Pawn (The Pawn Duet #2) - T.M. Frazier Page 0,50

him, he still wouldn’t be here, even if he were alive.”

“He was a traitor. A liar,” Pike points out. “Don’t waste your thoughts on him. Plus, it wasn’t your real wedding day.” He grips my legs possessively.

“I know, and maybe, it’s because his approval was a competition between me and my sisters. Maybe, it’s because I always held out hope for the hug or those words of reassurance. But they never came, and although my disappointment mounted, my love for him never faded.” I sniffle. “If anything, it only grew. But now, saying this aloud to you, I can finally hear myself, and knowing what he’s done and why? I can’t believe I didn’t recognize it before. I can’t believe I didn’t see him for who he really is.”

“Recognize what?” Pike asks, pushing a strand of hair from my eyes.

I lean into his touch. “Papa was a classic narcissist. The world revolved around him. We revolved around him. Him and his twisted goals. We were not his children. We were merely trophies on his shelf. He didn’t comfort us because he didn’t care. Not about us. Only himself.”

“I couldn’t even tell him if I had a bad day because he would just be irritated and blow me off as if my feelings were annoying.”

“Do you know how hard I tried to make him love me? When the accomplishments weren’t enough for anything more than a great, what’s next? I rebelled. I got a D on a science project once.”

Pike raises an eyebrow.

“I know, but trust me, to me and to my father, a D was the ultimate act of rebellion. It may not be as direct as breaking someone’s jaw, but it hit him just as hard. But when I showed it to him, it only earned me the silent treatment from Papa. He didn’t speak to me until my next test. So, I tried being honest with him. I opened up to him. I went into his office one night, and I told him that I love him, and I’d like to explain the way I’ve been feeling lately and wanted to talk to him about the pressure I’m under. I just wanted him to listen. To react. Something.”

“What did he say?” Pike presses. He cups my face in his hand and I turn my head to brush my lips over his open palm.

“He shut me down. Rolled his eyes and told me that I was being emotional due to my overactive hormones. He dismissed my feelings with a diagnosis.”

“It’s like he couldn’t handle even the most basic human emotion. I don’t know if he just didn’t want to talk about them or…or if he even had them. I tried to think of what could have happened to him to make him so cold, so unavailable, but that only caused me to lie awake at night and analyze him over and over again, when the truth is, I didn’t have enough information to go on, and it’s not like I could say, “Hey Papa, anything in your past ever happen that would make you this emotionally twisted person? Ever been spanked in public? Exposed to any sexual situations before puberty?” I shake my head. “I guess I’ll always wonder.”

“People are complicated,” he offers. “You of all people should know that by now.”

“They are so much more than complicated, and yet––” I look him in his beautiful eyes, “––sometimes, what we feel can be so simple.”

“You mean like this shit between us?” Pike presses a kiss to the inside of my knee. “Because it’s complicated as fuck, but what I’m feeling right now, for you. What I want. From you. “ He scrapes his teeth up the inside of my thigh. “It’s pretty fucking simple. It’s all the other shit that comes with it that’s hard.”

He sits up on his knees and lightly wraps his hand around my throat. A possessive hold. “My mom left me, when I was a kid. I didn’t get a chance to get to know if she was the caring kind or not but from what I remember, I think she could have been. She left me, Mic, but you can’t. You can put distance between us, but you can’t really leave.”

“Because you’ll always find me?” I swallow hard.

“No,” He rubs his hand over his chest like he’s in pain. “Because you’re still in here. But when you’re gone, this place inside of me…it hurts like fucking hell. Like I want to punch inside my