Lukas

“Look at me, Ivy. Look into my eyes, and you’ll see I’m telling you the truth. You know I would never do something like that. Are you crazy? I love you.”

I sob and shake my head. “I am looking at you. You’re a mess this morning. You look like you’ve been going at it all night, and I know what that looks like very well.”

“Ivy, no.” He holds my arms, his fingers digging into me. “I would never do something like that. Fucking ever. I’m just tired. She woke me up in the middle of the night. I had to drive a fucking hour back and forth to get her. I put her in the guest room, but she was drunk and acting crazy, coming on to me. I think she may have taken something. She wasn’t acting herself at all, and she still isn’t. I pushed her away and locked myself in my bedroom. I didn’t touch her.”

“She came on to you?” I ask incredulously. “For God’s sake, Lukas, she’s just a kid, and she looks up to you. She would never do something like that.”

His eyes are wild, tears forming in the corners of his bloodshot eyes. “Ivy, I swear to you, I’m telling the truth. You know me. You know I could never do that to you, or her, or our family. What we have is everything to me.”

I push him away. “I have to get out of here. I’m going to be sick. I can’t look at either one of you.”

I rip the diamond ring off my finger and hurl it at him. It bounces off his bare chest, and he watches it skid across the floor, stunned.

“No. Please, don’t do that.” He grabs the ring off the floor and comes back after me. “Please, put this back on. Don’t do this to us. Please,” he pleads.

I shake my head, confused and just wanting to get away from him. This is just like Paul, only this time, I actually caught him.

“You did this to us, and I have no idea why! I will never marry another cheater,” I cry, shaking my head, my heart breaking. “I can’t believe you did this to me, Lukas. I trusted you!”

Throwing the door open, I run out to my car. “Ivy!” He chases after me and catches up to me just as I slam my car door and lock it.

“Ivy, please, you have to believe me.” He bangs on my window, but I speed out of his parking lot, sobbing uncontrollably.

I can’t get the sight of my daughter half-naked out of my mind, smirking at me like she won. Has she been after him this entire time, just pretending she was happy for me? Could she be that conniving? My cell phone starts to blow up with missed calls and texts from Lukas.

I turn it off, not wanting to hear a word from him.

Everyone was right, after all. He played me for a fool.

And my own daughter fell under his spell and betrayed me.

I can’t trust anyone.

Lukas was wrong. There is no happily ever after.

LUKAS

I RUN BACK INTO MY HOUSE, slamming the door behind me, and fly up the stairs, taking them two at a time. I find her in the guest room, dressed and sitting on the bed.

“What the fuck did you just do?” I scream in her face.

She looks up at me, her eyes wide. “I’m sorry. I don’t remember what happened last night.” She stands up and grabs her leather bag and phone.

“The hell you fucking don’t!”

“Whatever, Lukas. Thanks for the ride.” She tries to push past me, but I grab her arm.

“Where the fuck do you think you’re going? You’re gonna tell me what the hell you just did and why.”

Fear settles in her eyes, and I loosen my grip on her arm, but don’t let her go.

“Why did you take off your clothes and sneak over to my room? You set that whole thing up.”

“Let me go,” she says, her voice shaking. “And stop yelling at me. You’re not my father.”

“You’re fucking lucky I’m not. No daughter of mine would ever do something like that. Did your father put you up to this?”

“No,” she says, looking at her feet. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I can’t remember anything other than touching you.”

Fury takes over, and I see red. “Why are you doing this, Macy? I thought we were friends. I thought you cared about your mother.”

“I do. I guess this just happened.”

“No!” I yell, shaking my head. “This didn’t just happen. You did this shit on purpose, and I want you to tell me why right fucking now.”

“Leave me alone!” she yells back at me, and I remind myself that she’s only eighteen. She’s also obviously messed up, and she’s supposed to be my stepdaughter some day.

I take a deep breath and try to calm myself before I do or say something that I can’t fix. “Macy, please, just tell me what’s going on, all right? I promise I’ll calm down, and I won’t be mad at you anymore. Just tell the truth so I can fix this with your mother, okay?”

“I don’t remember anything,” she says. “I remember that asshole leaving me at the party and you coming to get me, and us kissing.”

I grab her shoulders and shake her. “I did not kiss you. You tried to kiss me. I pushed you away, and you know it. Why are you doing this?”

Suddenly, Vandal is standing in the doorway, looking from Macy to me. “Dude, I’ve been ringing your bell for ten minutes and heard you screaming from the lot. What the fuck is going on?”

I throw my hands up. “I don’t know. She set me up to make it look like I slept with her, and Ivy believes her.”

He narrows his eyes at her. “The fuck did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything.” She cowers away from him and looks toward the door. “Stop looking at me.”

“You’re lying. It’s all over your face,” he accuses, towering over her. She cringes back from his menacing look.

“Leave me alone,” she says.

He backs her into a corner, his six-foot-four frame building a wall in front of her. “If you did something to hurt my brother, I will make you regret it, little girl. Trust me.”

“Vandal, she’s just a kid,” I remind him.

He stares her down. “She’s eighteen, old enough to know better and old enough to deal with the repercussions of fucking with people’s lives.”

She starts to shake at Vandal’s threat. “I just want to go home. I don’t remember what happened.”

“I can make you remember.” He puts his hand to her throat, barely touching her, but I can see she’s petrified. And she should be. Vandal is a psychopath and not someone to be fucked with. I don’t think he’d really hurt her, but since Katie died, he’s been even more mentally imbalanced than usual.

“Vandal . . .” I warn.

“You wanna go a round with me?” he says to her, his voice dark and nasty, like I imagine Satan would sound like. “You want to play games? I’ll show you what that’s really like, baby, and you’ll need a wheelchair to get out of here.”

Holy shit. My brother is off the rails. “Vandal, stop. Just call her a cab and get her out of here.”

“No. She’s going to remember. Aren’t you, Macy?”

She cringes against the wall, tears streaming down her face.

“Talk. Now,” he commands, his huge frame towering over her. “You want to know what it’s like to fuck with a man? I will show you if you don’t fucking spill it right now.”

“Vandal!” I yell, grabbing his shoulder. “Enough. She’s family.”

He glares at her. “Family doesn’t hurt each other.” He pulls out his wallet and throws a fifty at her. “Get the fuck out of here and get a cab.”

I watch as she picks up the cash and runs downstairs, the door slamming, shaking the house as she leaves.

Vandal turns to me, his eyes still dark and wild like an animal. “You look like shit, man. Did you—?”

I stop him dead. “No. Absolutely not. She called me, drunk from a party. I went and got her, and brought her back here. She was acting weird and kept trying to touch me. I pushed her away and slept alone in my room. I would never touch her. She’s the daughter of the woman I love. She’s family to me. You’re a father, Van. Could you do something like that?”

He stares out the window, his jaw muscles twitching. “I was a father. And I think I could pretty much do anything.”

I grimace at my bad choice of words. “I’m sorry. I’m not thinking.”

He crosses the room and slaps my back. “Don’t worry about it. What are you going to do?”

“Well, obviously, I have to somehow get her to admit that she set this up and get Ivy to believe me.” I pull all the sheets off the bed and throw them in a pile on the floor, wanting all traces of her gone. “She threw my ring at me, Van. It fucking gutted me.”

He leans against the doorframe and crosses huge arms, his jet black hair flowing down his chest. His looks freak me out most of the time, so I can only imagine the fear Macy felt at being his target.

“I think the ex had something to do with this, fiddles.”

Smirking at his sarcastic nickname, I nod in agreement. “I think so, too. That guy fucking hates me and can’t stand that we’re together. I think, when he found out we got engaged, it threw him over the edge.”

“Want me to go talk to him?”

Vandal’s method of talking scares me. “Not yet. I need to talk to Ivy, and Macy again when she calms down.”

He cracks his knuckles. “Just say the word, bro, and I will fuck his shit up.”

“You really like to hurt people, don’t you?”

An evil grin crosses his face. “Not all people, but yes, I enjoy a good amount of pain infliction in any form I can give it.”

I’m glad that gene skipped me.

After Vandal leaves, I take a quick shower and drive over to Ivy’s house. I take another hit to the gut when I see Paul’s car in the driveway.

I bang on the door in a fury until she opens the door, teary-eyed and red-faced.