Page 19 of Father Knows Best (A Family Affair #1)

ten

. . .

sutton

The New Reality

I couldn’t sleep a wink last night, but I refused to let myself toss and turn and keep Avery up all night, too. She only just officially moved in, I don’t want her to start sleeping poorly, especially with our wedding coming up.

When she got home from work yesterday, I told her I’d made a sale on a property in Half Moon Bay.

She kissed me, but didn’t wrap her arms around me the way she normally would, pressing to her toes and sneaking a kiss below the collar of my dress shirt.

“We need to talk,” she’d said, and my heart nearly stopped, my mind going to a million things that all led to me no longer having Avery in my life.

I don’t know why I went there, maybe it’s my greatest, deepest, most private fear?

Then she said “I talked to your father today, about your mother,” and everything shifted.

To find out after living an entire life of believing my father’s constant faithless fornication caused my mother’s untimely death that none of that was real... None of it was true. None of it happened, not the way I thought it did at least.

Glancing over, Avery’s hair strewn over her face, soft exhales parting her lips every few seconds, I’m overwhelmed with love for her. Love at first sight, that’s what I felt when I laid eyes on her last year, and every day since, I’ve fallen even harder. She’s perfect for me, of that I’m certain.

My chest constricts when I look at Avery and consider my father’s revision to history. He never loved anyone the way he loved my mother, he said, and that he loved her so hard that he couldn’t fathom the world at large knowing her faults.

I blink down at my beautiful fiancée, my soft-spoken, delicate, kind fiancée and try to place myself in his shoes.

What if Avery slept around all the time and strung me along?

I love her so much–would I love her enough to stay?

My father stayed. He said he stayed because having some of her was better than having none of her, more or less.

I try to imagine Avery in another man’s bed, with another man inside of her, and my entire body tenses.

He felt that. Every day.

And after I found the courage to Google the entire situation when I was in junior high, my father went from carrying the pain of my mother and her untimely end to having to balance that burden with my new, exposed, raw and very real wrath.

He raised me well. I went to the best schools, he always helped with homework, he showed up at every baseball practice until I quit, always attended back to school nights and chess club tournaments.

Though I held a painful and oftentimes confusing grudge against him from the adult ideas that I’d learned from the internet, he never punished me for my attitude, or treated me any differently.

As I got older, he did begin going out more, calling the nanny to take the spare room when he knew he’d be in when the sun was already up. Still, in those years, he never failed me as a father, though I put him to the test many times.

As an adult, I fell into business with him easily, becoming the best at what I do after years of watching him do it.

I tagged along to many showings, sat through papers being signed when my dad struggled between nannies—it made sense I followed in his footsteps, despite the fact that I harbored anger toward him for years.

But once I was an adult, I watched my father sleep around with women his age, my age and everywhere in between.

Once a woman waited for him in the lobby of Mercer on a Friday evening and he called her by the wrong name when he greeted her.

All signs pointed to the past being true.

Now, though, I’m not so sure I didn’t just see what I wanted to see.

Women were never in the home when I woke up. He never had a girlfriend. He didn’t remarry. He slept around, but is that such a crime?

Quietly and carefully, I sit up in bed, letting the covers bunch at my waist as I gently stroke my hand through Avery’s hair.

She doesn’t stir, and I take that moment to pull the sheet over her bare hip, and push strands of blonde silk off her cheek.

I kiss her, and carefully leave the room, pulling the door closed behind me.

He didn’t give me the contact information, but I have it.

I’ve had it for a long time. Years, even.

I’ve thought of calling—though in the past, for different reasons than I’m calling today.

Trudging down the hall, I slip into my home office and lock the door, settling comfortably in my chair.

Facing the window, I stare into the foggy early morning, watching troves of gray clouds tumble over the icy lawn, the sky settled atop my house on the hill.

I don’t believe my father would lie to me now, but the lie all those years ago is just as hard to process, though I’d be lying if I said I didn’t understand the thinking.

Pulling open my drawer, I retrieve the folded piece of paper from beneath my day planner, where the number has rested untouched for quite some time. Even when I moved into this home, I replaced the paper where it was before.

Unfolding it, I blink down at the name and number written in pencil.

Josie Allen. 415-966-8032.

I left my cell phone on the charger next to my bed, so I reach for my landline, and dial.

It’s early, not more than a few minutes after seven. I hope that I don’t wake her but more than that, I hope she answers.

“Hello?”

I don’t know what I expected, but her voice is aged, weary, and maybe some of that is the time of the morning but…

then again, my own father is nearly sixty years old.

I have to remind myself that the Josie Allen that exists in my mind is thirty years old, the same age my father was when he met Barry.

But it’s not 1998 anymore, and Josie sounds aged because she is.

“Hello.” I lick my lips, ignoring the nerves flickering in my hand as I grip the phone with all my strength. “This is Sutton Mercer. I am Margot Mercer’s son.”

There’s a pause, and the silence transcends a single thoughtful moment as two seconds bleeds into three, then four, and after what feels like a minute of full silence, I quietly ask, “Is this Josie Allen?” Maybe I should have started with that.

Then again, if she’d changed her number and this wasn’t Josie Allen, I’m not sure my announcement of who I am would’ve elicited a minute of silence.

“Sutton,” she says, as if my name is familiar. “Yes, this is Josie.”

I lick my lips and leap, spitting the words out before I lose my courage. “I called to understand what happened to my mother.”

An hour later, I return to the master bedroom, finding Avery in the same position I left her. She’s been working so hard lately, not just at work but with the wedding plans and getting her place cleaned up to list—I told her today, she needed to sleep in.

Yet so much energy courses through me after that phone call, I know as I spot her bare leg sticking out from our comforter that Avery will have to nap today to catch up on rest.

Sleeping in is shot.

I tug the sheet and blankets down, revealing her satin white pajama shorts, and so much sun-kissed, velvety skin that the morning wood that escaped me this morning due to overthought hits me hard.

Reaching into my sleep pants, I fist my hardened cock and stare down at the woman who is going to take my last name and bear my children, the woman who rights me in all ways.

She’s been hungrier for me lately, wanting things she’s never expressed wanting before.

I think about the way she put my hand beneath her panties the other day, standing in a stranger’s home as we waited for services to arrive.

Bold and so unlike her. I think the wedding stress is perhaps getting to her, so instead of unraveling her there, I choose now, crawling onto the bed over her body.

Held up on strong arms, I dip my head and press a kiss to her sleeping lips, my erection pressed heavily into her center.

Slowly, her eyes flutter open, and she blinks down at the way I’m caged over her body.

A beat passes and her lips part, and her eyes widen, and that’s when I know she feels me, hard and waiting, needing her more than I think I ever have.

I don’t even want to wait for her to get naked. I need to get inside of her, to feel the safety and warmth that only Avery provides. I press my mouth to hers again, feeding her more growls and moans than I ever have before as I reach down and tug her shorts and panties aside.

She reaches down too, but slips her hand in my pants, pulling my hard cock free. She slowly strokes me, and it feels so good, but I prefer being inside of her to anything else in the world.

Her tongue slides against mine as I nudge her legs apart, and she aligns my slippery cockhead with her center. She moans into my mouth as I sink inside of her, finding her swollen and wet, like she was aroused while she slept.

I brace myself on one arm long enough to rip open her satin sleep top, buttons skittering across the marble floor.

She gasps but fills her hands with my hair as I dip my head, sucking the tip of her breast into my mouth, maintaining the pace between her spread legs.

My cock is so hard, she feels so warm, her lips and her pussy are so soft— “I love you,” I breathe out, rutting into her harder, our groins kissing, the bed squeaking.

I never go quick with Avery, I take my time, making love to her in a way that I know unravels her, making her orgasm with my hands before she comes from me inside of her. But this morning, I can’t slow down.

My palms skate over her breasts. I grab her, pinching a nipple with one hand while crashing my mouth to her collarbone, covering her in errant, sloppy kisses.

She tugs and the ends of my hair, drags her nails down my back, digs her heels into my bare ass. I can’t stop telling her that I love her as my momentum shifts from eager to wild.

The bed knicks the wall as I sink deeper inside of her, each thrust more urgent, less skilled, sloppier.

She wraps her legs around me, and I look down to see the satin pajama shorts and little white panties I pulled aside are made dark by us–her arousal and mine, too.

I’ve never needed her so bad that I’ve torn her clothing, or mauled her awake, but I love the way she gives herself over, knowing somehow as she lifts from the pillow to fill my mouth with her tongue, that we need this.

“Avery,” I ground out, reaching between us to stroke her clit, but she shakes her head, slapping at my arm for me to stop.

“No, I’m, just… just…” her eyes roll closed, a gentle flutter, perspiration glittering on her eyelids. “Keep going, please, Sutt, please,” she moans.

With my elbows sunk deep into the memory foam mattress, I take her face in my hands and crush my mouth to hers. Our kiss is gnashed teeth and tangled tongues, moans and whispers of soon and close .

My hips slow and my erection pulses, short circuiting my brain as I throb and pulse, emptying myself into Avery as she clenches and moans all around me.

We come together, sweaty and panting in the early Saturday sun.

When I catch my breath, I slip out of her and clean her up using a damp towel from the bathroom.

I bring her one of my old college t-shirts from the drawer, and a new pair of her panties and help redress her while she sits up in the center of our bed.

“I’m sorry about your pajamas,” I tell her, as she sits with her legs crossed, bare legs smooth and exposed, lips still swollen from making love. Her hair is mussed and tangled, but her blue eyes shine in the soft glow of morning.

“I’m not.”

My head jerks up from where I’d been focused on retying my pants. Avery wears a sinister little smile, one that makes my groin feel tight and heavy all over again. “That was spontaneous, and hot.”

My mind veers back to the phone call I made this morning as I extend a hand to my fiancée. “Come on, I’ll make you an espresso and French toast, then we can go taste some cakes.”

I collect Avery in my arms, loving the soft squeal that comes from her as I toss her over my shoulder and swat her rear, covered only by my t-shirt and tiny panties. Once I take her down stairs, I lower her to a barstool.

“How are you feeling, you know, about everything the other night?” she asks quietly as I fill the grinder with fresh beans from the local market.

Once the press is in and the machine is on, I grip the edge of the counter, and face Avery. “I called her this morning, while you were asleep. Josie Allen.”

The sleep left in Avery’s expression drains, and she sits up a bit straighter. “You did?”

I nod, and then tell her what I both wanted to be true and also hoped was a lie. “My father was telling the truth. About it all. Josie corroborated.”

Avery slips off the stool and crushes into me, looping her arms around my waist as she presses her cheek to my chest. “Baby,” she says, and nothing more. She just holds me, and we stand there, swaying to the sound of espresso being made.

“How do you feel?” she finally asks when she steps back, her face pink from being pressed to me so tightly.

“Numb.”