I arrived at my dad’s place in Las Vegas late that afternoon. I’d considered simply calling him, but then it would’ve been too easy for him to just hang up on me. Instead I’d texted him to confirm that he’d be home, and got my ass on a plane.

While I was on the plane, I’d reread the offending article repeatedly—it was rapidly circulating the less-reputable entertainment gossip sites—and I knew I was making the right move.

This was really more of a go-ream-him-out-in-person situation.

By the time my taxi pulled up to my dad’s house, though, I’d lost most of my gusto. I knew the odds I’d actually ream him out over this or anything else were pretty slim.

I’d never given the man a tenth of the flack he’d deserved.

Standing in his tacky home, surrounded by all his flashy, gaudy bullshit, and giving him hell? Unlikely. Looking my father and his ridiculous life in the face always disarmed me. Made me realize how futile anything I could say to him really was.

It had been a long time since I’d been inside my father’s home. Maybe… six years? Seven? He’d lived in this one for over a decade, in this gated community in Summerlin, and I’d never enjoyed coming here. I’d never really enjoyed being in any of my dad’s homes over the years, but this one was easily my least-favorite.

Maybe because when I walked into it, it seemed so grossly unlikely that a man who’d fathered me could actually live here.

It looked like a Goodfella lived in it. All marble and glossy and too much gold. And my dad himself, in his paisley silk pajama pants and robe, was the picture of Look at me, I’m rich and sleazy.

There was even a new young thing on his arm.

Well, she wasn’t exactly on his arm. She was lounging on his couch, half-naked, when I followed him into the expansive, shiny living room. She was topless, to be precise, and had a tiny, fluffy white dog in her lap.

When she saw me, she looked me over slowly and speculatively, making no move whatsoever to cover her breasts. And my dad, the epitome of grace and manners, didn’t even introduce us properly.

“This is Margery,” he told her. And that was it.

“Maggie,” I said. My dad only ever called me Margery to be an ass, because he knew I preferred Maggie.

“Charmaine,” the girl said, still looking me over. And not in a friendly way.

“I’m his daughter,” I informed her, before she could say anything I could never unhear, like asking him if I’d dropped by for a threesome. “Could you please give us a little time to talk, alone?”

She didn’t say anything, but she got up and made a point of walking over to my dad, boobs still out, and gave him a gratuitous kiss before handing him the dog. Then she threw me another look. Like Maxxi, she was young and slightly plump, but where Maxxi had brown hair with fuchsia at the tips, this one was a peroxide-blonde.

She also had a definite skank vibe about her.

Sadly, I kinda missed Maxxi.

When she’d wandered out of the room, I asked my dad, “What happened to Maxxi?”

“Gone,” he said, with a lack of feeling that was pretty disturbing, though I really couldn’t be surprised. I watched him stroke the dog’s fur and deposit the tiny thing gently on the couch. Then I looked around.

Why would I even hope to find Maxxi here?

Just because he’d kept her around longer than a lot of the other ones didn’t mean she’d be staying forever.

I sighed and set my purse on a table. Unfortunately, I wasn’t going to get the kinds of answers I was hoping for. This became abundantly clear when I took a good, long read of my dad.

It was barely four-thirty on a Wednesday and he was definitely not sober. And he was mixing himself a fresh drink on his gaudy drink cart, this mirror-and-rhinestone thing that looked like it belonged on the set of a 1970s porno.

Looked a hell of a lot like the one he’d sent me and Zane as a wedding gift, actually.

Needless to say, we didn’t keep it.

On the wall behind him, there was a giant painting of—I shit you not—himself, with the dog. He also had a new tattoo on his wrist of a naked chick. Which brought the total count of naked chick tattoos on my dad’s body to three, as far as I knew.

“Maxxi was nice,” I offered. It was true enough; the one time I’d met Maxxi, the night I married Zane, she was nice. She was pretty wasted, but she was nice. Probably nicer than my dad deserved, honestly. “You were with her for a while. A couple of years, right?”

My dad made a disgusted sound. “Maxxi’s a useless cunt.”

Okaaay.

I watched him take his drink and settle onto the couch, drawing the dog into his lap, completely unaffected by my presence. Well… he looked mildly annoyed, maybe.

Holy shit, this was gonna be hard.

Harder than I’d anticipated, even.

My father was the very opposite of a nice, loving father or a nice, loving man. All he had to do was open his mouth to remind me of it.

Calling his ex-girlfriend a useless cunt?

How would I ever get through to a man who would do that?

No matter how pissed off I was about the girl spilling my private shit to the media, she didn’t deserve my dad talking about her like that. Maybe she was a little… air-headed? But from what I knew, she was barely twenty-one when I met her.

My dad was turning sixty this year.

It would’ve been swell if this age disparity was an anomaly in my dad’s dating history, but not so. Fact was, Dizzy Bowman, fading rock star, was drawn to girls with major daddy issues.

Admittedly, I had daddy issues of my own, so it wasn’t exactly difficult to recognize. I’d never been into dating vastly older men, but I couldn’t exactly judge.

“You want one?” he asked me as he looked me over. He gestured belatedly toward the bar cart, where he hadn’t bothered to pour me a drink.

“No, thank you,” I said, and my dad actually rolled his eyes. Because, you know, good fathers always rolled their eyes when their daughters wouldn’t drink alcohol with them. “I came to talk.” I chose a chair across from the couch that didn’t look like anyone had had sex on it recently, and perched carefully on the edge. “Look, Dizzy. I wanted to ask you—”

“Dizzy.” He cut me off with a bitter chuckle. “Are we back to this shit?”

Uh… we never got off this shit. But okay…

“Dad,” I amended, though it pained me. I was pretty sure he only preferred me calling him Dad because of the power trip. I’m your father, you owe me your life. That kind of thing. “I need to talk to you about something important.”

“So?” He sipped his drink. “What’s up?”

What’s up?

Seriously?

We hadn’t seen each other since my wedding almost two years ago, and we’d spoken less than a handful of times this year.

Any number of things could’ve been up.

I’m dying of cancer, Dad.

I’ve got three months to live.

I won the lottery and I’m leaving it all to you.

Jesus, I wanted to say something terrible to get some kind of reaction from him.

Five minutes in the man’s company, and I already felt like an angry teenager all over again.

“What’s up,” I said slowly, “is that Maxxi said a bunch of stuff to the media about us.”

“She’s not here,” was his response.

“Yes, I see that. Did you see what she said, online?”

“Yeah. I saw.”

Okay. So at least he knew what I was talking about. Though he didn’t seem the least bit concerned.

“They quoted her, Dad. She gave them her name. She didn’t even try to hide who she was. Which means she was probably trying to hurt you. And to do that… she was probably pretty upset with you.”

“So?”

“So… what happened between you two?”

He grunted. “What happened? I treated her like a queen, and this is how she returns my generosity. Dragging my name through the mud.”

Right… Because his name was so pristine up until that point.

“She said she was at my wedding to Zane,” I went on. “Which was supposed to be a private event. She wasn’t supposed to tell anyone.”

My dad stared at me blankly. “That was a long time ago, Maggie.”

Like that mattered?

I tried another tack. “She spilled a lot on unflattering stuff about you, too. I think this was just one of many things she thought might hurt you.”

“Why would it hurt me?”

“Uh… because I’m your daughter? And it was supposed to be a secret.”

That didn’t seem to compute at all. I could already see him checking out of the conversation, though it wasn’t like he’d really checked in in the first place.

“I was supposed to be able to trust you,” I added.

Now my father gave me a cold look. And when Dizzy Bowman gave you a cold look, it put frost on your spine. “It wasn’t me who blabbed about your wedding.”

“Right. But you’re the one who brought her to the wedding. We trusted you, and you vouched for her, and we trusted that. This is a breach of that trust. Do you get that?”

I looked deep into his gray eyes, and no, he definitely didn’t get that.

“It’s not my fault if some bitch can’t keep her mouth shut,” he said. “This what you came here for? To hassle me in my living room?” He took a slurp of his drink.

“I’m not hassling you, Di—Dad. But you should know, it really upset me when I read what she said to the press—”

“Don’t be a bitch, Maggie.”

And there it was.

Had I ever gotten through a conversation with my dad without him calling me a bitch or a slut or a waste of air?

Not that I could recall.

Which was maybe why I had such a hard time standing up to him. Because I knew that when I did, the insults would start flying.

And it would hurt.

I sat back and looked at him. He was still handsome, in a way. My father was never the best-looking guy, but there was something about him. This kind of haphazard charm he tossed around. Made people want to buy into his bullshit, at least for a while. There was a reason the young girls kept coming around, and it wasn’t just the money.

With his scraggly, bleach-blond hair and tattoos, his dark tan and jewelry, there was something attractive about him, I supposed, to a certain type of girl. It was his confidence, maybe. His unshakable sense of self-importance.

“I’m not being a bitch, Dad,” I told him calmly. “I’m just trying to be honest with you. I want you to know how I feel.”

He made a disgusted sound and sipped his drink. It was almost empty. “Well, what do you want me to do about it?”

As if I wanted anything.

I watched him stroke his dog. She wore a gold bow, and if memory served, her name was Cookie. I’d never met her before, but he’d definitely sent me pictures of her. She was pretty damn cute, so it was impossible to hate her. But it was painfully clear to me that Cookie got a shit-ton more love from my dad than I ever had.

I was pretty damn sure, based on this exchange and so many others over the years, that all I’d ever been to my dad was a pain in his ass. Even though I’d never actually asked him for much.

Although… maybe I did want something.

For as long as I could remember, I’d wanted to work in the music industry and manage bands—and not because I loved music. I did, but the real reason I’d always been so driven to succeed in my career was because deep down I’d been seeking my father’s recognition and approval all along.

I knew this.

My musical talent was pretty much nil, but the business side of things had proven a solid fit for me, and I knew that was the only way I’d have a chance of making a name for myself in the industry.

The only thing my dad had ever seemed to care about besides himself was the music industry.

Well, and his dog.

And yes, I wanted his approval.

That was never more clear to me than when I sat here in his tacky house and felt his supreme lack of approval.

It wasn’t that my father disapproved of me, exactly.

He just didn’t approve.

And seeing him like this, fawning over Cookie? He was now feeding her treats from a silvered-glass bowl… and Jesus Christ.

I was jealous of a dog.

“I don’t expect anything from you, Dad,” I told him, which was true enough. Maybe I did want, but I’d learned long ago not to expect.

“How’s your husband?” he asked, switching topics like I hadn’t even spoken. Was he trying to be an asshole? Because he definitely hadn’t asked me how I was since I’d stepped in the door. “You know, I asked him to meet up with me when Dirty played Vegas. What was that, two months ago? He never called me back.”

Perfect. I should’ve known.

I’d never heard from my dad while we were in Vegas on this tour… yet he’d reached out to Zane.

Zane never told me about that, but I didn’t blame him. He would’ve known it would only hurt me.

“He’s okay,” I said flatly.

I could’ve said, He’s mad at me right now because I freaked out that our wedding is now in the press, thanks to you, and we spent an hour arguing about it this afternoon while he tried to talk me out of coming to see you, you know, on account of you being such an irretrievable asshole, but I didn’t.

“Okay?” He grunted. “You’re not making him happy?”

“I try,” I said; no idea if he’d pick up on the sarcasm. “My mission in life is to make my husband happy, of course.”

“Should be. You play your cards right, he’ll take care of you for the rest of your life. I would’ve taken care of your mother, if she’d stepped up.”

Cards?

Play?

Like my marriage to Zane was some kind of strategic game?

And my mother…?

My mom did step up—and raised me by herself. With pretty much zero help from him. While he’d fucked groupies and snorted coke in his gold-plated mansion, we’d scraped by.

I watched him suck back the last dregs of his drink, his eyes unfocused. He was barely following our conversation, and it wasn’t just that he was drunk and/or high.

He also truly didn’t give a shit.

Not one shit.

“What are you on?” I asked him. It wasn’t something I normally asked. Because really, why bother? But I was morbidly curious.

“Grow up, Margery,” he snarled. “You know I’ve got the pills for my back.”

Right. The mysterious phantom back pain that had afflicted him for the last thirty years.

“I didn’t know that was still bothering you.”

“Why’re you here?” he asked me, and I could tell that he seriously had no clue. I had no idea if he’d already forgotten about the whole Maxxi-leaking-shit-to-the-media thing or if he’d entirely missed how significant it was to me. But he definitely had no clue why I was still sitting here.

Frankly, neither did I.

I stood up and got my purse.

“I do want Zane to be happy,” I told him. “Maybe someday you’ll meet someone who’ll want that for you, too.”

He glanced up at me as Cookie ate a treat from his hand. “Did you meet Charmaine?”

I stared at him, searching his face. Jesus, he was drunk.

“Oh, yeah. She seems like a real keeper.”

As I headed out to the front foyer, he called after me, “Tell Zane to give me a call, Maggie.”

“Sure, Dad.”

I’ll get right on that.

If only he knew… that if Zane had come with me to have this conversation—which he’d wanted to do, but I’d talked him out of—he’d probably have cut off my dad’s balls already and fed them to him.

I’d probably have let him.

I wasn’t a little girl anymore, and I definitely saw Derek “Dizzy” Bowman for what he was—a womanizing, alcoholic narcissist who was much more in love with himself than he’d ever been with my mom, and who really didn’t give a crap about me. All I was was a footnote in his life, the mere fact of my existence a credit to his excellence as a human being.

Yup, I’m a dad. Got a beautiful daughter…

I was pretty sure a line like that had gotten him laid more times than I cared to know.

As I walked out his front door, I knew I needed to let go of the hope that I was ever going to win his approval, much less his love. And I knew I shouldn’t have felt so hurt about it, or about the fact that his latest girlfriend had betrayed my trust.

My need to be loved by a man who could probably never love me, who probably had no real capacity to love anyone but himself, was the most fucked-up ongoing disappointment in my life—and it was the hardest to reckon with.

I really shouldn’t have needed my dad’s love anymore. I shouldn’t have wanted it. But I still did. I knew that painful truth, deep inside.

I wanted it, but I was never going to get it.

Because you couldn’t have something that didn’t exist.

* * *

I arrived back in Detroit late that night, exhausted, my emotions rubbed raw and wanting nothing more than to fall into Zane’s arms. I found him easily enough, in the lounge of the bar, which was closed for a private Dirty party. Brody and Jessa were with us again, Roni had also flown out, some other friends of the band had come down from Toronto and the place was packed.

I’d said hello to Brody and a few other people before I spotted Zane. He was standing at the back of the room, talking with Dylan and some other guys I didn’t know.

I made my way through the crowd toward them, and when Zane saw me his face lit right up. His eyes locked on mine and I felt that look all the way down deep. The butterflies swarmed, my heart swelled, and my shoulders softened with relief.

About two seconds later, I saw her.

Dallas.

She was standing over at the bar with a few other girls, including Katie, and Jesse was standing nearby. And granted, Katie and Jesse had no reason to know about my bullshit drama with Dallas, or what an evil wench she was, but it really rubbed me the wrong way. Katie and Jesse were my friends.

Zane was my husband, and this was my family.

Dallas was the enemy.

What the hell was she doing here? In her shiny red mini-dress and I’m-a-slut heels, with her thick blonde hair and fake game-show-co-host smile…

By the time I reached Zane and he pulled me to him, I was far more angry and distraught than I was happy to see him.

“What’s she doing here?” I demanded, before he could get a word out.

“Who?” The light in his face died a bit, so maybe he already knew who.

“Dallas,” I bit out.

Zane glanced over toward the bar, where Dallas stood. So yeah, he knew she was there.

“Hey, Maggie. Welcome back.” Dylan laid a warm hand on my back and I let him draw me into a hug.

“Thanks, Dylan,” I forced out. “Nice to be back.”

Then Zane yanked me away from Dylan and pulled me aside—into the very back corner of the bar.

“You alright?” he asked, looking me over. “What happened with Dizzy?”

“Fuck Dizzy. Did you invite her?”

“No,” he said. “I didn’t invite her. I haven’t even talked to her yet.”

“Yet?” My hands curled into fists at my sides, and I wondered what the odds were that I’d punch him—or Dallas—before the night was through. With the fury that was running through my veins right now, it was feeling pretty damn likely. I was shaking, I was so wrung out from the awkward-painful conversation with my dad, and now this…

“It’s a party, Maggie,” he said, eying me cautiously. Maybe wondering if I was gonna use the fists. “She showed up. That’s what people do.”

“Yeah. She showed up. Just like she showed up at your Christmas party, and you let her stay there, too. There she is, and you know how I feel about her. I told you how I feel about her after that party. So unless you have some kind of feelings for her, I can’t see any reason why she’s still here.”

“I’m not involved with her anymore,” he said, eyes narrowing. So now he was getting mad at me? Where did he get off getting mad at me over this? “I’ve told you that. You never believe me.”

“Okay,” I practically seethed. “I believe you. But you still put up with her. You still entertain her bullshit.”

“What bullshit?” he challenged. “When she shoved her hand down my pants at the Christmas party? I told you, nothing happened after that.”

“I know. You didn’t even kick her ass out.”

“I didn’t fuck her either, Maggie. I spent most of the night with you.”

That was true.

“Even though you were barely speaking to me,” he added, with a little growl in his voice.

That was true, too.

I glared at him anyway.

He glared right back at me. He towered over me, with his head bent close to mine. We were maybe an inch apart, and even more than I wanted to kiss him… I wanted to throttle him.

Fuck. Were we ever gonna get along for any length of time?

And would I ever stop seeing my fucking dad when I looked at him?

Maybe not. Because I couldn’t seem to stop seeing women like Dallas when I looked at him.

Women I knew were beneath me—which meant I wasn’t gonna make some scene by kicking her out myself. I shouldn’t have to kick her out myself.

I shouldn’t have to ask Jude to kick her out, either.

She wasn’t here for me or Jude.

“She’s not a good person, Zane,” I informed him, because to be fair, maybe he’d never seen that side of her. With him, she was probably sweet as pie. “I don’t want to see her. Is it too much to ask that she doesn’t show up at every party?”

“She’s not at every party,” he said. “And I get that you don’t like her, but—”

“But what? There’s no but. I have reasons for not liking her, Zane.”

“Why, because she grabbed my dick? She didn’t know I was with you when she did that, because you don’t let me tell anyone I’m with you.”

“Right. So it’s my fault. And that makes it okay for her to grab your dick.”

“Well, it doesn’t make it not okay,” he said.

“You did not just say that.”

“Maggie. I’m not fucking Dallas and I’m not looking to have my dick grabbed by anyone. When are you gonna believe me when I say that?”

Silence. It was loud in the party, but we just stared at each other for a long moment in our silent, heated corner.

“I understand that you don’t like Dallas,” he said again, slowly. “I just don’t understand why she needs to be punished. If you need to punish someone, punish me. I’m the one who slept with her when I shouldn’t have. That’s not her fault.”

I shook my head at him, still angry. I was mad at myself, too, for flipping out on him about this, about that stupid girl, when I couldn’t even stand up to the one person who really deserved my anger—my dad.

“I can’t believe you don’t see it,” I told him quietly.

“See what?”

“You think she’s a nice girl? Ask her what she thinks of me.”

I turned to walk away, because stupid tears were actually forming in my eyes—but Zane grabbed my arm, stopping me. He spun me around to face him and held me by my shoulders. “What does that mean?”

I blinked back my tears, trying to cover the pain with anger. But I couldn’t deal. I was so done. I had nothing left.

Dealing with my dad had taken it all.

“I overheard her talking about me at the Christmas party.” My lips actually quivered as I said the words.

“Talking about you? What do you mean, talking about you?” Zane’s hands tightened on my shoulders, his fingers digging into me.

A part of me couldn’t believe I was really telling him this… But I told him anyway.

“It was late, after a lot of people had left. I found her in the kitchen with her girlfriend. They were drunk, and I guess they were looking in your fridge for booze. They didn’t see me. But I heard her say, ‘Where’s that little brown girl who makes the drinks?’”

Zane stared at me.

I didn’t want to say it, but there it was. I’d never wanted to repeat those ugly words to him.

Zane knew who I was and what I was worth, and everything I did for Dirty. But to some people, all I’d ever be was the little brown girl who made the drinks at a Dirty party.

“She said what?”

I swallowed a sob that threatened to escape. “She said, ‘Where’s that little brown girl who—’”

“Don’t. Don’t fucking say it again.”

I went silent.

“Give me a minute,” he growled. Then he practically tossed me aside as he walked away, leaving me standing here, alone.

I turned right around and left the party. I headed up to my room, just barely holding back the tears. As soon as I’d shut myself into my hotel room, though, the tears won.

I tossed myself on the bed and cried for five solid minutes or so, until I was too exhausted to do it anymore and felt like a useless idiot. What had crying ever done for anyone?

It hadn’t done anything for me when I was a kid. It definitely never solved any of my problems or magically turned my dad into a nice guy.

Then I rolled over onto my back and stared blankly at the ceiling, kinda wishing I’d never gotten up this morning.

Well… the sex on the private jet with Zane… I’d get out of bed for that. And the chocolate cake.

But the rest of it?

To hell with the rest of it.

* * *

Maybe fifteen minutes later, there was a soft knock on my hotel room door.

I opened it to find Dallas, her eyes red-rimmed from crying. Her gaze barely met mine, and I hoped I didn’t look half the mess that she did.

I’d never had a conversation with this woman before. I really didn’t know her, and she didn’t know me.

I only knew her name because my husband had fucked her.

What the hell did we have to say to each other?

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, but there wasn’t much remorse in it.

Clearly, she was sorry about whatever just happened between her and Zane, though.

Shady was standing behind her. When I looked at him, he took her by the elbow, gently, and ushered her away.