His hands slapped against his face as he made some horrible sounds and dragged them down before dropping them to his sides. “You ignored the girl?”
“Mostly. When I couldn’t take it, I’d send her a text or talk to her just to hear her voice. Dad, I’m no good for her. I fucking woke up with a girl in my bed one night after seeing Taylor at a party. I got so drunk I screwed around with two different women. Who does that kind of shit if they care about someone else? The guilt about tore me in two. I had to tell her about it just to get it off my chest.”
His mouth fell open. “You . . . you didn’t. You told her that?”
I slowly nodded my head. “Well, I kind of left out the fact I had slept with two girls on the same night and mentioned just the one.” He pushed off from the truck and walked up to me and slapped the living shit out of the back of my head. “What kind of idiot did I raise? First off, don’t ever mention the other girl to her. She doesn’t need to know what one stupid drunk night led you to do.” Shaking his head, he asked, “Why in the world would you tell a girl about sleeping with another girl?”
“I-I don’t know! She confuses me!”
He shook his head. “She confuses you? Tell me you didn’t do anything else to hurt this poor girl.”
I swallowed hard. “I um . . . I tried to stay away from her, Dad. I honestly did, but every time I would look at her, she would be looking at me. I thought we could make it work.”
His face fell. “What. Did. You. Do?”
I dropped my hands to my knees as I tried to bring air into my lungs. “It was in Paris. I couldn’t take it any longer. I needed to tell her how much I wanted her and loved her.”
“Loved her?”
“She skipped lunch and I went to her hotel room.”
“Oh mother of God, I’m not liking where this is going. Did you say you loved her?”
I dragged in a deep breath. “Yes, Dad. I said I love her.”
He swallowed hard and motioned for me to keep talking. “I told her I didn’t think I was good enough for her and she said it was nonsense. She asked me to make love to her and . . . and . . . I did. I made her mine.”
Standing up, I turned to him. “I told her I loved her and she told me she loved me and always would. That freaked the hell out of me. Afterwards, I ran into Cammie who told me Taylor would never be happy with me and I freaked out.”
“Who is Cammie and define you freaked out?”
“Cammie is the girl I slept with that I told Taylor about.”
He nodded his head. “The freaking out? What did you do?”
“I told Taylor things between us wouldn’t work and she got upset.”
He let out a curt laugh and walked away from me as he said, “I would imagine she would be upset seeing as you just had sex with her. Tell me, was she still a virgin, and please for the love of all that is good in this world say no.”
I frowned and shook my head. “I did what I thought was best. If I kept acting like everything was okay, we would have grown apart and you know I’m right. She would have been in Austin and me here. How would that have worked, Dad? I mean, when I talk to her I can still feel—”
He opened the door to the truck, grabbed something and then slammed it shut before walking over to me.
“When you talk to her? You still talk to this girl?”
“Of course I do. I love and care about her.”
His mouth fell open. “Listen to what you just said. You have toyed with this girl’s heart, Jase. You took her virginity, told her you loved her and then five minutes later told her things wouldn’t work out, yet you still talk to her?”
“I love her, Dad! I can’t help the way I feel.”
My father scrubbed his hands down his face and moaned. “That poor girl. If I was her father I’d hunt you down and shoot you in the balls.”
I moved my hand and adjusted myself. The very thought of being shot in the balls made my stomach turn.
“I said I messed up!”
He shook his head and pointed his finger at me. I’d never seen my dad so mad before. “No, Jase, you didn’t mess up. You fucked up. You royally fucked up.”