sick,” Lexie screams, cutting me right to my core. “Both of you. Dad, she’s – she’s literally the same age as me. And you did this behind my back.”
“Look, let’s just take a moment,” I say, raising my hands, trying to infuse some calm into the room. I know that I’m the last person either of them probably wants to deal with at the moment – at least, that’s how I would feel if I was them – but I’m also the only person who can put this right. Or try to. “Please, sit down. Both of you.”
I gesture to the sofa on one side of the room and the ch
air in front of the desk at the other, but neither of them does as they’re told. They both just stare at me, Lexie with pure anger and Candy with utter sorrow. I can see without even asking how badly she feels. She told me that Lexie was her best friend. Why didn’t I listen? Why did I insist on driving a wedge between them?
I know why. Because even when I look at her now, all I want to do is go over there and take her in my arms. But that would only make the situation worse with Alex, and I can’t risk that – not right now.
“I want you to know that I’ve already been in touch with the paper,” I say, carrying on since they won’t acknowledge what I said already. “I asked them to take down the article, and especially the picture.”
“Will they?” Candy asks, a note of hope in a voice that is choked with tears. That, too, cuts right down to my heart. I want to comfort her. I’m split directly in half, one part of me wanting to cross and hold my daughter, the other to do the same for the woman I see beside me for the rest of my life. What am I supposed to do here?
“No,” I say, heavily. “I’m sorry. They said that it’s news, and they have a right to report on it. But they will issue a correction, indicating that you aren’t actually underage and their source was mistaken.”
“That’s all you care about?” Lexie cries. “That’s what you came over here for? To tell your precious Candy that your reputation won’t be ruined? What about me? Don’t you care about the fact that I know?”
“Of course, I care,” I say, turning towards her. “Lexie. I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to find out like this. We weren’t going to keep it a secret forever, I swear.”
“You weren’t… you… you had plans?” Lexie says, her eyes widening further in her red face. “How long has this been going on for? You talked about not telling me?”
“It’s only been two days, like I told you,” Candy says, her voice high and plaintive. “I swear, that’s all. It’s so new. If we told you, and it didn’t work out it…”
“What? It would be worst than this?” Lexie demands, whirling around her. “Really? You think so?”
“I didn’t say that,” Candy sniffs, wiping at her face to clear the tears that are still spilling there.
“Lexie, please,” I say, raising my hands again to try and give her a calming gesture. “Everyone out there is listening – there’s quite a crowd gathering. Let’s try and quiet down a bit and talk about this, okay? Like adults?”
“Oh, so this is still about your reputation?” Lexie shakes her head furiously. I just can’t seem to say the right thing – I keep digging myself deeper. I don’t even know if there is a right thing to say anymore. “You know what, Dad? Screw you. You can have my roommate. Hey, why don’t you just move in here for the rest of the year? I’m sure you’ll be very happy together.”
With those words, my daughter rushes forward. At first, I think that she’s rushing at me – that she might push me, or throw herself into my arms for comfort, or punch me, or something, anything. But then she pushes past me and grabs for the door handle, and before I can react, she’s gone, racing out into the hall and leaving the two of us behind.
“What… Lexie,” I shout, but it’s too late. She has no intention of coming back, and how can I blame her?
And what do I do now?
My gut, the fatherly instinct that has guided me for the last twenty years, wants me to go after her, to find her and comfort her until she stops crying. But my heart sees Candy standing in front of me, also upset, also in need of me. My heart is torn into two halves, and each of them is gone in a different direction.
I can’t be in two places at once. So, what the hell am I going to do now?
How do I choose between my daughter and the woman I know is the one I’ve been waiting for to share my life with?
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Candy
“Go,” I tell him. I recognize the indecision on his face, the way he looks after Alex, and then back at me, unsure which way to go. I wipe the tears from my cheeks stubbornly, sniffing, trying to make myself appear as calm as possible so that he won’t be tempted to stay. “Go after her. She needs you.”
“But,” Finn takes a half-step towards me, and I know I haven’t done a good enough job of convincing him that I’m fine. “What about you? I can’t just leave you like this.”
“Yes, you can,” I insist. “For your daughter.”
Finn makes a face, obviously torn with the idea of leaving me. I can see by the way he takes a half-step back again that he doesn’t want to just let Alex go like this. He wants to follow her. But he also wants to stay with me.
So, I’m going to have to make this easy for him.
“Go after her,” I say. “I’ll come with you – she’s my best friend, too, and this is half my fault. Come on, before she gets too far ahead and we can’t find her.”
It seems like that was all the motivation Finn needed to get moving, he leaps forward into action, striding out into the hall so quickly that I can barely keep up. I lock our door as quickly as I can and then rush forward, having to almost run to catch up with his long legs. People are staring at us from their rooms like Finn said, but I ignore them. None of that matters now.
If I was vain at all, I would care that I only managed to throw on the least matching outfit from the pile on my floor before Alex came back into the room and started yelling again. I would care that my makeup isn’t done, that my hair is a mess, that I’m red and streaked with tears. But I don’t care about any of that. Not when it comes to finding my best friend and stopping her before we lose our friendship forever.
I just rush after Finn, keeping up with him as best as I can as he hurtles through the doors at the end of the hall and down the stairs, where we just catch a glimpse of Alex heading outside before she’s gone. She isn’t too far ahead of us and moving slower than we are. We might be able to catch up to her before it’s too late.
We rush together down the stairs, and I almost think once that I will trip and probably break my ankle on the way down, but I don’t. Instead, we make it outside, dash along the paths towards the parking lot, gaining on Alex all the time. But she glances behind and sees us and starts to speed up, and my heart is pounding in my mouth, making me think that we won’t get to her before she reaches her car and she’s gone.
She reaches her car as Finn is just entering the parking lot, me a little way behind, and now we have the advantage because she still needs to unlock the door and get inside and put the keys in the ignition. It’s as we approach her that my attention is taken by something else – a man off to the side with brightly-dyed hair, smirking and watching us with his phone raised in front of him, clearly taking pictures or video of the whole thing.
And something comes back to me just at that moment, as he takes a picture and the light on his phone camera flashes. I remember last night, thinking I saw a flash of light, thinking I heard the noise from outside the room a little louder. I opened my eyes and the door was closed, and I thought that I must have imagined it. But now I know. If someone managed to open the door and get their phone angled inside, and then took a picture with the flash on…
“Wait, Lexie, please!” Finn shouts, but Alex’s attention has been drawn to that man now too, and she stares at him with an angry gesture as he takes another shot.
“What are you doing?” she shouts, half-in her car, almost ready to take off. “Stop taking pictures!”
And then Finn’s steps falter, and I almost run right into him. Because he’s also staring at the man with his phone – a man who is now openly laughing and grinning at what he sees.
“Robiye?” Finn asks, and I know then that he knows this man – and by the tone of Finn’s voice, I’m guessing that he might just be the source of all of our troubles so far.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Finn
I stare at him, open-mouthed. I can’t believe what I’m seeing. I know for a fact that Robiye isn’t a student, and nor does he teach in any way. There
’s no reason for him to be here on campus, that I know about at all. Which means that he’s here on purpose – to document the fallout of his plan.
He’s the one who sent the picture to the paper. The one who told them she was underage to try to ruin my reputation. I can see that now. He’s such a petty little man and always has been. After I ignored him in our meeting, he clearly didn’t take it too kindly.
I see it all in a flash. I understand everything. Everything, that is, except for this ridiculous over-reaction. It was a meeting. If you want to get revenge, you take your business elsewhere – you don’t try to ruin a man’s personal life.
“Hi, Finn,” Robiye says cheerfully, waving at me. “Smile for the camera.”
“You smug little idiot,” I hiss, advancing towards him. He takes a step back, hiding behind a car, though the camera is still trained on me. “You took that picture, didn’t you? You made up that story.”
“I didn’t make it all up,” Robiye says. “You were still sleeping with your daughter’s best friend. Even if it isn’t against the law, it’s still a pretty good story. I can think of a few blogs that are going to love running with this footage.”
I growl low in my throat, moving towards him again. Now, the only thing between us is Lexie’s car. She’s still half-standing, one foot in the driver’s side and one on the ground, holding onto the door for balance, watching us uncertainly. “You set me up,” I say, shaking my head at him with fury. “Because I wasn’t interested in your presentation?”
“That’s right, Finn,” Robiye says, pouting as he poses with one hand on his hip, the other still holding the phone aloft. “So you’d better not cross me again. I’m a superstar, and you’d better start treating me that way if you know what’s good for you.”
“For god’s sake,” I snarl, moving to go around the car towards him. “You think I care about that right now? Your presentation was boring, Robiye. I don’t like your art and I never have. It’s a commercial dross. Take it to another gallery and get out of my face, before I shove that phone down your throat.”
My Roommate's Dad: An Instalove Possessive Age Gap Romance Page 7