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“Oh,” I said, the word sticking like a lump at the back of my throat. I should’ve been grateful. I should’ve been relieved. But all I felt was panic and disappointment, like he was abandoning me all over again.
“Is it…” I couldn’t make myself say the words. Is it because I made you hard? “Did I do something wrong?”
“No. You were perfect.” He let us into the apartment. “I shouldn’t have asked you to do that.”
“But I offered.”
“It doesn’t matter.” He lowered me onto the couch cushion. “Anyway, it’s better for you if you’re not involved in my work.”
“Better how?”
“Too much controversy.”
“Since when are you shy about controversy?”
He pushed the ottoman closer so I could rest my foot on it. “I’m not shy about anything. But the backlash wouldn’t fall solely on me. It would mark your career before it even started. Better they see you as an artist first, and as my daughter second. Not as my subject."
“Who’s they?”
“Critics, dealers, other artists.”
“But I don’t care how they see me.” I couldn’t believe I was fighting him on this, considering how badly the session had rattled me. But when the alternative was moving out of my father’s light and back into the darkness... I couldn’t let that happen. I didn’t care whether the piece went viral, or never amounted to anything more than kindling.
I could not handle losing him again.
“Dad, I’m doing this for you, not for them.”
“I thought you were doing it for you.”
“I am. I’m doing it for both of us.”
“You’re not hearing me, Paige.” He rubbed his eyes. “I’m not going to paint you.”
“Because you’re worried about my career prospects?”
“Because you’re mine.” The edge in his voice told me not to push, but there was something in the way he said the word mine that hooked its claws in me. A twinge of anguish, the threat of darkness buried, something protective about his straight-backed stance.
No, not just protective.
Possessive.
Maybe there was a reason my father had turned his mouth toward mine yesterday, the same reason he’d chosen not to confront me about spying on him. What if, when he spread my legs and touched my pussy and got hard watching me masturbate, it wasn’t just a biological response?
I had spent the last twenty-four hours wondering if I was going crazy, when perhaps the truth lay somewhere on the ground between us.
Like the apple that never falls far from the tree.
“The kiss,” I said, gazing up at him from the couch. “It wasn’t an accident, was it?”
He eyed me like he would a predator, like I was something dangerous. Maybe I was. He shook his head.
“Then, this is real,” I said, “what I’m feeling. It’s not just in my head.”
“Only you know what you’re feeling. But no, it’s not all in your head.”
I brought my fingers to my lips. Now that the pain in my foot had subsided, all I could think about was the fact that he’d wanted to kiss me. Not on the cheek or the forehead. On the lips.
This attraction, this completely inappropriate desire I was battling, wasn’t one-sided. He wanted this as badly as I did, so much that he hadn’t been able to stop himself from kissing me, touching me, watching me.
