Bad Divorce Read online

  Or was he sick? The thought of losing him hurt, despite everything he’d done.

  But maybe he just . . . needed her? For the first time ever, maybe her father needed her or wanted to spend time with her or—

  That hope was hard to stifle, especially because she knew better than to allow herself to feel hopeful when disappointment was the more likely outcome of interacting with her father.

  Luke brushed a hand down her arm. “What’d he have to say?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He rose up on one elbow, rotating so he could glance down at her. And not speak, apparently, because all he did was stare at her. Then lifted one brown brow.

  Bec sighed. “Don’t look at me like that.”

  The brow went higher. “Like what?”

  “Like you’re all . . . I don’t know, not judgy exactly, but disapproving.”

  “Becky, sweetheart—”

  “Don’t sweetheart me.”

  “Becky, then.” He paused, giving her a chance to insert another protest, but between getting so damned used to him and her friends calling her Becky over the last few weeks and feeling so unsettled by her father’s call, she couldn’t even drum up a correction. “It’s not like you to avoid things.”

  She scoffed. “I spent ten years avoiding you.”

  A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Should we call it a case of mutual avoidance?”

  “Sure.” A begrudging agreement.

  Her eyes drifted around her bedroom, deliberately avoiding his gaze as she took in the pale blue walls. Her linens were crisp white cotton because she’d always loved the way hotel sheets felt and had wanted to replicate that, but aside from one print of a Scottish seascape that CeCe had painted for her, the room was almost empty of personality.

  Or empty of her personality anyway.

  Even the living room and kitchen were mostly bare of knickknacks, the only items hanging on the walls pictures of her and her friends or things the Sextant had brought back for her—more drawings from CeCe, who always teased when presenting her with original artwork by saying Bec was the only one of the group who actually had wall space to spare; a fern leaf encased in amber from Rachel, who’d visited New Zealand with her other half, Sebastian; a pencil sketch of Berlin from Heather; pictures of Bec with Abby’s kids.

  Bec hadn’t printed the photos or framed them or even hung them on the walls.

  That had all been the girls. Two months ago, they’d bullied her into running to Target for hooks and frames, and they all had spent an entire evening hanging them up in her apartment . . . and also drinking wine.

  Which had resulted in a few crooked pictures. But Bec couldn’t bring herself to straighten them, even after they’d gone.

  Her friends had hung them for her.

  Her friends had given her a gift she’d never known she wanted.

  A home.

  Oh, she’d long used the convenient excuse of being too busy with work, of insane hours being the reason her apartment was sterile and barely lived in. She was hardly home as it was, why bother investing any time into decorating somewhere that she spent so little time in?

  But work wasn’t the issue.

  Not really.

  It was just easier to pretend it was work rather than to admit the truth. Because the truth was that she was the one with the problem.

  Why create a home when it would just be torn away from her?

  “Talk to me, sweetheart.”

  She shook her head, blinking back tears. “I j-just . . .” She sniffed. “Dammit. I never realized how much I was missing out on until you came back.”

  “What do you mean?”

  And so she told him everything.

  Not the bare facts of losing her mom, of moving, of boarding school.

  But how after her mom had died, her dad didn’t come home. He didn’t explain what happened. No, that dubious honor had gone to the person he’d hired to watch her while their family home was packed away and sold, any happy memories being regulated into the back of her mind.

  “I lost my dad then too. He was working all the time and when he was home, he couldn’t stand the sight of me.” She let Luke hug her tight. “He’d disengaged, become cold and unfeeling when I needed him the most. He hired people to take me to school, to feed me, to comfort me if I had a nightmare.”

  “Oh, sweetheart.”

  Tears burned but she blinked them back. “I just thought if I could be smart enough, good enough, pretty enough that maybe he’d notice—” She shook her head. “Folly. All of it. Because I had to find that worth in myself and it took me damn near twenty years.”

  “But . . .” He hesitated, but she nodded, encouraging him to ask. They were baring it all, baby. Full-on honest fucking communication.

  If he saw this part of her and left—

  Luke opened his mouth, closed it, then hugged her again. “I can see it in your eyes.”

  “What?” It was a stiff question.

  “You think this will make me run.”

  Well, yeah.

  She couldn’t even get her own father to stay.

  “I’m not leaving,” he said. “What I was going to ask is why you didn’t tell me all of this before. You made it seem—”

  “Like it was no big deal.”

  “Yeah.”

  Bec blew out a breath. “Don’t you see? It had to be no big deal or I wouldn’t have survived. I wouldn’t have been able to cope with my father moving back to California and leaving me in New York. I couldn’t have dealt with him not visiting, or flying me home over vacation.” Her voice dropped. “It was easier to just pretend it was me.”

  “Then me.”

  She blinked. “Yeah.” They’d created something that had resembled a home . . . or at least, the only sort of home she knew how to create, and that hadn’t exactly gone well. “I learned it was easier to put a very specific distance between myself and the rest of the world. It was safer.”

  “Sweetheart, I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s okay. I’m—I had Abby and Sera.”

  They were the only real caveat to her plans for distance. They’d barreled on through any walls, merrily leading new—and wonderful—women along with them. And Bec? Well, she’d started to feel a bit like the Grinch, her frosty exterior hiding a heart with the potential for growth on the inside.

  Now was that a millennial description of a classic children’s book or what?

  Fingertips brushed her bottom lip. “Why are you smiling when you’re so sad here”—he touched the spot over her heart then one temple—“and here?”

  “I am sad, but I realized that I have my friends, that I have you and that makes things hurt a little less.” She sighed, smile fading. “I don’t know why my Dad called because I didn’t pick up. I haven’t listened to the message. I didn’t—I don’t know if I even want to open that old would back up.”

  Luke sank back down to the mattress, pulling her so she was tucked against his side then slowly running his fingers through her hair. “That’s why you jumped me first thing when you got home?”

  Home. There was that word again.

  But the smugness in his tone also meant that she retained a little Darden spirit. She tugged at his chest hair, mock-glaring at the yummy expanse of muscle. “You jumped me, if I recall. I was just trying to give you a nice—”

  He tickled her side, cutting off her self-righteous rant by inducing giggles. “Dropping to your knees in front of a man tends to get you jumped.” She glanced up, laughing harder when she saw he was staring down at her and waggling his brows.

  “See if that happens again,” she muttered when she finally regained control of herself. “Not likely.”

  “Brutal.”

  “Damn straight.”

  He kissed the top of her head. “Tough. Beautiful. Smart. Sexy. Funny—”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Brilliant. Valuable. Worthy. Clever. Sassy,” he continued, staring down at her as th
ough just reciting character traits was a normal part of human conversation.

  “I—”

  Fingers covered her lips. “You’re all of those things, sweetheart, and so many more. Loving. Independent. Sweet. Vulnerable. Courageous. Resilient—”

  “Stop,” she said. “Please, Luke. I’m not all of those things. I barely hold it together most of the time.”

  “And welcome to the rest of the world, Becky. So many of us are just treading water.” He cupped her cheek. “But you. You are special. You’re so much more than a grieving daughter or a ridiculously smart lawyer. You’re more than just a friend or girlfriend or lover. You’re—”

  “Do not say special.”

  “Tough shit, Rebecca.” He cupped the other cheek, waited until her eyes were locked with his. “Tough shit because you are special.”

  “Oh, fuck,” she murmured.

  Because her eyes burned and her throat was tight and, dammit, there were those little drops of salty liquid leaking out of the corners of her lashes. They dripped down her cheeks, pooling on Luke’s chest.

  He wrapped her in his arms, held her tight. “You’re allowed to cry,” he said. “You’re allowed to feel. You’re allowed to be torn up because as much as you don’t want to admit it, the wound your father inflicted on your heart isn’t healed.”

  “Fuck off,” she snapped. “I’m fine. I don’t need—I’m not some broken thing.”

  “Of course you’re not,” he said, his tone soft despite her harshness. “But Becky, sweetheart, you’re human. And that means that your feelings won’t always stay collated into nice, neat files. Sometimes shit spills out and things get messy.”

  She pushed against his chest, but Luke wouldn’t let her go.

  And then she couldn’t let him go.

  She hadn’t been allowed emotions. Not for so fucking long.

  No. The reality was that she hadn’t allowed herself to feel.

  Because down that path came disappointment.

  Warm palms brushed over her hair, glided along her spine, slow, gentle movements that soothed her as she cried and cried and cried. Tears for her mom, for her father, and Luke, and . . . for her.

  She couldn’t ever remember crying for her own losses, though she must have at some point.

  Bec remembered her mother’s funeral, how there had been two caskets, one for her mom and one for her brother, Liam. She remembered seeing the wooden letters she’d picked out on a shopping trip with her mother. They’d been displayed in front of his tiny casket, and she’d grabbed the L, desperate to have something tangible of her mother and the baby when everything in life seemed so fragile and transient.

  Her father had torn it from her hands at the gravesite, tossed it down into the hole.

  She shivered at the memory of its thud hitting the top of the casket.

  And yet, Bec hadn’t cried. She’d understood that it was her job to be strong for her father, to be tough and resilient and—

  She shouldn’t have had to be any of those things.

  Not at seven.

  Not at ten.

  Not as a child.

  And it made her so fucking heartbroken that’d she’d needed to be that way just because her father hadn’t been able to put aside his grief enough to love her as she should have been loved.

  She was livid. So fucking angry that he’d forced her into that and that he’d reached out now? After years of ignoring emails and texts and voicemails, after only occasionally deeming her worthy of the rare one-sentence but incredibly terse reply. After everything, he wanted to speak with her now.

  Where in the fuck did he get off?

  Bec’s shoulders went tight as a sudden thought occurred to her.

  Luke’s hand stopped its soothing movement. “What is it?”

  “What if . . .” She shook her head. “It’s stupid that I assumed this whole thing has to do with some big behavioral or physical change of his. It’s been more than twenty years, he’s—” She broke off, inhaled and exhaled deeply. “Just because I’ve changed doesn’t mean that he’s going to be any different. He’s probably just wishing me an early birthday.”

  Except her birthday wasn’t for another month.

  He’d also never called her on or near her birthday before.

  This was different. She knew that as instinctively as she knew when to take on a particularly challenging case.

  “You don’t believe that,” Luke said after a moment.

  “No,” she said, her voice soft, her fingers trailing over his chest, tracing nonsensical patterns on his skin that somehow soothed her. “No,” she repeated. “I don’t believe that. He called for a reason. One I don’t know or can’t fathom, but something has changed.”

  “He’s getting older,” Luke said. “He might want—”

  “Don’t.”

  Don’t get her hopes up.

  Don’t make her feel something when she wasn’t sure she could ever forgive her father.

  “Okay,” he said, fingers slipping through her hair again, petting her, gentling her.

  They lay like that for a long time, their bodies intertwined, Luke’s hands moving over her body, and that comforting touch had the tension leeching out of her.

  “There’s only one way to find out what your father really wants,” he eventually murmured.

  Bec sucked in a breath, knowing what was coming but still having to ask anyway. “How?”

  “You listen to the voicemail.”

  Damn. She’d been afraid he’d say that.

  Nineteen

  Luke

  He watched the change wash over Becky.

  Her shoulders stiffened, the arm that had formerly laid pliant across his chest tightened, her breathing sped, and . . . then all that tension dissipated.

  “You had to go and say it, didn’t you?” Forced lightness laced her tone. “I was happy to pretend to be too busy, to forget the message was there, and then you had to be all reasonable.”

  Luke chuckled. “Sorry, not sorry?”

  “Hmph.”

  “You know I’m right,” he told her. “You hate that I’m right, but it doesn’t change the fact that I’m—”

  “Right?” She pushed up to sitting. “Why don’t you say it a few more times?”

  His lips curved and, not deterred by the sass in the least, he tugged her back down to his side. “I’m so right. Gloriously, perfectly right—”

  Her hand clamped over his mouth. “Yes, yes. Now you don’t have to rub—”

  He flicked his tongue out, teasing the sensitive skin on her palm. Becky jumped and tugged her hand away. “Really, Pearson?”

  Luke folded his arms behind his head. “Let’s continue with how I’m right.”

  “Ugh.” She started to get off the bed. “No,” she grumbled. “I’ve had enough of that—ack!” He’d snagged her wrist, yanking her to the mattress, and climbing on top of her. She was naked, a fact his body definitely noticed, but she was also running, so he focused on the more pressing issues first.

  “Listen to the message, sugar pie.” He bent his head, sucked one nipple in his mouth.

  “Luke!”

  “Do it,” he said, kissing his way down her body. Becky’s hands wove into his hair and pushed ever so discretely in the direction of her pussy. He dragged his mouth lower, brushed his tongue along the insides of her thighs. “Do it, and I’ll do that thing with my fingers again.”

  She stilled, lifted her head up to look at him. “Really?”

  He circled her clit with his thumb. “Really.”

  “I can’t believe you’re talking about my vagina and my father in the same sentence.”

  Slow circles. Gentle, teasing circles.

  “Technically, I didn’t put those two things together.”

  “You im—implied it.”

  “You inferred it.” He spread her wide, bent to suck her clit into his mouth.

  “Fuck.” Her hips jumped, her fingers went tight against his scalp, and his dick,
already hard and aching, turned to granite. As usual, things with his Becky had escalated further than he’d intended. “Stop using big words,” she said. “You know it turns me on.”

  Luke’s eyes shot to hers, and he saw the mischief in those gray pools. “Stop equivocating and just listen to the message.”

  “Mmm. Equivocating.” Her head flopped back to the mattress. “So. Many. Letters.”

  “You’re such a—” Fuck he couldn’t think of another big word, not when he was between Becky’s thighs, the salty tang of her against his tongue. There. Got one. “Such a hedonist.”

  She laughed. “Oh, my God,” she said. “We’re absolutely ridiculous.”

  “I’m the one trying to lick your pussy here.” He circled her clit with his tongue.

  “No, what you’re trying—ah—to do is oral sex me into submission.”

  He paused. “Is it working?”

  Laughter shook her frame, tightened her legs around him. “Yes, Pearson. It’s working. Stop teasing and make me come, and I’ll listen to the voicemail.”

  A flick of his tongue made her moan. “I understand where we went wrong now.” He slid one finger through her folds, pushed it inside. “Before,” he said as her breath caught and her hips tilted, trying to get him deeper.

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” she snapped. “I—oh fuck.”

  He’d done the thing with his finger.

  “I should have sexed you into submission.”

  Hazy eyes met his. “Never would have worked.”

  He repeated the thing with his finger, watching as her eyes rolled to the back of her head. “If I’d known this”—more finger—“it would have worked.”

  “You—ah—act like knowing how to find a woman’s G-spot should earn you a gold medal.”

  “I don’t give a fuck about medals, so long as this”—another teasing touch—“has you screaming my name.”

  Her mouth dropped open. “Oh, damn. You’re good, Pearson.”

  He grinned.

  “Fine.” She lifted her hips slightly. “Sex me into submission, and then I’ll listen to the voicemail.”

  “I thought you’d never ask.”

  “Men are such—” she huffed, but her complaint was cut off when she cried out his name.