Ruthless Daddy_A Romance Collection

by Emily Bishop

  Careful, Holzman. Be very careful. You can’t fall again.

  Chapter 8

  Olivia

  Twelve Years Earlier

  My pompoms swung at my sides as I walked home, legs springing lightly. It was the middle of March, an unusually vibrant spring day, and the clouds parted to reveal a still-blistering sun. I hadn’t worn tights with the cheerleading outfit, and my legs were naked. I’d wanted nothing more than to take the long walk back to my parents’. Nothing more but to hum in my own thoughts, daydreaming.

  Eric. Eric Holzman, the boy next door.

  Wasn’t that always the cliché? I thought about him endlessly, bringing my fingers between my legs as I lay back in bed at night, staring at the glowing stars on my ceiling. I’d known him since we were eight years old, two bright-eyed, fearful kids, both anxious in front of our fathers. Me, anxious to become whatever it was my father wanted me to be. The best at school. Cheerleading captain. Youthful, good.

  And Eric, fearful that his dad would beat him, would tell him that he was no-good—that he wished he’d never been born. I’d heard the fights echoing out from their house for the past ten years, and they chilled my blood. Nearly once a week, since we were ten or so, Eric had slipped in through my window and burrowed himself beside me in bed, quivering.

  Now, those nights he crept in sizzled with a different energy. More than once, I’d felt his dick against my thigh. My eyes had flickered toward his as we whispered in the night, my stomach clenching with desire to kiss. To draw my tongue along his. To taste him. But knowing we were merely two rooms away from my parents’ sleeping forms kept us separate, two islands.

  I approached my house from the east end, watching as my mother swayed back and forth on the porch swing. I swung a pom-pom into the air and waved it, loving the broad smile that graced her face. At just over forty, she was a youthful mother, yet dutiful to my father’s will. She often told me only that my duties were to Anthony Thames. That I was to pursue school only to return to our small town of Randall to “give back” to the community.

  “You can be a teacher,” she told me, stroking her fingers through my hair. “Or even a social worker. Something like that.”

  Although I got the best grades in school, I was constricted by my parents’ views of the world. They yanked me back fast when I mentioned I wanted to pursue a degree in science over in Chapel Hill. “Well, that’s quite a ways away, honey,” my mom had murmured, as my dad had scoffed, charging toward the fridge for another snack.

  I stopped at the base of the steps, looked up at my pretty mother—at the knitting in her hands, the needles slipping through the yarn. Her eyebrows furrowed, and her eyes crept toward the house next door. From it, the echoing cries of Eric’s father rang out. Isaac.

  Shivering, I drew up to the porch, staring at the windows of that little house. The window blinds quaked, as if they’d been hit by something. With my hand over my heart, I whispered to my mother.

  “Why can’t we do anything? Why can’t Daddy do anything? Doesn’t he have any control?”

  My mother moved from the porch swing and brought her hand over my shoulder, kneading at the tense muscle. Clucking her tongue, she gave me no answer. “Baby, I’m going to go check on the chicken. Why don’t you run inside and start practicing the piano? Maybe drown out a bit of that noise over there. Lord knows the neighborhood needs it. That terrible man. And all he’s doing is raising a terrible boy.”

  “I’ll be in in a second,” I said. “Just want to do the last of my cheerleading stretches out here before I go in. I don’t want to pull a hamstring, like Jessica.”

  My mother nodded, bopping her head into the darkness of the door. I remained, my fists clenched, eyes turned back toward that house. As if on cue, Eric bolted from the front door, his black curls flopping back and forth. He turned toward his father’s porch, where a large, menacing finger careened toward him.

  “Don’t you fucking dare come back for dinner!” Isaac growled at him. “You no good son of a bitch.”

  Eric hurried toward the side of the house, his face blotchy. As he turned toward his motorbike, his eyes green with anger, he found my face. It was as if he already knew I would be there, waiting.

  I hurried across the grass toward him, toward the heat and adrenaline coursing from him. I allowed my pompoms to fall to the ground, forgotten. They whispered in the wind.

  “Are you going to come with me, or not?” he asked, all hard angles. “Because I can’t fucking hack it another minute.”

  “Where are you going?” I asked him.

  “Anywhere.”

  I slipped onto the back of his bike.

  We sped down the gravel road, toward the outskirts of Randall, our hair trailing behind us. Placing my chin atop his shoulder, I wrapped my arms around his firm chest, the muscles that seemed so adult, so grown. This wasn’t the body of the fourteen-year-old who’d snuck into my room, four years before. This was the body of a man.

  Eric raced the motorbike into the deep forest trail, sliding us between the trees. My stomach whooped. With each passing second, I was sure that the motorbike would careen into a branch or a stump. But it didn’t happen.

  After thirty minutes of bolting through the woods, Eric cut the engine and ripped his leg from the seat, standing beside me. I inhaled the scent of him, swallowed. Get it together, he’s just a—perfect. He’s perfect. And hurt. And—

  He paced alongside me, his eyes all fire and brimstone.

  “I just want him to die, you know?” he spat. “I can’t believe I was born into that family. Why did he even want kids? I mean, it’s clear all he’s wanted to do since I was born is murder me. Well, I’m going to kill him.”

  Eric’s arrogance coupled with his volatility. I leaned back. “You don’t mean that, Eric. You don’t want your dad to die…”

  “I do!” Eric insisted.

  I blinked up at him, shaking my head, speechless.

  Eric sighed, gripped my arms, fingers tracing light lines. His voice grew softer, coaxing. “Hey. Hey, don’t look at me like that. Not like I’m a monster,” he whispered. His face grew closer to mine, his lips only an inch or two away. The heat of his breath danced across my lips.

  Oh my god, oh my god. It’s happening. Finally.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m just not used to it from you. Not around me.”

  I’d heard the rumors of his fights outside the high school. How he’d smashed a hammer through the front window of the football captain’s Mercedes. But always, when he crept into my bed—his head burrowed into my pillow—he was delicate with me.

  “I know.” He brought his hands to my hair and traced the strands down, toward my shoulders. I shivered, aching for him to kiss me. But instead, his voice grew even softer. “Why don’t we get the hell out of here, huh? Just take off down the road. Head west, like all those books you’re always reading. I can’t think of anyone else I want to be with. God knows I hate everyone else.”

  My heart hammered, balancing between what I knew my life to be—one charged with importance for my parents, and what I wanted: Eric Holzman and a world of freedom. Of science. Of learning. All of that waited outside the bounds of my hometown, far from Randall. Perhaps west, as Eric said.

  “We’re only a few weeks from graduating…” I said, trying to quell a smile. “Why can’t we wait until then? You know I have to do all the stupid family things. Walk across the bullshit stage. Make that speech for being valedictorian.”

  “The school won’t have a valedictorian if you run away with me right now,” Eric said, growing more insistent. “And wouldn’t that be the talk of the town? Class Queen heads off with ultimate Bad Boy. They’ll write about it in the newspapers. We’ll be runaways. All those years we were fooling them. That we had a secret. And that secret was that our friendship? It was stronger than anything else in this dumbass town.”

  My stomach clenched at the word “friendship.” I glanced toward the trees on either side, at the d
arkness faltering over the limbs. We were standing in shadow, lit softly by the stars.

  I wanted to go with him. Friendship, huh? Wanted to say it.

  But instead, my father’s voice echoed in my head. He’d spent my life whittling me away, ensuring I wouldn’t “muck around’ with that Eric Holzman. Once, when he’d spotted me eyeing Eric across the parking lot of the high school, my father had threatened to move us from our family home. “If you so much as talk to that boy, Olivia, I swear I’ll rip you a new one,” he’d said.

  “Naw, you’re too good. Aren’t you?” Eric asked me, expression darkening. “You would never come away with a guy like me. I heard what’s his face, Freddy, was gonna ask you to that stupid carnival dance. Are you going to go with him? That blond wonder?”

  I shrugged, my cheeks burning bright. My mother had brought up the fact that Freddy was going to ask. His mother worked alongside her at the downtown humane society, and the pair had conspired—hoping their two “goodie” kids would join hands in, if not matrimony, then surely for an hour or two of holding hands at the carnival.

  I only cared about Eric. But what could I do? I was friggin’ eighteen years old. All I had was Mom and Dad and that house. No money, no nothing.

  Except for Eric. You have Eric.

  Or did I?

  “That must be a yes, huh?” Eric sighed. He brought his leg over the front of the motorbike and switched on the engine. “What the hell did I expect, anyway?” he called, as we sped out of the trees and back toward home. “Better for me to head home. It’s like my own fucking version of suicide. Except it’s lazy. I don’t have to do it myself.”

  Chapter 9

  Eric

  Present Day

  “Come on, baby,” I sighed, bringing my hands beneath Maggie’s armpits and lifting her skyward, into me. I brought my sunglasses over my eyes, nodding toward the funeral director beside me—a man named Conner Cook, who’d told me we went to high school together.

  I hadn’t remembered him. He was another blurry name, another faceless body. His hair had strung out, revealing his balding scalp. And he gazed at me with an almost wonderment, as if he seeing a ghost.

  “Well, that’s it, then,” he said to me. “The funeral will be in four days’ time. I’ll arrange everything from here.”

  “Thanks, man,” I said, slipping my hand into his and shaking it. “Really do appreciate it. I mean. The old man. I can’t say I ever thought I’d be handling this. But then again, who else would?”

  “He didn’t have anyone else in the world but you,” Conner agreed, his eyes turning toward the carpet. “It’s the right thing to do, you know. Following up with him like this. We all know the way he treated you.”

  I strode toward the steps, hating the way he looked at me. Like a fucking victim. Sure, everyone knew the old man had torn into me: blasting my skull against the refrigerator, that time, until blood had trickled down my chin. Why hadn’t I fled earlier, before that godforsaken night at the carnival? Why hadn’t I raced away from all of them—from the assholes who pitied me and the prick who beat me?

  Of course, I already had the answer. But I stamped it out. Too risky. Too much at stake, now. No messing around. Fuck!

  “She’s a cute one, you know,” Conner said to me, as I eased from the front of the funeral home. Maggie’s head nestled against my neck. “Did she ever meet her grandfather?”

  “Naw, man. I haven’t been back,” I told Conner. I felt strangely on display. This nerdy man wanting to connect with me, if only because we’d had the same fucking math class or some shit. “I’ll see you in a few days. You’ll put the information in the paper? Not like anyone will want to come say their respects.”

  I drove the familiar route from the center of town toward the old homestead, leafing through my pocket to draw out the jangling, rusty keys. Maggie cantered behind me in the grass as I walked toward the door. To the right, Olivia’s parents’ house stood sturdy, proud, its swing out front swaying in the wind. I imagined all those afternoons, so conscious that Olivia’s mother’s eyes were upon me. Studying my every twitch. As if I would bolt toward her, set fire to her house…

  “Where are we, Daddy?” Maggie asked from behind, her voice sweet and lilting.

  A wave of horrible memories flung through me as I turned the key through the front door. My voice was unsteady. “This is where your daddy grew up,” I said. “I moved here when I was eight years old. That was only four more than you are now.”

  I turned the key in the front door, opened it, then took my Maggie’s hand.

  “Four more,” she repeated, unsure.

  We entered, and the stench of it hit me like a brick. The place smelled of an aging man. Of a sick man. A man who probably maintained a diet of hamburgers and French fries throughout the twelve years since I’d been gone. His scraps had been my primary diet, when Olivia didn’t take care of it. “Have a freakin’ carrot every once in a while,” she’d sighed several times, her eyes bright. “I’m not your mother, but you’re looking a little lacking in nutrients, kid.”

  Kid. It was what she’d called me, until the attraction had grown too great. Until I’d become a man, and she’d been totally overwhelmed by my presence.

  Inside, I felt like I was walking into a museum. Maggie scampered on ahead, diving through the kitchen. “Careful, Mags!”

  “Yes, Daddy.”

  I gazed at the old baseball card portraits on the wall as I walked—none of them outrageously expensive, yet all of them things my father felt proud enough to hang. He’d blathered on about the players while drunk, delivering information about stats, about dates and years. “You weren’t even a bean in your momma’s eye when this happened,” he’d said once, drunk out of his mind and faltering to the floor. “But I remember it clear as day, son. And it gave me life to see it. I always wanted you to do something big like that, Eric. You have the name for it. Eric Holzman. Sounds like a fucking player, doesn’t it? Sounds like you should be able to go out there on that field and be somebody.”

  Maggie screeched from the kitchen, galvanized me out of memory.

  I ran forward, heart pounding, and found her atop a dining room chair, reaching up toward a small collection of stuffed animals, peppered out on the old cabinet. The cabinet had belonged to my grandmother, before she’d died when I was around twelve or thirteen. I still remembered carrying that fucking bulky piece in, my fingers straining beneath it as my father had yanked it from the other end. “You gotta lift with your fucking knees, boy. Not your back!”

  “Down from there, Mags. I’ll get it.” I lifted her from the chair, one-armed, then used the other to grab a teddy bear off the edge. It was pale blue, worn out. It had belonged to my mother when she was a kid—and she’d kept it around to up the kitsch of the kitchen. The platters in the cabinet were similarly silly: celebrating various Fourth of Julys and the Queen of England’s birthday, that sort of shit.

  Maggie clung to the teddy, pressing its face against her chest. “What is his name, Daddy?” she asked.

  “I don’t think he has one,” I said. “Why don’t you name him yourself?”

  Maggie rushed back toward the front room, then bounced onto the dusty sofa. She sneezed, and I brought her a Kleenex, stroked the top of her golden head.

  Twelve years of the old man living in this stuffy existence, all alone. Where the hell was I supposed to begin with all his junk? How was I meant to make peace with it?

  “Daddy?”

  “What is it?”

  “I named him Armie,” she said, matter-of-factly. “Is that okay?”

  “Sure thing, sweetie,” I said.

  Fuck, this place was a mess. I couldn’t clean this shit on my own, sort out the dick’s affairs with Maggie hanging around in this hole, waiting. I brought my fingers across my growing, dark beard and glanced toward Olivia’s house. I hadn’t yet drawn up a response to her letter, although Max had been a constant in the back of my mind—forcing me to question what kind of fa
ther I wanted to be to him. What kind of father I wanted to be remembered as, if he was one day diving through a collection of my junk. One day, staring at a goddamn teddy bear and remembering what a goddamn piece of shit I was.

  Dad had a stack of bills on the counter, sliding over and scattering into the sink. Beside it, I found a pad of paper and a blue pen, uncapped. I wrote out the letter, quickly.

  I couldn’t be what I wanted to be for her. That romance, love, between us, was beside the point. I’d driven a stake through any beauty we might have created together when I’d set that carnival on fire. When I’d left.

  But meeting for our son’s sake wouldn’t hurt. I had to know more about Max, things only Olivia could tell me. I wouldn’t be Max’s Isaac. I would be me. I would be to him what I was to Maggie, and that was fucking that.

  No complications.

  No matter how much I wanted to pull Olivia out into my car and bring my cock into her, watching as her face drew back into a soft smile.

  Chapter 10

  Olivia

  Max stumbled behind me on our walk from the library that afternoon, his curls swirling toward his T-shirt. My bag was burdened with books—ones of far-off places, of adventures I’d never been allowed to take. I’d fallen into reading as a necessity, as my body had given in to the weight of having a child. How my skin had strained against Max, his head pushing out, creating space. “You’re carrying a boy,” my father had told me, far too early to tell. His voice had been a grunt. “Damn it. Of course that asshole forced you to have a boy.”

  As if Eric had had any choice. As if he’d premeditated my pregnancy.

  The letter had been slipped into the mailbox, unstamped. I held it aloft as Max slipped onto the porch swing, his eyes skimming over the first page of a book series. The kid was so often reading, and it made me warm inside. I wanted to follow his thoughts like a stream.

  I leaned against the porch edge, snaked my finger through the envelope, and drew out the letter—written out on yellowing paper.