“I brought you here because I wanted to ask you something,” Damien said suddenly, letting his hand that was in my hair fall to my waist.
“What is it?”
“Well,” he began, “now that you’ve discovered that your last boyfriend was gay, and we have been secretly dating, how would you like to date a straight man that you don’t have to keep a secret?” He paused for a moment before adding, “Even better, you don’t have to blackmail me into dating you,” he joked. Then, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a tight-fisted hand. His eyes searched my face as he opened his hand to display a silver snowflake necklace.
“Is this what Chase was going to say you bought?” I asked curiously, my eyes wide. I moved my hair to one side and turned around for him to put the delicate necklace on me. Now I had a bracelet and a necklace from him. He was really spoiling me.
“Yeah, but I swear if he had told you and ruined the surprise then he would’ve never seen the light of day again,” he stated as he hooked the necklace on my neck. As soon as the cold metal touched my skin and the clasp was connected, I spun back around to face him.
“I think Matt could have taken you.”
“That’s so hurtful,” he gasped, feigning a hurt tone.
“I’m sorry, but Matt’s just tougher than you,” I replied, giving him an apologetic smile for my opinion.
He mumbled a few words about how I better be joking, how he’d go to the gym more, and how no “girly-man” could take him. I knew he was kidding about the girly-man statement, because even Damien knew Matt played football, and was noticeably more muscular and taller than he was. There was nothing girly, weak, or hesitant about that boy and Damien knew it. If he had swung at Chase, it would have been Damien on the ground. Even if he didn’t want to admit it.
“So what’s your answer?” Damien asked, snapping me out of my mental reverie.
“About what?”
“My proposal,” he stated as if he was confused on why I wasn’t answering.
“I will be sure to ask my dad about my mom first thing tomorrow,” I said, letting a smile curve at the edges of my lips.
“Not that proposal, Jade. The one where you openly date me, for everyone to see, and know that you’re my girlfriend,” he stated to clarify so I couldn’t worm my way around answering any longer.
“I think you already know my answer to that.” I leaned in and gave him a gentle kiss on the lips before pulling away to answer, “Hell yes.”
Chapter 32
With the wedding quickly approaching, there were more people in the house than usual helping prepare for it. My father and the senator were constantly out, leaving me alone with strangers when I got back from school since Damien and Alyssa got out of school later than I did. For the past week I had been spending a majority of my free time in my room, or in the basement where the wedding preparation hadn’t touched yet. For the past few days, as we neared the wedding day, I had been doing my best to avoid the senator and my father, but with the wedding coming up in a few weeks, I found myself headed downstairs to my dad’s office for a much needed talk.
I tapped on the door gently, earning a response almost immediately.
“Come in!”
Sighing, I pushed the door open, poking my head inside first. Damien told me that I should talk to my dad about my feelings on the wedding, and to find out about his feelings on my new relationship. The senator told my dad about Damien and me last night, but I hadn’t seen my dad since. This was going to be our first real discussion about the changes in our lives since he threatened to send me to live in the middle of nowhere. Needless to say, I was kind of nervous.
My dad looked up as I walked into the room and as his green eyes met mine, he gave me a small smile. That had to be a good sign.
“Hey,” I began, approaching him. Despite the perfectly good desk and swivel chair that stood near the window of his office, my dad sat on the floor. In front of him were about five or six thick scrapbooks that were all lying open; my hunched over father returned his gaze to them.
“Hey,” he replied, his eyes squinting as he leaned forward to stare at a small picture in one of the larger books. A wide smile tugged at his lips before he patted the ground next to him and said, “Join me?”
I wasn’t sure what it was that I was joining him for, but nonetheless, I maneuvered myself to take a seat next to him, pressing my back against the front of his desk. “What are you doing?” I questioned, leaning forward to take a look at the open book nearest to me.
My eyes focused in on a picture of my dad pinching a piece of vanilla cake with white frosting between his index finger and his thumb and putting it into my mom’s mouth. She was wearing her wedding dress and smiling so hard that it was a wonder she managed to get the cake in her mouth. They looked so happy standing there without a single care in the world, just enjoying their special day. It was strange to think that only twenty-four years after this picture was taken, the smiley bride with all of that excitement in her eyes would be gone, and the groom who was staring at her so lovingly would be remarrying.
My dad sighed, giving me a forced smile. “I’m reminiscing.”
By being this close to him, I could tell that he had been crying a bit before I came in. His eyes were glassy and his nose was slightly red, as if he had just pinched it. He pointed at a picture in the book I had just been looking at. This one was a close up of my mom’s face. She was smiling brightly, flashing the dimples in her cheeks and all of her straight, white teeth. You could see the little freckle that sat above her lip, and the way her long eyelashes fanned out around her piercing blue eyes. Her golden hair was pulled up into a classy up-do that was slightly shielded by the veil that was clipped into her hair. She truly was stunning.
“She hated that picture.” He let out a shaky breath of laughter, his eyes lighting up as he said, “She looked perfect. Come to think of it, she always managed to look flawless somehow. She tried to toss this picture out after the wedding pictures came in, but I got to it first and made tons of copies. That didn’t stop her though. She would toss the picture whenever she had a chance, but I would just keep replacing it in the album.” He shook his head, as if he could just imagine my mother sneaking into the album and ripping up the picture. “She was crazy, that woman, but I loved her.”
I bit my lip, my eyes grazing over the picture again. That sounded like something I would do; make copies of the photo and keep replacing it. Maybe my dad and I actually did have something in common.
The room slipped back into a comfortable silence as we looked over the pictures. My dad’s eyes were still on the wedding album, and he had even pulled it closer to him so that he could flip through the pages, while mine had moved to another album; my album. It was open to pictures of me as the fat baby that I had been, but as I flipped the pages the pictures of me got older. I lost baby fat with each flip of the page until I was eventually a gangly and awkward looking teenager. I winced when I came to those pictures and hurriedly flipped backwards into the book a chunk, landing on a page that I hadn’t taken a close look at before.
“I remember this,” I gasped, crouching lower to stare at the picture closer. Next to me, my dad shifted to look at it too. It was a photo of my mother and I when I was about six years old, playing at a playground that was near our house. My mom was sitting on the swing with me propped up on her lap. Her arms were wrapped around my tiny torso and we were both smiling at the photographer, also known as my dad. My smile was so wide that you could see the spaces in my mouth where teeth were missing.
My dad chuckled next to me. “I do too. That was the day that you fell backwards off the swing. You cried for a while and your mother and I assumed it was because you fell, but then you told us that it was because you wanted to ride the swing and were too scared that you would fall off again, not that you were in pain from falling off.” He shook his head again. “You must have gotten your craziness from your mom.”
I smiled, my eyes on my dad�
��s bright expression as he looked at the photo.
“Then your mom came up with the idea of her holding you on her lap while she swung, and you were all smiles again.”
“I was a pretty smart kid,” I said pridefully. “I managed to get myself a car seat for a swing.”
My dad nodded. “You still are smart. You were also pretty manipulative as well.” His eyes met mine as he added, “Still are manipulative too.” The way he said it wasn’t a put down. In fact, he said it with what could only be described as exuberance in his voice. “Kind of like how I was at your age. I think that’s what angers me the most about you, Jade. You’re just so much like me.”
I couldn’t stop myself from gaping at him. He had the nerve to call me and my mom crazy, but he was the crazy one.
“You can’t be serious.”
He nodded. “I was a bit of a rebel myself too. You aren’t the only one allowed to run wild.” He furrowed his eyebrows. “Except, you are worse than I was.” To my surprise, he smiled after he said that. Then he used his words as a segue into a topic that I had anticipated when I came in here. “I was never romantically involved with my stepsibling,” he shrugged his broad shoulders, “but then again I didn’t have one.”
I rolled my eyes at his words, but couldn’t hide the amused smirk on my lips. That segue was sneaky, yet clever too. I hadn’t even had time to prepare to explain myself before he brought it up. “Yeah, well I’m a unique kind of girl, huh?” I replied, folding my legs into a crisscross position.
“Sure are.”
I waited for a second, expecting him to burst into a sudden fit of anger and yell at me for my poor decision, but the yelling never came. There was just silence. Silence that I broke. “So, you don’t care that Damien and I are...” I fished for a word to explain us, “involved?”
He furrowed his dark eyebrows. “Hell yeah I care. Any father would care if his daughter was dating a guy who once microwaved a container with aluminum foil in it.”
I furrowed my eyebrows, sure that we looked similar with our matching expressions. “He did what?”
My dad smirked. “He didn’t tell you that?”
I shook my head in response.
“Ask him about the things he’s set on fire in his lifetime. You may be surprised. The toaster story is probably the funniest.”
That made me smile.
“Well, as I was saying, of course I care that you two are involved. I understand that Tara is fine with it, but I’m a bit uncomfortable with the idea of the two of you being together and living under the same roof. With the wedding in a few days, it may be too late for that household discussion, but we may have to move one of your rooms. You rooms are too close, and I’m not too old to know what happens when the rest of us go to sleep.” Then, to my horror, he actually had the audacity to wink.
I gagged.
“So, if you two can stick to some rules about the household and can continue to stay out of trouble like you have been, then I’m fine with you two seeing each other.” He sighed deeply before saying, “I am a bit sad about the Matt thing not working out.”
I smiled to myself at that statement. I guess he hadn’t found out about Matt’s recent sexual revelation. He’d find out soon enough though. I just wasn’t going to be the one to tell him. “Yeah, Matt and I just weren’t meant for each other. I couldn’t fully fulfill his needs.”
My dad gave me a stern look to which I just smiled innocently at. “Inappropriate,” he scolded.
I raised my hand to my head and saluted him. “Got it, sir.”
He rolled his eyes in response.
I reached for the wedding album that was in front of him and set it on my lap. My eyes flickered from picture after picture of the smiling couple. “So, what made you take this trip down memory lane?” I was trying to change the subject, but I was also curious. Who looks at photos from their wedding with their first wife when their wedding to their second wife was just a few days away?
“I like to remember. You may think that I forgot about your mother, but I didn’t. I loved her and I still do. I always will. She was my first love, you know.” He shifted his eyes downward as he said the last part. “I would have traded places with her in a heartbeat if it meant that she would be here with you. She was my life, Jade, and I would have done anything for her. I’d do anything for the both of you, even if you can’t see that.”
I knotted my hands together, focusing on them as I mumbled, “But you’re getting remarried so quickly. Why would you do that if you loved her as much as you say you did?”
“Your mother’s dying wish was for us to be happy, Jade. She wanted us to move on, and not live in the past. With that in mind, I tried to do anything possible to move on, and not wallow in her death. I had to try, and give you the best life possible, even if it meant me falling in love with another woman. Before I met Tara, I had met other women, and none of them were right for me—for us. Tara, while rough on the outside, does truly care for you, Jade. That’s why she’s okay with you and Damien being together,” he said with a knowing smile.
I let out a nervous chuckle. If only he knew the real reason why she was okay with Damien and me dating, then he wouldn’t be so pleased with me. “Do you even love her?”
“I really do. I grew to love Tara. You’re mother on the other hand,” he began with a breath of laughter, “I fell for her as soon as we met, and trust me, I fell hard. It was like a slap to the face—mostly since she slapped me when we first met. I knew after that not to stand behind her when she was talking with her friends. She was such an animated talker that she used her hands a lot when she spoke.” He paused to scratch his chin. “I’m not sure if that was a good or bad thing. Bad being that she bruised me on our first meeting, and good being that she surely knew how to leave an impression on a guy.”
“Literally,” I pointed out, earning a grin that stretched from ear to ear.
“Yeah, literally.” He leaned forward suddenly grabbing a dark blue album that was a few feet away. He pulled it toward him and placed his hand on a picture of my mom when she was younger. Her legs were long and toned, and she was wearing a fashionable pair of high-waisted pants, with a crop top. The styles from back then really had come back. In the picture she had to have been about eighteen or so for how young she looked. Her golden hair was raked into a neat side pony tail, and the seductive smirk that she was giving the camera was sure to melt the hearts of any guy within a ten mile radius. No wonder my dad had fallen so hard.
“All of these old pictures of her remind me of you now. You always looked more like me, but as you get older you grow to look more like her.”
He flipped the page. “Especially here,” he chuckled, pointing at a picture of my mom wearing a backwards baseball cap. Her hair was spilling down from beneath the cap and I could see instantly what made him say it looked like me. Not only did I have my mom’s tall and lean body shape, but I also had her attitude it seemed. In the picture, my mom was glaring daggers at someone just out of view of the camera. The way her face contorted into an obvious look of jealousy and anger matched my expression perfectly. It was uncanny how our noses wrinkled in distaste the same way, how our eyes squinted, and left identical lines in between our brows.
I let out a small laugh at the picture. “We do. I never thought we looked alike before.”
He nodded his head, smiling at me. “I always thought you two looked alike. There was always something that matched.”
“Other than the craziness?”
“Yeah, other than the craziness,” he chuckled.
“Why was she making that face though?”
My dad sat up straighter, as if he was waiting for me to ask that question. “Get this, she was actually jealous of someone. Your mom. Jealous. It was so shocking and cute at the same time that I had to take a picture. She had no reason to be jealous. The lady who worked at the hot dog stand, who actually looked more like a hot dog than the franks she was selling did, was flirting with me.”
I laughed a real, full out laugh at his words.
“I know, right. As if she had any reason to be jealous.”
“It was just because she cared about you dad. Even if you couldn’t see it, in her mind she had to protect you. She didn’t want anyone to take you away from her because she loved you too.”
“I know she did, Jade, I know she did. I just wish that she was here for you instead of me. She would have been able to handle this better than I had, she would have known—”
“You did perfectly fine, Dad. You did the best you could with what you had, and now by this time next week we will have a family again. I can’t thank you enough and I know mom would agree with me when I say that you did it right and that I’m proud of you,” I added with a soft genuine smile.
“Thank you, Jade, it means a lot to me to have you say that. That is also why I asked Tara to put you in the wedding with us.”
I furrowed my eyebrows in confusion. As of yesterday I was just attending the wedding, and helping out with seating the guests and today I find out that I’m going to be in the wedding. Who throws someone into a wedding less than a week before the big day? I haven’t even had time to prepare. The only wedding I’ve ever been in was my Uncle Phil’s wedding, and even then that was when I was six. I couldn’t possibly remember what to do. Also, I highly doubt that I’ll be the flower girl in this wedding.
Then my dad spoke, clearing up some things for me. It was almost as if he had read my mind. “You are going to replace Alyssa as the maid of honor.”
Crush: A YA Romance Collection Page 23