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

except Dad’s cop buddies since we didn’t give a shit about Mom’s family, and Dad was the only child of long-dead parents.  
    I never questioned Michael. He didn’t stay late at work, didn’t keep his phone under his pillow or text at odd hours or take secretive phone calls. There was no lipstick on his collars, no perfume I didn’t recognize on his body.
    The lipstick on the collar thing, though—does that actually happen? How do you get lipstick on a guy’s collar? Are you kissing his shirt?  
    Point is, there weren’t any warning signs.  
    We had regular sex. He never acted weird. He wasn’t super possessive or jealous, never obviously checked out other chicks…
    Then…on our wedding day, he fucked Tawny Howard in his dressing room.  
    If I hadn’t caught him, would he have married me? Taken me to bed on our honeymoon with Tawny’s pussy juice all over his dick?  
    I shuddered, since now I had no clue what else he’d been up to—or, rather, who else he’d been up in . We never had sex without protection, since I wasn’t on birth control—I had regular, not-very heavy periods and hated the way birth control messed with my hormones. I was glad for that, now, because it meant I was clean even if he was a cheating bastard whore.
    I felt another tear trickle down my cheek, and then another. He’d probably been cheating on me the whole time, I’d just been too stupid to see it. I’d made the conscious effort to trust him after he’d told me he loved me. He’d said it first, without any pressure from me. It hadn’t even felt forced, or unnatural, or fake. I’d believed him. And I’d let myself feel like I was in love with him, too. I’d put blind faith in him, which had gone against every instinct I’d ever had. I hadn’t wanted to trust him, hadn’t wanted to fall in love with him. But I’d made myself trust him because, as I told myself, if I didn’t choose to trust someone eventually, I’d go through life alone, like Dad. Who was sad, lonely, and difficult, except where I was concerned.
    Speaking of Dad…I opened our iMessage thread and started reading through the backlog.
    Dru? Where the shit are you, girl?
    Seriously. Call me. NOW.
    WHErE THE fUCk DID YOU GO?!
    DRU EMMALINE CONNOLLY CALL YOUR FATHER FUCKING PRONTO!
    The texts got increasingly angry and frightened, until the last few were nearly unintelligible. The voicemails were worse. He sounded absolutely terrified, and for a guy who’d done a tour in Iraq and patrolled the worst parts of Seattle every night, that said something.  
    Shit.
    SHITSHITSHIT.  
    I’d fucked up.
    Mom had left him for no reason, and now I had, too, or at least I was assuming it must have felt like that. I mean, I’d told Rolando to tell him I’d call him, but for someone who’d already had his wife abandon him, it had to have felt like a betrayal. Like a knife to the heart.
    I wiped my eyes, tried to swallow the lump in my throat, and hit Dad’s speed dial in my phone, and he picked up before it finished the first ring.  
    He sounded groggy, scratchy. “Dru?”
    “Yeah, Daddy. It’s me.”  
    “Where the motherfucking goddamned hell did you fucking go?” Only a Marine Corps DI could swear like that.  
    “I’m in Ketchikan, Dad.”  
    “Alaska?”
    “Apparently.”
    A moment of silence, then the sounds of the burr grinder and the faucet as Dad made coffee. “Explain.”
    “I—I’m sorry, Dad. I’m so sorry. I didn’t think about how it’d make you feel, I just…I had to go. I couldn’t stay in Seattle another second. It was a crazy spur of the moment thing and I was drunk…but it was the right thing to do for me. I’m just sorry I worried you.”
    “ Worried me? Worried is what I’d be if you got in a fender bender or some shit. I heard from Rolando that you jumped in front of a seaplane during take-off and climbed into the plane drunk and still in your wedding dress, and took off in it? That’s not worry, that’s a heart