Daddy Knows Best Read Online Free Page B

wished I’d never met her, never met her mother, never been in Kefalonia in the first place.
    No. That was a lie. I didn’t regret it.
    But I may well regret what was yet to come.
    I left her diary open on her bed.
    The time for secrets was over.
     
    ***
     
     
    I was staring at my bedroom ceiling when the front door slammed. I checked the bedside clock. Two thirty am. The clattering around downstairs made it clear she was drunk again, but I made no attempt to go down to her. I was still wide awake when she made her way to bed, hardly breathing as I heard her moving around in the room next door. Finally, she was quiet.
    I must have been dozing when my bedroom door creaked open.
    “Andrew?” she whispered. “Are you awake?”
    I grunted, loud in the night. “Georgia?”
    Her scent hit me, dark cherry and vanilla. “You read my diary.”
    “You wanted me to,” I replied, simply.
    “I had a nightmare,” she said, moving closer. The air was like static, crackling in the space between us. “A bad one. You must have read about them?”
    I cursed the blood in my veins, cursed the way I wanted her. “You’re safe, Georgia, nothing can hurt you, not in this house.”
    “It can,” she whispered. “ Everything hurts me in this house.” I stayed silent, willing her away. “Can I lay with you? Just a while.”
    “This is a bad idea, sweetheart. You know it as well as I do.”
    “Please...” she said.
    She was so close, hovering by the bed in the darkness, illuminated by only the faintest glow from the streetlamps outside. I hated my own fingers as they pulled back the duvet. Hated my own hammering pulse, and the way I craved to consume her. She slid in beside me, clutching her knees to her chest to keep her distance.
    “I’m sorry I’m such a bitch to you. I’m a bitch to everyone.”
    “So, choose not to be,” I said. “Nobody makes you do anything.”
    “You could...” she began. “ You could make me do anything.”
    I sighed, changing the subject. “You haven’t been going to college. Why?”
    “I hate it there. I hate the people, hate the routine.”
    “You need to go to college. It’s your future.”
    “Who cares about my future?”
    “Your mother does. I do. You should.”
    “She doesn’t care. Not about me, not about you, either.” She let go of her knees, stretching out beside me. Her face was only inches away, close enough that I could feel her breath on my cheek. “Why did you marry her?”
    I smiled in the darkness. “ Love , of course.” I could almost feel her frown. “What do you want me to say? We got on, she was funny… driven… attractive. Our lives seemed compatible. I wanted a new life, a new start.”
    “You talk about all that in the past tense.”
    “Isn’t it past tense? She’s on the other side of the planet, you’re in my bed, her bed, talking about her like she was never here.”
    “She’s never here. Not when it matters. Never has been.”
    “I shouldn’t have hit you, Georgia. I’m sorry.”
    “I wanted you to,” she whispered. “I always wanted you to. I liked you being my daddy, Andrew. I liked it.”
    My cock betrayed me, my whole damn body threatening my resolve. My secret life itched at me, begging for confession. She can’t have seen the truth on my laptop, can’t have any fucking idea. I kept my silence. “What do you dream about?”
    She sighed and rolled onto her back, staring up into the darkness. “I’m trapped in a dark room with no windows, nobody knows I’m there except my mother, and she’s laughing at me. She laughs as the walls start closing in. I’m begging her to help me, to let me out, but she never does. I wake up just before they crush me.”
    “That’s dark.”
    “Had them my whole life. Nobody would rescue me, Andrew. Nobody even knows who I am, not really.”
    My fingertips touched her elbow, the contact sizzling all the way through my arm. “You’re not alone.”
    “There’s a darkness in me” she said. “I