Badd Motherf*cker: Badd Brothers by Jasinda Wilder Page A

and Mom working at a diner to put a little more cushion in the bank until Dad figured out his next career.  
    And then, without a word, without a reason, without so much as a single argument or blowout, Mom just…left.  
    It had scarred both Dad and me for life. Dad never dated again, and I’d always found it impossible to trust anyone except Dad. I never really had many friends, never really dated all that much. I got into lots of trouble in high school, of the drinking and smoking pot and fucking boys in the back of cars variety, but that was because I was angry and confused. I didn’t have a mom to show me how to be a woman, and Dad had his career as a cop by then, so there wasn’t anyone to tell me no. None of the boys I ever fucked meant anything. It was what troublemakers did, and it was—believe me when I say I get how fucking cliché this is—a cry for attention.
    I met Michael my junior year of college. He was a few years older than me, cool, laid-back, good-looking, had an intact nuclear family, mom, dad, brother, sister. He wasn’t exactly close to his siblings, but he had them and saw them regularly. His dad was an asshole and his mom was a drunk, but he had them, both together in the same house, still married. It was odd, for me. We’d go over to his house, the same one he grew up in his whole life—unlike me, a Corps brat who’d been to six different elementary schools between kindergarten and fifth grade—and we’d sit around the dinner table with his whole family, and they’d argue and bicker and drink too much and sometimes Michael and his brother would nearly come to blows after too much red wine, but they’d always hug before Michael and I left, and he’d hug his mom and dad and sister too, and it was just…so weird. It made no sense to me. They were dysfunctional, sure, but in a normal way.  
    My mom had abandoned me. I’d been more independent at twelve than most college kids. I made my own breakfast, packed my own lunch, and usually made dinner for Dad, too. I did my homework without being told, and most of the housework. I could take a bus from home to the precinct, and did so regularly. I’d routinely accept rides to and from school or to the station from Dad’s cop buddies, which meant climbing into the passenger seat and playing with the radio and turning on the siren if they got a call.  
    I could shoot a gun better than most rookies, knew a dozen different ways to break someone’s wrist, and owned my own Taser. Which I’d once used on a guy on a bus who was trying to cop a feel on fourteen-year-old me.  
    My dad was big, gruff, cynical, tough, intimidating. He once arrested a boy I’d been fooling around with—the kid had wanted me to blow him and I’d said no, and he’d gotten a little handsy in his teenage displeasure. Unfortunately for Billy Price we’d been in his car outside my house, and Dad had been watching. Honestly, Billy had been lucky Dad hadn’t pepper sprayed him. He’d been cuffed, booked for assault, and had spent the night in the holding cell with the drunks before Dad let him out. I hadn’t needed Dad’s intervention, but I hadn’t been upset about it either.  
    Then along came Michael and his normal family and his affectionate-but-not-clingy ways, his not-impressive-but-decent cock, his not-impressive-but-decent ability to last for more than five seconds in bed, and the fact that he’d claimed to love me. He’d pick me up from work at the law firm, take me to dinner, buy me roses, take me to the movies or a concert, and we’d have sex and wake up and have breakfast, and he’d go to work in the marketing division of Amazon and I’d go to work in the small but intense firm where I was a law clerk, and that was life. He seemed happy. I’d thought I was happy.  
    He proposed over dinner at a swanky restaurant, and we planned the wedding. We’d planned it to be small, just his family and closest friends. Dad and I didn’t really have anyone