Page 113 of Made for Wilde

I taste copper as my teeth cut into the inside of my cheek. Blood pools in my mouth, warm and metallic. Then my vision blurs as the hallway tilts beneath my feet.

“My daughter?” Jason roars, his voice breaking with hurt and fury that cuts through me like a blade. “You fucking touched my daughter?”

Charlotte screams. The sound rips through the hallway, high and desperate, and it tears something inside me. But I can’t look at her. Can’t bear to see her face right now.

The second punch hits my ribs and drives the air from my lungs in a painful whoosh.

I see this one coming too, his left hook swinging wide toward my body. Every instinct tells me to block, to bring my arm down, to twist away.

I don’t move.

The impact is like taking a sledgehammer to the chest.

Something cracks. The pain is immediate and sharp, radiating outward from the point of contact. I stumble back a step but force myself to remain standing.

I deserve this.

I deserve every blow he wants to deliver. I betrayed him in the worst possible way, and this is the price.

“Dad, stop it!” Charlotte screams and moves toward us with tears streaming down her face.

I hold up my hand to keep her away and taste blood with every word.

“Stay back, baby. It’s okay.”

But nothing about this is okay.

Nothing will ever be okay again. The knowledge sits like a stone in my gut as I face the man who has been more brother than friend for most of my life. The man who trusted me with the thing that matters most to him.

His daughter.

“You were supposed to be her protector,” Jason says, his voice dropping to something more terrible than his shouts.The volume decreases but the venom intensifies. Each word is deliberate, cutting. “Not her seducer.”

The accusation hits harder than any physical blow could.

Is that what I did?

The question loops in my mind. Did I really seduce my best friend’s innocent daughter?

The doubt creeps in, corrosive and painful. It eats away at the certainty I’ve clung to these past months. Did I take advantage of her youth, her inexperience, her trust? She’s twenty-one. I’m forty-one. The numbers sit heavy in my gut.

I think back to that first night. Charlotte caught in the storm, soaked through and shivering when I found her. Me bringing her somewhere safe, offering her warmth and shelter. Nothing more. But then she asked to cut my hair. Something so simple, so intimate. Her fingers brushing against my neck, her face close to mine. And I didn’t pull away.

Should I have pulled away?

I was the experienced one. The one who should have known better. Maybe I did manipulate her, even if I didn’t mean to. Maybe I saw something I wanted and convinced myself it was mutual. Maybe?—

No.

The thought cuts through the spiral of doubt like a knife.

What Charlotte and I have is real. It’s complicated, unexpected, wrong in so many ways, but it’s real. She came to me of her own free will. She chose this. Chose me. Not because I manipulated her or took advantage, but because of something genuine between us.

The love I feel for her, the way she makes me want to be a better man, the future we’re building together. It’s not predatory or manipulative.

It’s love in its purest form.

Even if the whole world calls it wrong.