Page 4 of Sweet as Puck

“She is. Look, Cara, I’m sorry you saw me in the compromising position. It was a mistake. It’ll never happen again. Please, please don’t tell your mother,” Dad begged.

I hated him.

I hated the sound of his voice and the way his apology didn’t even really sound like one.

Mum closed her eyes, and I watched as a tear ran down her cheek. Her shoulders slumped as she exhaled slowly.

“How many times have you cheated on Mum?” I asked, my voice sounding a lot harsher than I even intended.

“That’s not important,” he soothed and my skin crawled. “Whatisimportant is that it’s not going to happen again.”

“How many times have you slept with Danielle?” I asked again.

Mum lifted her tear-stained face to mine, and my heart broke at the utter devastation in her red-rimmed eyes.

Dad sighed as if he was running out of patience. “Two—no three—times. But I’ll be stronger. I’ll do the right thing from now on.”

Mum took the phone out of my hand and took it off speaker. She pressed it up to her cheek and squared her shoulders, sitting up straighter. When she spoke, she was deadly calm.

“Don’t you dare ask our daughter to cover for you. Cara isn’t one of those patsies you have working for you.”

I heard Dad’s protest through the line as Mum hung up on him. She held on to my phone, flipping it end to end against her knee.

“I’m sorry, Mum,” I whispered.

“You have nothing to apologize for, honey. And you were right, he did do something terrible.” She shook her head, and my phone started ringing again. It was Dad.

“He wasn’t wearing a condom,” I whispered.

I watched as her sadness morphed into rage. Her features hardened and her jaw ticked as she ground her teeth together.

My phone stopped ringing, then started again a moment later.

She answered it, putting it on speaker. “David.” Her greeting was clipped, more of a snarl than anything else.

“Carina, I’m sorry.” He paused as if waiting for Mum to say something, but she sat stoic, anger radiating from her. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

My breath wobbled as I inhaled, fresh tears falling down my cheeks. My heart hurt. They weren’t perfect, but they’d always had the strongest relationship I’d ever seen. Only moments earlier I’d been thinking to myself that I wanted a marriage like theirs. Now, though? Not so much.

What had happened to make it all go so off the rails?

“You slept with her three times,” Mum stated bluntly.

There was silence on the other end of the line for far too long before his one-word answer came through. “Yes.”

“You didn’t feel like you needed to own up to it after the first or second time? Were you going to come clean this time, or are we only having this conversation because you got caught?” Shedidn’t give him a chance to answer before she asked more rapid-fire questions. The control she exercised in not raising her voice to scream and shout her pain at him, was awe-inspiring. I had no idea how she managed to do it.

“You didn’t feel like you should say anything after you first thought of her like that? The first time you looked at her and wanted her? What about the first kiss? The first touch? You never stopped yourself. You went back for more—not once, not twice, but three times.”

“No, but—”

“I don’t trust you anymore.”

“Can I earn it back?” he asked.

I almost felt sorry for Dad. He sounded genuinely regretful.

“No.” Mum bit her lip, her eyes glassy as she blinked back tears and sucked in a slow breath. With a hoarse whisper, she asked, “Why, David? Why did you do it?”