Page 69 of The Triple Play

Our house, or rather,Dad’s estate, was bought with the money from his prestigious legal job and was built to be looked at. It wasn’t warm or inviting or a loving place to live after Mom died. Three stories of cold white brick and symmetry was a stupid idea for somewhere in the hurricane belt — we’d had the upstairs windows replaced at least seven or eight times from debris. Even as a kid, those windows freaked me out, watching me like brand new eyes every time we’d come home from evacuating and they’d be broken. I’d spent the first eighteen and a half years of my life in that house and still never felt like I’d earned the right to lean on a wall or call my roommine.

My tires crunched over the gravel that lined the loop, slowing to a stop right in front of the freshly painted wooden steps. I spotted him immediately, standing on the wraparound porch with his arms crossed, his crisp blue dress shirt tucked into charcoal slacks, his greying hair styled back away from his face. A human gavel in fucking loafers.

I sat there for a moment, the engine idling, my fingers tightening around the steering wheel, trying to talk myself out of opening the door. But it didn’t work. I’d only get an earful later.

“Annie,” Dad said, nodding at me as I shut the door on the same black Ford Fusion I’d had since high school. I didn’t bother to lock it — it wasn’t like anyone was going to break into it out here.

“Hey, Dad.” I walked up the front porch steps, my body still a little sore from the position Xavi had held me in last night, and came to a stop in front of him.

He gave me a once over, his eyes sharp, his mouth flat. Just that unreadable, lawyer stare I’d seen him use in a courtroom too many times to count that could make a witness stammer and make me feel fifteen again.

“Come inside,” he said as if I were aguestin this house, stepping back and holding the door open with enough stiffness that it set my alarm bells off. Dad was a board most of the time, but this was a step further even for him.

I walked into the front hall, the marble floor making each fall of my boots echo. I kicked them off at the shoe rack before he could ask me to, knowing the drill. Everything was exactly the same, but still so unfamiliar — white walls, crown molding, the same oil painting of the Savannah coastline hanging above the fireplace. There was no warmth, no clutter, and more importantly, no trace of me or Mom anywhere.

He motioned toward the leather couch across from the mantle and I followed the wordless command without thinking about it, sinking down onto the edge of the sofa like it might bite me. He didn’t sit, though, and that made my stomach twist. He stood in front of the coffee table, his arms crossed,loominglike he was trying to decide if I was his daughter or a witness on the stand.

“Where have you been the last two weeks?” he asked.

I swallowed. Fair question. “I went to LA for a bit,” I said, not fully lying, but my voice was tight. “I just needed to get away for a little bit.”

His brow raised, his brown eyes boring a hole in my skull. “Just LA?”

“Just LA, Dad.”

He walked over to the built-in bar, poured himself two fingers of Lagavulin, and didn’t offer me one. He turned back to me, leaning back on the bar, and let the silence stretch between us as he sipped.

The tension was eating me alive, but I knew better than to put my foot in my mouth with him.

“Tell me, Annie, are you particularly fond of the Atlanta Fire lately?” he asked, and bile crept up my esophagus. “You used to like watching the games with me. Never seemed overly interested in attending one though.”

I blinked at him, my pulse starting to rise.

“I know you’ve been following Cole Maxwell, Colton Miller, and Xavi Moreau from city to city.”

My spine stiffened. “What?”

He didn’t flinch, just took another sip and stared at me over the rim of the glass. “I said I know where you’ve been. I know who you’ve been with. I know what cities they’ve played in, and I know you’ve been in every one.”

I could feel the color drain from my face, my cheeks suddenly feeling ice cold. “How… How do you know their names?”

He shrugged. “I’m a fan. You know that. And I do my due diligence,” he said flatly. “Especially when my daughter disappears without notice. Made a few calls, double-checked flight logs. Word of mouth.”

I stared at him, my mouth going dry, my brain scrambling for words. I replayed every moment I thought I’d been discreet, every moment I’d failed at that. None of us wanted it out there, but now of all people, myfatherknew.

He took another sip of his drink before holding it in front of his waist like a shield, like he was measuring the weight of his words before he said them.

But nothing could have prepared me for them.

“Are you sleeping with them?”

The air got sucked out of the room in the span of half a second. My jaw tensed, my breath caught in my throat. “Excuse me?”

He didn’t even flinch. “Are you sleeping with the three of them, Annabelle Marie Brent?”

His use of my full name hit me the same way it always did when I was in trouble as a child. “I’m not answering that,” I rasped, my chest tight, my body screaming at me toleave. But Dad had a way of locking me down with just a stare.

He set his glass down on the bar with a sharp clack. “So that’s a yes.”

---