CHAPTER 8: I'M SLEEPING WITH MY BEST FRIEND'S FATHER [VIII]

CHAPTER 8

AVA'S POV

The front door opens while Marcus still has me pinned against the kitchen counter.

His hand is under my skirt. Two thick fingers are buried inside me, curling slowly. My leg is hooked high around his hip. I’m biting down on his shoulder to keep from making noise even though we thought we didn’t need to be quiet anymore. His cum from twenty minutes ago is still leaking out of me, slick and warm down my thigh. We’re both breathing hard. The kitchen smells like sex and coffee. We don’t hear the key in the lock. We don’t hear the door open. We don’t hear the suitcase wheels until it’s already too late.

“Dad? I’m back—”

Lisa’s voice cuts through the house like a blade.

Everything stops.

Marcus’s fingers freeze inside me. My whole body goes rigid. My heart slams so hard against my ribs it hurts. For one suspended second neither of us moves. Then we both turn our heads at the same time.

Lisa is standing in the doorway of the kitchen.

Her hair is wet from the rain. Her jacket is dark with water. She’s still holding the handle of her suitcase, knuckles white. She looks at her father’s face first. Then her eyes drop to where his hand disappears under my skirt. Then they move to my face — flushed, lips parted, eyes wide with pure horror — and to the way my body is still pressed against his, one leg lifted, skirt rucked up, the unmistakable evidence of what we were doing written all over both of us.

Nobody speaks.

The only sound is the rain against the windows and the soft drip of water falling from her hair onto the floor.

Then the suitcase slips from her fingers and hits the tile with a dull, heavy thud.

“What the fuck.”

Her voice is barely above a whisper at first. Then it rises, sharp and cracking.

“What the fuck is this?!”

Marcus pulls his hand out from under my skirt slowly. The wet sound of his fingers leaving me is obscene in the silence. I yank my skirt down with shaking hands, but it’s useless. I look exactly like what I am — freshly fucked, hair a mess, lips swollen, his cum still visibly wet on my inner thighs. There’s no way to cover it. There’s no way to make this look like anything else.

Lisa’s eyes are huge and shiny with shock. She stares at me like she’s never seen me before in her life.

“Ava…?”

My throat closes completely. I open my mouth. Nothing comes out. Not a single word.

Marcus steps half in front of me, his voice low and controlled, the same calm tone he uses when he’s about to get his way. “Lisa. It’s not—”

“Don’t.” The word snaps out of her like a whip. She stares at him, then at me, then back at him. “Don’t you dare try to explain this. How long?”

Neither of us answers.

The silence stretches.

“How long?!” she screams. Her voice breaks on the second word.

“Five weeks,” Marcus says finally. His voice is calm. Almost cold. “A bit more.”

Lisa makes a sound like the air has been punched out of her lungs. It’s small and wounded and terrible. She looks at me again — really looks — and I watch the exact moment the shock curdles into something uglier. Something that will leave a scar.

“You were supposed to be my best friend.” Her voice cracks wide open. Tears are already spilling down her face, but she doesn’t wipe them away. “I let you stay here. I gave you a key. I was worried about you every time your mum got bad. I chose you. And this whole time… this whole time you’ve been fucking my dad?”

She’s shaking. Her hands are trembling at her sides. Rainwater is still sliding down her temples.

I force the words out. They sound small and ruined.

“Lisa, I’m sorry—”

“Are you?” She laughs, high and wrong and sharp enough to cut. “Is that why you’ve been so ‘busy’ lately? Why you always offered to come over? Why you’ve been acting so weird every time Ryan is around?”

My stomach drops through the floor.

I see the second the thought lands. I see it hit her eyes.

Lisa goes very, very still.

“Ryan.” His name comes out quiet. Dangerous. “What about Ryan?”

I don’t answer fast enough. The pause is all she needs.

Her face changes. The color drains out of it.

“Oh my god.” She takes a step backward, as if putting space between us might protect her. “You’re sleeping with him too.”

The silence that follows is worse than any scream.

Marcus glances sideways at me. He doesn’t look surprised. He already knew. Of course he knew. Lisa sees that too — the lack of shock on her father’s face — and something in her expression fractures even further.

“You knew?” she whispers, staring at him. “You knew she was fucking my boyfriend… and you still touched her? You still—” Her voice gives out. She looks between the two of us like we are strangers wearing the faces of people she used to love. “What’s wrong with you? What’s wrong with both of you?”

I open my mouth again. Nothing comes out. There is no excuse that isn’t disgusting. There is no version of this that doesn’t make me the villain. Because I am.

Lisa’s tears are falling faster now, tracking through the rainwater already on her cheeks. She keeps shaking her head, small, broken movements, like she can somehow deny the entire scene in front of her.

“I was on your side,” she says to me, and her voice is so full of hurt it barely sounds like her. “Every single time. Every time your mum got violent. Every time you needed a place to sleep. Every time you needed someone. I chose you. And the whole time you were doing this. To me. With him. With Ryan. With both of them.”

She turns her eyes to her father one last time. Whatever she sees there drains the last of the fight out of her and leaves only something raw and final.

“You’re both disgusting.”

The words land with the weight of a door closing forever.

Then she turns around, leaves the suitcase exactly where it fell, and walks straight back out of the front door into the rain. She doesn’t run. She doesn’t look back. She just leaves.

The door slams hard enough to rattle the frame and send a vibration through the floor.

The house falls into a thick, awful silence broken only by the steady sound of rain against the windows and the ragged sound of my own breathing.

Marcus leans back against the counter and lets out a long, slow breath. He drags a hand down his face. For a moment he doesn’t look at me.

I stand there in the middle of the kitchen with his cum still dripping down my leg, my skirt wrinkled, my body still aching from what we were doing when she walked in. My best friend’s ruined trust sits in the room like a third person. The sick, ugly truth settles over me with perfect clarity: part of me had always known this was how it would end. I had just wanted to keep it going as long as possible.

Neither of us moves to go after her.

The rain keeps falling.

And the silence keeps growing.