“What in the name of Jesus Christ Himself were you thinking?” Preston Mercer’s voice booms loud enough to rattle a nearby lamp.

My father is standing in front of me, face beet red, shaking a copy of Sunday’s 7-Day at me the same way he did when I brought home a C− in Algebra the first quarter of eighth grade. Though I refused to admit it, I was more fixated on the way Penny Wilmer’s lips silently moved when she worked her math problems than the lessons Mrs. Gremer was trying to teach.

The following Monday I asked to be moved to the opposite side of the room from Penny Wilmer and I brought my grade up to an A the next three-quarters straight. I fixed that. I’ll fix this, too, though it’s far more complicated than putting a few desks between me and a pretty redhead who got me hard by biting her lip.

“Do you know what your careless actions have caused?” He doesn’t even wait for my response. “A shit show, Shaw, that’s what. A goddamn fucking shit show!”

Oh boy. Profanities galore. My father is upset. I get it. I deserve it even, and I’ll take his wrath like a man. I fucked up. I’ll own it exactly the way I did in the eighth grade.

“I’m taking care of it,” I announce evenly.

“Taking care of it? And how are you taking care of it, exactly?”

The 7-Day is a political outlet but they have bordered on more of a gossip rag the last year and their credibility is starting to come into question. A fact I’m particularly pleased that John Whelan, the president of Lock Media, agreed with me on during our brief conversation yesterday.

I wasn’t too surprised he took my call. Seemed that little stunt the 7-Day pulled made it all the way to his desk before I did. He agreed they would print not only a retraction but an apology and assured me the reporter responsible would be fired. Then he assured me heads would roll if they slandered one of the most prominent businessmen in Seattle again. And when he extended that courtesy to my siblings I told him I wouldn’t pursue legal action.

“I have it under control, Dad.”

I lean back on the couch and place my left ankle on my right knee. My arm hangs loosely over the back and my fingers tap against the soft fabric, masking the sheer rage boiling in my veins at this second. And this time, it’s not because my father is treating me like I’m a prepubescent who got a bad mark that may soil my chances at an Ivy League education.

No…it’s because Reid “fuckface” Mergen is sitting a little too comfortably to my right. Slightly out of choking distance. Enjoying my verbal lashing if I had to guess.

I haven’t talked to my father since the incident broke two days ago. I’ve had more important things to deal with, such as repairing the damage some dumbfuck did and keeping Willow close and out of her own head. And away from Mergen. But Noah was right. I had to face him sooner or later and since I knew this could get ugly, I insisted I meet him at his house instead of his office.

Now I’m not so sure that was a good idea.

“You had a minor dip in the polls. You’ll be back up by the end of the week,” I say easily.

“That’s not even the issue.” It is. “Do you know how your mother reacted when she saw this trash?” I wince a little at that one. My parents don’t want to picture me having sex any more than I do them. “How the hell did this happen?” Still yelling. Still shaking that damn paper.

Sliding my gaze over to my father’s campaign manager, I address him when answering, because honestly? This is the basic question I’ve had for days now. “I don’t know,” I sneer. “Why don’t you ask campaign boy over here. Isn’t it his job to keep this shit from the press in the first place?”

Mergen’s eyes glaze over in a flurry of black hate. If he grinds his molars together any harder, I’m sure he’ll break a tooth. I pray for pain. “My job”—he punches—“would be a helluva lot easier if you’d keep your fucking dick in your pants.”

“Where I put my dick is none of your business,” I toss back nonchalantly. “Keeping it out of the papers is.” Besides, my dick is not in question here. It was nowhere near the waitress. Except for that brief second she palmed me over my jeans, which I barely remember.

He leans forward. It’s meant to be threatening and I want to castrate him on the spot. I’m plotting where I can find the dullest kitchen knife when he slams me front and center, no contact necessary. “And what about Willow? Is where you put your dick her business or are you plotting so far ahead you’ve already forgotten she’s the woman you’re supposedly in love with?”

This fucker’s nuts are mine. They’ll be hanging in my trophy case by sundown. I shoot up at the same time he does, and the only thing that stops me from throwing a punch is the fact my father has stepped in between us as a buffer.

“You won’t do this in my home. Sit down. Both of you.”

My father is about my size, about my weight, but with a twenty-seven-year difference between us, moving him out of the way so I could take down this prick on the other side wouldn’t be a hard task. I think about it. For a blistering second, it’s all consuming. Mergen would be on the ground bleeding before he could do a damn thing to stop me.

It’s tempting. So damn tempting. But I’d have to listen to my mother’s reprimand for the next year and this piece of shit isn’t worth it. Instead, I stab my finger in the direction of his chest. “You say her name again, I won’t think twice about laying you flat.”

His smug smirk fires up the intense hatred I have for him and all he’s trying to do to my family. And my father is clueless.

“You don’t deserve her,” Mergen says with fiery heat.

“God help me,” my father mutters. He walks over to pick up the drink he abandoned earlier so he could berate me.

“You’re right. I don’t,” I surprise him by answering. I am so over my skis with Willow it isn’t even funny. But by some divine miracle, and despite all of my shortcomings, she loves me and I’ll take it. “You sure you didn’t have your sticky fingers in this little debacle? It seems awfully coincidental given the fact you’ve made it clear you want her back.”

Mergen doesn’t say a thing. He doesn’t breathe. He doesn’t even blink. A weighty silence falls over the room. I gaze at my father who is now staring at Mergen, an unreadable expression on his face. It’s as if he’s finally seeing the real snake in the grass for the first time in weeks. About fucking time.

“Is this true?” he asks him.

For the first time since I walked in, Mergen looks uncomfortable. My father likes Willow. He likes us together and though he knows as well as I do there is history between the two, I’m betting he’s as much in the dark about the details as I am. If he thinks his campaign manager has nefarious intentions toward his son’s girlfriend, which in turn may hurt his campaign, maybe Mergen will write his own ticket out of town. One can only hope. For all our sakes, that’s the best possible outcome.

“No,” he answers my father, not daring to look my way.

“No?” My incredulous rebuttal morphs into a harsh laugh. I cross my arms and widen my stance, then go in for the kill. “So, when you told me over our little chat recently, quote unquote, ‘I’m the one she’ll marry, the one she was always meant to marry,’ you were just what? Trying to goad me? Get under my skin? Be a fucking prick? Is that it?”

His chest expands slowly. I note his fingers have curled in slightly and his jaw muscles tick with fury. I let my lips turn up into a cocky grin.

“I haven’t asked you this before because quite frankly I don’t think it’s any of my business, but what exactly is the nature of your relationship with my son’s girlfriend.” My father punctuates the last word nicely.

Boom. Go Dad.

Mergen’s eyes cut from me to my father, who is now standing straight and tall. Waiting. My father doesn’t like to be kept waiting.

“Preston—”

He interrupts, “I don’t have time for bullshit, Reid. I’d like a straight answer if you please.” He pauses only briefly. “You were more than cast mates, I take?”

Silence.

So much silence it’s suffocating me from the top down.

Maybe he sensed the subtle step I took toward him or maybe it was my father’s shaggy gray-tipped brows that are now touching his receding hairline. Either way, at last he reluctantly answers, “Yes.”

My gut clenches. Hard. You already knew this, Merc. Man up.

“And?” my father prods gently. It seems counterintuitive, but that’s the innate politician in him. Getting anyone to talk about anything. He makes them actually think they want to get things off their chest that are weighing them down. It’s a gift I wish I had inherited. It would come in handy with Willow, that’s for sure.

Mergen turns back to me, and when I think about this night for months and years to come, I’ll remember every frame of it with sick accuracy.

I won’t forget the dark pit in my stomach I thought would swallow me whole. Or the hateful thoughts clouding my mind as he spoke the truth with conviction. The piercing in my chest is akin to a swift, serrated knife being driven in farther with each syllable from that one fucking word…

“I was her fiancé.”

Fiancé.

And all that shit swirling inside me was bad enough, wasn’t it? What could be worse than standing face-to-face with the man who had my woman’s life entwined in his before I did?

I didn’t think it possible, yet there was one thing.

What would stick with me most wasn’t how I felt, but how he did. The obvious anguish present in his voice, visible on his now sober face said it all. Once upon a time, he had someone so precious, beyond extraordinary, and she slipped through his fingers. He wanted her back with such desperation he would do anything. Any. Thing regardless of morality, but everything he did was an effort in futility because she didn’t reciprocate his feelings any longer. She belonged to someone else now.

It was a foreign feeling. One I hoped to hell I would never experience.

But with the twisted trajectories our lives unknowingly took years before we met, with those poisonous secrets I now hold from Willow my worst fear is I will end up exactly like Reid Mergen once she finds out.

Alone and pining away for the woman I will love until I die.